Service Manager & Cireson App Store Additions

I've recently had some interesting conversations with the guys from Cireson.

Cireson are a System Center consultancy firm in the USA who have developed from the needs of their customers a range of extensions to Service Manager which help fill some of the perceived gaps in the solution.

They have a range of solutions/extensions covering many different needs:

• SCSM Web Console
• SCSM Asset Management
• SCSM My Work Items
• SCSM Group Assign
• SCSM Preview Pane
• SCSM Tier Watcher
• SCCM Power Manager
• SCSM Auto Close
• SCSM Notify Analyst
• SCSM Customizations
• SCSM Calendar Sync
• SCSM Risk Calculator
• SCSM Change Calendar
• SCSM Asset Import
• SCSM Affected User

One of the main areas I was interested in was the Asset Management solution, since that's where I began my Service Manager journey back in 2010.

Cireson have extended the console to provide you with a rich asset management solution, contained within the Configuration section of the console.

From here you can manage Contracts, Costs, Warranties, Organisational information as well as your various assets.

 

One area I specifically really do like is the Software Asset Management extensions, giving you the easy ability to start monitoring license counts and simplifying/rationalising the data pulled in from ConfigMgr in terms of versions and product names.

You can find more information about Cierson's selection of extensions for Service Manager here in their handy "App Store":
http://www.cireson.com/app-store/

I'll be posting some more around these great tools shortly so keep your eyes open for the posts!

Asset Management Solution/Extensions for Service Manager 2010 SP1

I've updated the Asset Management solution that I've previously blogged about (including some work arounds for the previous problem mentioned about decimal values).

I've uploaded it this time to the Technet Gallery Beta so the files can be found here:
http://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/Asset-Management-d06aff1f

Asset Items Covered:

• Peripherals (Scanners, Digital Cameras, Camcorders, Monitors, Fax Machines etc)
• Remote Access Tokens (RAS SecurID etc)
• Cisco IPT Phone Hardware
• Mobile Phones (Made up of 2 Assets: Handset & Phone Number)
• Network Infrastructure (Switches, ASA's etc)
• Server Infrastructure (Fibre Switches, UPS, SAN DAE's, Tape Drives etc)
• Printers
• Computers (Extended views from OOB and additional class extensions)
• Users & Groups (Extended views from OOB

I've included both the sealed MP's in a "Ready to Import" folder than can be imported straight away into Service Manager for testing and the unsealed xml so that you can see how it's all strung together.

Please read the documentation included in the zip file, before blindly importing.

It's been designed around UK Local Government, so won't fit every environment out-of-the-box but should be very easy to adapt.

If you are adapting it, please remember that if the original MP is sealed, then your customised version will need re-sealing. If you do this, you'll also need to re-alter all the public keys used in the references in the other MPs. Short and sweet... reseal ALL the MP's using your own key if you modify it.

If anyone does have any comments, suggestions, etc etc then please please please feed them back to me. The more people that look at it the more likely someone is to spot something I missed/did wrong.

Also, if you do extend it further, please let me know as it could be useful within my environment too.

There's a known issues section at the end of the documentation file in the package, please read that section and see if there's anything you can help with. I'll be enternally greatfull if there is!

** Disclaimers **
This is a slightly modified first release, first seen on my blog, and may very likely still have some issues.
Please test this in a non-live environment first, and don't shout at me if it breaks anything.
This comes with no warranty, expressed or implied.

Asset Management Solution - Problem!

If you've taken a look at the Asset Management solution I posted last month, you might want to hold off putting it into production, I've found a problem.

The problem is with the "Equipment Cost" property extension used in both the core AssetManagement.mp as well as the AssetManagementComputerPrinterCustomisations.mp

Both MP's use a similar property which is a decimal value type:

<Property ID="EquipmentCost" Type="decimal" AutoIncrement="false" Key="false" CaseSensitive="false" MaxLength="7" MinLength="0" Required="false" MinValue="0" MaxValue="5000000"/>

This was created using the Authoring Tool, and while there is a known issue with it truncating the values, I've found another.....

I noticed the Data Warehouse starting to log event ID 33502 & 33503 messages

I logged a support call with Microsoft and once we started digging we found that it had created it in the databases in differing formats.

In the operational DB it had created it as decimal(7,0)

In the Staging and Config DB it had created it as decimal(7,0)

In the Repository DB it had created it as decimal(7,6)

In the DataMart DB it had created it as decimal(7,6) 

Microsoft Support are still investigating the issue and I'll post back as soon as I have a resolution.

