Service Manager – Page 2

Early Look: Service Manager HTML 5 Portal

October 21, 2015 by sbuchanan

***UPDATE 11-10-2015****

Download the new portal here: http://www.microsoft.com/en-in/download/details.aspx?id=49556
Office Install Instructions here: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/mt622142.aspx

****UPDATE END****

Today the Microsoft Service Manager team announced that Service Manager’s UR8 will include the new HTML 5 self-service portal. Here is the link to that blog post: http://blogs.technet.com/b/servicemanager/archive/2015/10/21/ur8-release-date.aspx

This is very exciting news as we know a new improved portal for Service Manager has been highly requested for a long time. In this blog post I will give a quick tour of the new portal that is coming. Here is what you see when you first login with some descriptions of the different areas:

Menu

You will find the fly out menu on the left side of the portal. On the top half are the navigation menu with contact info on the lower half.

Announcements

The Service Manager team has brought announcements back to the portal.

Service Catalog

Below is a screenshot of the Service Catalog the core of the self-service portal. You will see the Service Offerings listed in an easy way. As you click on a Service Offering you will see its Request Offerings pop out on the right.

Here is what a Request Offering looks like:

Notice on the request offering that you can favorite them by clicking on the heart icon.

My Requests

End users have the ability to access requests they have submitted as shown in the screenshot below.

My Activities

There is an area for activities to approve/reject, mark as completed/failed etc.

Help Article (Knowledge Base)

The Help Articles area is a huge improvement over the last portal. Now the help articles show right in the web browser. They also can be rated and or favorite.

The following screenshot shows that you can use keywords to scope down the help articles. This is helpful to narrow down to a specific topic.

The next two screenshots show what an internal and external help article looks like in the new portal.

Service Manager SCCM Remote Control Management Pack

August 22, 2015 by sbuchanan

Configuration Manager has a Remote Control tool. This tool is often used by service desks to conduct remote support sessions with end users. More information about this tool can be found here: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/Gg682062.aspx

A common ask in any Service Manager deployment is to use this tool within Service Manager from Incidents. For some time there have been many blogs out there with the steps on how to setup this integration. A quick search on your favorite search engine will bring back many results. The steps to set this up are relatively easy to do however they can be prone to errors.

I recently collaborated with fellow System Center expert Sam Erskine (www.itprocessed.com) to package this in a management pack as an effort to reduce the steps needed to set this up. I use it myself on Service Manager projects and it saves me time. I can import a management pack on a new SCSM deployment and then it is ready to be used. If you are using User Affinity in SCCM and the SCCM connector in Service Manager users primary device will automatically be assigned. This relationship flows over to Service Manager through the SCCM connector. When you click on the SCCM Remote Control Task it will attempt to connect to the primary device. Here is what it looks like:

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Download the solution here: https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/Service-Manager-SCCM-0ee48590

Update: SCSM Discovery Report v1.3

July 30, 2015 by sbuchanan

I have made some more updates to the SCSM Discovery Report script. It is now version 1.3. The updates include:

First: Updated the SCSM Version Checker code to version 2. Microsoft MVP Steve Beaumont worked with Samuel Erskine to optimize the PowerShell in the SCSM version checker. This optimization is now a part of the SCSM Discovery Report script. This also detects up to UR7 now.

Second: Fixed Service Manager Management Group Name section not displaying the name.

Third: Updated the Display Data Warehouse Information section to use UR7’s Get-SCDWInfraLocation CMDlet.

The script can be downloaded here: https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/Service-Manager-Discovery-a25c7d80

Script: Export Unsealed Service Manager Management Packs

July 27, 2015 by sbuchanan

Customizations to Service Manager are stored in unsealed management packs. These should be backed up. These can be exported from Service Manager and stored in a safe location. The process to export unsealed management packs from the Service Manager console is manual and each have to be exported one by one. A better way to do this is to use a script to export all un-sealed management packs.

There are several scripts out there that can do this but most are for older versions of SCSM. I have recently updated one of these scripts. It was created by Microsoft MVP and one of the top Service Manager experts Anders Asp. Here is his blog with the original script: http://www.scsm.se/?p=227

I have updated the script to work with the latest SCSM PowerShell CMDlets and have tested it with SCSM 2012 R2 UR7.

