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!

Configuration Manager 2012 and VMware vCenter Protect Update Catalog

My colleague spent some time in the TrustLab today installing VMware vCenter Protect Update Catalog.  This was previously a solution from Shavlik and provides update management of third party applications such as Adobe Reader, QuickTime, Sun Java etc directly from within System Center 2007/2012 Configuration Manager alongside the normal Microsoft patch updates.

You can find Part 1 of his blog post on the installation here: http://ixrv.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/configuring-scup-2011-shavlikvmware.html

More info on vCenter Protect Update Catalog (They need a better name!) can be found here:
http://www.vmware.com/products/datacenter-virtualization/vcenter-protect-update-catalog/overview.html

Service Manager Telephony Integration

All I can say is wow.

Signature Consultancy have released a killer feature addition to Service Manager, Telephony Integration.

http://www.signatureconsultancy.com/smti.html

I've had customers ask about this feature as a comparison against other service desk solutions and always had to advise that it wasn't possible, but now it is!!

SMTI provides hooks into your IPT system, identifies the incoming caller and then provides the ability to quickly list and see details surrounding open calls for that user.

The features don't stop there though, you can also log a "quick" incident straight from SMTI without having to go back to the full console.

I'm not sure how/if I could put this into my demo environment but as soon as I get chance I'll certainly try to take a deeper look.

For further information either download the trial from the Signature website or contact them for further information.

http://www.signatureconsultancy.com/smtitrial.html

Trickle of releases - System Center 2012 Downloads

With the release of System Center 2012 marching ever closer, a trickle of releases are starting to sneak out of the gate from Microsoft in preperation.

Over the last couple of days the following Solution Accelerators, Management Packs, Integration Packs and Add-ons have appeared:

Solution Accelerators

• Microsoft Security Compliance Manager

Management Packs

• System Center Monitoring Pack for System Center 2012 - Orchestrator
• System Center Monitoring Pack for System Center 2012 - Configuration Manager
• System Center Security Monitoring Pack for Endpoint Protection
• System Center Monitoring Pack for WS-Management and SMASH Device Discovery
• System Center Monitoring Pack for Active Directory (AD) - (This isn't 2012 specific, just updated!)
• SystemCenter Monitoring pack for SQL Server (now includes support for SQL 2012 Monitoring)

Add-ons

• System Center 2012 - Operations Manager Component Add - On
• System Center 2012 – Service Manager Component Add-ons and Extensions
• System Center 2012 – Orchestrator Component Add-ons and Extensions
• System Center 2012 – Configuration Manager Component Add-ons and Extensions
• Microsoft Visio 2010 and SharePoint 2010 Extensions for System Center 2012

Integration Packs

• System Center Integration Pack for IBM Tivoli Netcool/OMNIbus
• System Center Integration Pack for HP Operations Manager
• System Center Integration Pack for Active Directory
• System Center Integration Pack for HP Service Manager
• System Center Integration Pack for VMware vSphere
• System Center Integration Pack for HP iLO and OA

Technical Documentation

• Technical Documentation Download for System Center 2012 - Service Manager
• Technical Documentation Download for System Center 2012 – Operations Manager
• Technical Documentation Download for System Center 2012 – Virtual Machine Manager
• Technical Documentation Download for System Center 2012 - Orchestrator
• Technical Documentation Download for System Center 2012 - Unified Installer

Community Technical Preview (Think Early Beta) of SP1 for System Center 2012

• System Center 2012 CTP for Windows Server "8" Beta support
• CTP of System Center 2012 Service Pack 1 (SP1) Documentation

If you notice on some of these links, things like the Service Manager authoring tool are now named RTM, roll on the release of everything!

I'm not going to write a raft of explantion text for each one, either the name is fairly self explanatory, or click the link and read the description there.

3rd Party Extensions for Service Manager

Looking to increase the features and flexibility of Service Manager 2010?
Then it’s worth taking a look at some of the available features offered by Microsoft Partners:

Seven Winds Call Script Manager Solution
This tool is the solution for an elementary problem existing within each service desk organization, consistency in the manner upon which incidents are registered at the 1st line of support.

SCSM Engingeering Team blog post & video demo

Intel vPro Management Pack

Intel® vPro™ Management Pack for System Center Service Manager 2010 is used to provide access to KVM Remote Control, IDE-Redirection and Power Control of systems.

Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) Management Pack
The IT GRC Process Management Pack for System Center Service Manager provides end-to-end compliance and risk management covering people, process, and technology.

Partner Demo: Absolute Software Locks Stolen/Lost Computers Remotely from Service Manager Console
Not sure if this is available yet, as I can’t find it listed on Absolute’s website, but it looks great.

Savision LiveMaps
Live Maps extends Microsoft’s System Center allowing for networks, systems, services and business processes to be dynamically visualized onto easy-to-understand displays.

End-to-End Compliance Management with Full Armor Policy Portal
PolicyPortal is a Software + Services offering built on top of Windows Azure that provides scalable endpoint management through the cloud. PolicyPortal can deliver applications, secured documents, security policies through Group Policy Objects and manage compliance for any remote, heterogeneous end-point.

ATEA/Spintop Accelerator Service Request Portal
Accelerator is a self-service portal for ordering and managing IT services including process automation for executing orders. The main purpose of the portal is to provide users a single point for ordering services and an automated process for delivering the services, thereby replacing manual tasks in the IT-organization.

Provance IT Asset Management Pack
It extends Microsoft System Center Service Manager with additional functionality to manage the financial, contractual and organizational information necessary to support Software Asset Management, License Compliance, IT Asset Life Cycle Management, and more cost-effective and efficient IT Service Management.

Bay Dynamics IT Analytics
IT Analytics™ for System Center leverages advanced business intelligence and analytics technology to enable users to maximize the value of the data that resides within System Center databases by providing multidimensional ad-hoc analysis, Key Performance Indicators, and robust graphical trending.

Dundas Dashboards
More of a Proof of Concept, but it looks really good.
Check here for the Engineering Team Blog post which also has a link at the bottom to a demo site to see it in action.

Service Manager 2010 Dashboards
These dashboards not only deliver actionable information out of the box, but also provides a flexible framework which allows easily customizing and extending these dashboards to meet their specific needs.