Archive for: ‘January 2013’

My Work Items

January 27, 2013 Posted by Anders Asp

I often hear customers asking for an easier way to see all their active Work Items and if it’s possible to create a “My Work Items” view. The answer to this question is both yes and no.

Yes, it’s possible to create a “My Work Items” view, the thing is that you will not be able to filter out the closed Work Items for each class. Why? Because the Status property is not a property on the Work Item class itself, but rather a property of each and every class underneath Work Item (such as Incident, Problem, Change etc.).

For more details, please see this post including the comments written in it:
http://blogs.technet.com/b/servicemanager/archive/2010/09/28/all-work-items-assigned-to-me-view.aspx

There are some third party vendors that have observed this “issue” though and created their own solutions for this.

For instance:
http://www.cireson.com/app-store/scsm-my-work-items/
http://blog.scsmsolutions.com/2012/08/ave-pro-my-work-items-view/
http://www.caseddimensions.com/system_center_service_manager_assigned_to_me/
http://www.gridprosoftware.com/produkter/powerpack

I’m sure all the solutions above works great, but the downside is that you will have to pay some money to get it. So what are the alternatives for those of us who don’t want to pay for this and are unable to develop something like this ourselves? Well, using nothing but Service Manager and Notepad, one of your best bets might look like this:

my_work_items

Now, this doesn’t give you one single view to look at, but instead of having the different “My …” views spread out through the console, I’ve gathered them all in a single place. The upside with using several views instead of one common, is that we are able to create richer views for each process. You can display very specific details for each process in the different views – something that wouldn’t work in one common view because it would be way to cluttered.

My Incidents

My Review Activities

If you want to use this approach you can download the complete MP here (updated 2013-09-20):

MyWorkItems.zip

Service Manager 2012 SP1 links

January 20, 2013 Posted by Anders Asp

Service Pack 1 for Service Manager (well, for the whole SC suite) has been available for a while and I just wanted to share some useful links with you.
(Note: CU1 for SP1 has actually been released too, but it didn’t include any fixes for SCSM)

System Center 2012 SP1 trial (incl. Service Manager)
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-US/evalcenter/hh505660.aspx

Service Manager 2012 SP1 VHDs
Mgmt. server: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=36427
DW server: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=36425

Service Manager 2012 SP1 Authoring Tool
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=36214

Service Manager 2012 SP1 documentation
Download: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=27850
Read online: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh305220.aspx

Orchestrator IPs for SC2012 SP1 (incl. SCSM)
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=34611

And just to remind you all what’s new in SP1 for SCSM:

Chargeback

Chargeback helps you apply cloud-based pricing on Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) fabric and show that information to customers in order to minimize virtual machine oversubscription and underutilization. Chargeback illustrates how you can use System Center 2012 Service Pack 1 (SP1) in a cross-platform environment where you use multiple Service Manager components to achieve your business goals.

In Service Manager, chargeback consists of a new node in the Administration workspace, new OLAP data cubes, and sample Excel reports.

Improved Operations Manager Integration

An System Center 2012 – Operations Manager SP1 agent is automatically installed as part of Service Manager SP1. After Setup completes, you must manually configure the agent for use with the Operations Manager management server. The agent is compatible with System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2, System Center 2012 – Operations Manager, and System Center 2012 – Operations Manager SP1.

To validate that the Operations Manager Agent was installed, open Control Panel and verify that the Operations Manager Agent is present. To manually configure the Operations Manager agent, see Configuring Agents.

SQL Server 2012 Support

All databases used by Service Manager are supported on all editions of SQL Server 2012.

Windows Server 2012 and Windows 8 Support

All Service Manager roles, except the Self-Service Portal SharePoint web parts, are supported on all editions of Windows Server 2012.

Windows 8 is supported for the Service Manager console and for end-users accessing the Self-Service Portal.

To be honest we didn’t get any new cool features or functions in SP1 besides the Chargeback functionallity (which in turn is built for a very specific scenario) but underneath the shell we got many unlisted bugfixes and enhancements.

I’ve been running SP1 in my lab for a long time without any issues and some of my customers has already upgraded to SP1 – so I suggest you do the same!

Take a look at the documentation around upgrading your environment:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj900193.aspx