The script is named: ExportUnsealedSCSMMPs.ps1

You can download the script locally on a Management Server

Edit the script and change “C:\Unsealed SCSM MPs\” to a directory on your server. Be sure to leave the “\” at the end.

Run the script from an elevated PowerShell window on a Management Server by typing

.\ExportUnsealedSCSMMPs.ps1

You should see the following output:

clip_image001

The unsealed MP’s will be loaded in a folder with the current date as seen in the following screenshot:

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Note: Old folders will need to be manually cleaned up. You can also schedule this using Task Scheduler.

This script can be downloaded here:

https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/Export-Unsealed-Service-43602dd4

Operations Management Suite in SCSM Console

May 24, 2015 by sbuchanan

Today I was playing around with Service Manager and decided to add a view for Operations Management Suite in the Service Manager Console. I have placed it in a management pack for use in other Service Manager environments. I have uploaded the management pack to TechNet Gallery. Once you load the management pack an Operations Management Suite folder will show up within Work Items.

NOTE: The first time you open Operations Management Suite inside of Service Manager you will see compatibility mode warning just click on continue.

Here are some screenshots:

Download the management pack here:

https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/Operations-Management-10f68429

Update to the SCSM Discovery Report

March 25, 2015 by sbuchanan

I have made a couple of updates to the Service Manager Discovery report. The first one is that the report will now display the update rollup level within the report along with the version number. This was courtesy of Samuel Erskine and Natascia Heil. Thanks for contributing the the report! They have recently built … Read more

Service Manager Discovery Report

March 10, 2015 by sbuchanan

I recently built a PowerShell script that creates a discovery report for System Center Service Manager. The idea behind the script was to have something that I could run to gather all of the information I would want about a Service Manager deployment. I searched online and could not find anything so that’s when I decided to put something together.

This report can be used by consultants doing assessments or SCSM admins as an easy way to document what you have in your environment. This is a first pass at the report so it is version 1.1. I plan to add more information/functionality to the report in the future. Keep in mind I am not a PowerShell expert so feel free to take the script tweak it and share your updates with the community.

When the script is run it will output a report of System Center Service Manager in HTML format. This script should be run on a management server within your Service Manager’s management group. The script should be run with an account that has administrative access to Service Manager and the local server it will be running on.

The script will run on Service Manager 2012 SP1 and above. It uses SCSM 2012 SP1/R2 CMDLETS along with SMLets. If you don’t have the SMLets installed you can download them here: https://smlets.codeplex.com/

Discovered in the report:

These are the sections of information in the report.

Management Server Name
Service Manager Version
Management Server HDD CPU Memory
Service Manager Management Group Name
Service Manager Data Warehouse Information
Users connected to Service Manager
Service Manager Run as accounts
Service Manager User Roles
Service Manager Notification Channels
Service Manager Connectors
Service Manager Email Templates
Service Manager Subscriptions
Service Manager Groups
Service Manager Queues
Service Manager Service Offerings
Published Service Manager Request Offerings
Draft Service Manager Request Offerings
Service Manager Views
Service Manager Tasks
Service Manager Un-sealed Management Packs
Websites local to the Service Manager Server
Last 10 Service Manager error event logs

Example Link:

This will take you to an online example of the report.

https://www.buchatech.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Service-Manager-Discovery-Report.html

Example Output:

Here is a screenshot of the report.

clip_image001

Download It:

https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/Service-Manager-Discovery-a25c7d80

NOTE: The PowerShell report is provided AS-IS without warranty of any kind. It is recommended to run in a lab environment before running it in a production environment.

Whitepaper – Service Management’s Role in the Private Cloud

January 17, 2015 by sbuchanan

I am happy to announce that today Savision just published a new whitepaper authored by me. It is titled:

Service Management’s Role in the Private Cloud
Dispelling the Myopic Perception

This whitepaper sets out to define Private Cloud, the layers of Private Cloud, and those layers within which service management operates.

The whitepaper also explores having ultimate visibility into your organization’s business services. Business services discussed in this paper consist of configuration items (CIs), monitoring, and application maps; they are underpinned with incident, change management, and modern day self-service. In addition, the whitepaper explores the integration between Operations Manager and Service Manager, and the role Savision Live Maps Unity plays in this area. Here is an excerpt from the whitepaper:

“Technology needs of the business are changing, often faster than can be addressed by most internal IT departments.