Asset Management Solution for Service Manager 2010

Since I've just put this into our production environment I thought now would be a good time to share this with the world too.

I've posted before about this solution so I won't spend time going over old ground.
http://systemscentre.blogspot.com/2010/12/asset-management-service-manager.html

You can find the files here:
http://cid-d130da82a6555249.office.live.com/self.aspx/.Public/SCSM%5E_AssetManagement%5E_MP.zip

I've included both the sealed MP's in a "Ready to Import" folder than can be imported straight away into Service Manager for testing and the unsealed xml so that you can see how it's all strung together.

Please read the documentation included in the zip file, before blindly importing.

It's been designed around UK Local Government, so won't fit every environment out-of-the-box but should be very easy to adapt.

If you are adapting it, please remember that if the original MP is sealed, then your customised version will need re-sealing.  If you do this, you'll also need to re-alter all the public keys used in the references in the other MPs.  Short and sweet... reseal ALL the MP's using your own key if you modify it.

If anyone does have any comments, suggestions, etc etc then please please please feed them back to me.  The more people that look at it the more likely someone is to spot something I missed/did wrong.

Also, if you do extend it further, please let me know as it could be useful within my environment too.

There's a known issues section at the end of the documentation file in the package, please read that section and see if there's anything you can help with.  I'll be enternally greatfull if there is!

** Disclaimers **
This is the first release, and may very likely have some issues.
Please test this in a non-live environment first, and don't shout at me if it breaks anything.
This comes with no warranty, expressed or implied.



Asset Management - Service Manager Management Pack

I posted a while ago about the management pack I was working on to satisfy our requirements for where I work.
http://systemscentre.blogspot.com/search/label/Asset%20Management

What I didn't do was get it finished as quick as I hoped to.

Well I'm nearly there now and after replying to a forum thread about this, I thought I'd best post an update here as well.

I've broken the MP off from Configuration Items where it lived before and it's now got it's own Wunderbar tab.  There's a common form across most of the MP as shown, but it differs slightly for Mobile, Remote access tokens etc.

I've extended the Windows Computer class to record some extra properties such as department, section etc as well as making it less cluttered to manually add an asset.  The idea being that you can add basic details as soon as the item arrives and then let AD & SCCM connectors add more detailed information as the device gets onto the network.

 I've got a deadline for this going into our live production that is looming so I'm hoping to wrap this all up before Christmas.

Asset Items Covered:

• Peripherals (Scanners, Digital Cameras, Camcorders, Monitors, Fax Machines etc)
• Remote Access Tokens (RAS SecurID etc)
• Cisco IPT Phone Hardware
• Mobile Phones (Made up of 3 Assets: Handset, Phone Number & SIM Card)
• Network Infrastructure (Switches, ASA's etc)
• Server Infrastructure (Fibre Switches, UPS, SAN DAE's, Tape Drives etc)
• Computers (Extended views from OOB and additional class extensions)
• Users & Groups  (Extended views from OOB)

Things left to do/expand on:

• Reports - I've got basic data flowing across to the DW, just need to write some useful reports but these might wait until after Christmas now.
• Dashboards - I'm going to utilise the SCSM Dashboard Solution Accelerator and the ability to integrate it into the console to provide simple dashboards such as number of devices deployed/in stock/awaiting delivery etc.

Issues:

• Because in the forms you don't specify the Display name it creates a seemingly random display name:

In fact this is acutally the guid for the enumeration list value "Scanner".  Why it's putting the guid in instead of the friendly name I don't know, but I'm hoping to get a call logged with MS tomorrow to see if they can shed any light. It doesn't cause too many problems with views as I've purposefully worked around it, however, when using selction boxes for relationships it makes it hard to read which item you're after:

** Edit ** - You can now download the MP, check this post for more details: http://systemscentre.blogspot.com/2011/01/asset-management-solution-for-service.html

Microsoft System Center Service Manager - Asset Management Pack

I thought I'd post a quick one regarding the Asset Management MP that I'm currently working on since it's getting nearer completion.

If I'm feeling brave enough I might just release this to the community, but it will obviously need some tweaking as it's geared towards Local Government.

Here's a few screenshots for now:

Console Folders & Views

Peripheral View

Peripheral Custom Form



I'm currently just finishing off the reports for the MP (Stock levels, items deployed in defined timescale etc)and I'll start work on a detailed blog post later tomorrow.