It is critical for IT departments to shift away from the image of black box cost centers and slow moving dinosaurs that are hard to work with and become viewed as revenue-generating centers that are agile, fast moving, and business enablers with modernized IT services.

From the perspective of internal IT, there are some key steps that can be made to prepare and deliver “modern IT services” – with service management being a critical component of those services. This whitepaper explores these key steps from a Microsoft technology perspective as it applies to System Center.”

A huge thanks to both Kerrie Meyler and Sam Erskine for doing the technical review on this whitepaper!

To download visit:

http://savision.com/resources/white-paper/free-whitepaper-mvp-steve-buchanan-service-managements-role-private-cloud?utm_source=Twitter&utm_content=Whitepaper+by+MVP+Steve+Buchanan&utm_campaign=General

Community tools: Manage SCSM DW Jobs & SCORCH Reporting

November 24, 2014 by sbuchanan

One of the many great things about System Center is the rich eco-system within the community. Many System Center guru’s contribute their time to making tools that improve or fill gaps within System Center and they release these to the community for FREE. Two new community tools have recently been released one for Service Manager and one for Orchestrator. I wanted to post about them today and give them some shine.

SCSM DW Jobs Management Tool

The first tool is from Sam Erskine. We have seen a lot of great stuff from Sam lately such as System Center books, speaking at conferences and now another Service Manager tool. This tool gives you a GUI to execute all the Server Manager Data Warehouse actions.

ViewJobs-executed

As of right now you cannot do this directly in the Service Manager console. You can only do this via PowerShell. This tool gives you a centralized and organized way to handle the DW jobs. This is especially helpful when upgrading Service Manager or applying update rollups.

Sam has posted a blog about the tool with more information. You can find it here:

http://itprocessed.com/2014/11/838/

You can download this tool here:

https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/SCSM-DW-Jobs-Management-f69fb703

Orchestrator SSRS Reports

This one is from Steve Jesok. He is the man when it comes to automation. Steve has taken the time to share some very useful Orchestrator reports with the community.

summary

Orchestrator does not come with any reporting out of the box. For insight into your Orchestrator environment you have to create your own reports. Here is a blurb from the description of the reports:

“This collection of reports was put together to help me spot check the health of my servers and identify usage and failure patterns easier. The reports are based on a number of common Orchestrator SQL queries you find used to gather different bits of information, this is simply an attempt to put more of those bits in one place.”

You can download the reports here:
https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/Orchestrator-SSRS-Reports-ac304a7d

Thanks Sam and Steve!

Speaking @ MMS as one of the 3 International System Center Chefs

October 14, 2014 by sbuchanan

I am excited to be co-presenting a Service Manager session at MMS 2014 on November 10th. The Midwest Management Summit is a 3-day conference purposely capped to just 500 attendees so that nobody gets lost in the crowd. Almost 60 Microsoft MVP’s will be presenting on System Center topics and more.

Areas the speakers will be presenting on are Operations Manager, Configuration Manager, Orchestrator, Service Management Automation, Service Manager, Data Protection Manager, Azure Pack, PowerShell, Desired State Configuration and more.

The session I will be co-presenting in is titled: 900 Degrees of Service Manager with 3 International System Center Chefs. I am lucky to be co-presenting with:

Here is what you can expect from the session:

“In this demo-packed session, you explore the depths of customizing Service Manager with Samuel Erskine, Dieter Gasser and Steve Buchanan (MVP). We will walk you through real-world scenarios of using advanced customization techniques such as the Authoring Tool, PowerShell, and Visual Studio to build and customize classes, forms, workflows and console tasks in Service Manager. We also discuss best practices, recommendations and processes you follow when customizing Service Manager. You will learn how to plan for customizing Service Manager for business processes. Transform your plans into custom solutions using the advance authoring tools. Finally the session is delivered by 3 deep experts with vast real world deployment and authoring experience.”

Here is a video from the MMS site with us talking about the session:

About me:

Full details about this session can be found here: 900 Degrees of Service Manager with 3 International System Center Chefs

UPDATE:

MMS has extended reduced conference registration until Friday, October 17th. So go and register today to keep from paying the higher conference and hotel rates!