SCSM.SE

There’s two “minor” news that’s actually pretty important.

First – The ability to search for users using their usernames in the User Pickers! A simple thing that all my customers has asked for. The userpickers also displays the selected users username in the field.

Second – Parallel activities in Change. At first when Microsoft stated that they would introduce parallel activities to Service Manager, the plan was actually to do so for Service Request and Release Management only! But after discussing this with the community and customers, Microsoft realised that they had to implement this in the Change Request process as well. As if that wasn’t enough, the Change Request form was updated with the new, good looking and drag n’ drop interface for activities!

There’s plenty of more SCSM 2012 blogposts to come – stay tuned! 🙂

I hope that you’re as excited about the release of the public beta as I’m, and I wanted to write this blogpost to help you get started with it. If you haven’t downloaded it yet, please see my previous post for a link to the download page.

Let’s start by taking a looking at the Software Requirements for SCSM2012 beta and compare them to SCSM2010:

As you can see the list has changed from 2010 to 2012, and the most significant changes is marked in red.

You are now required to have Windows Server 2008 R2 Sp1 on your management, data warehouse and portal servers. This means that if you have a current installation of SCSM2010 on another OS (which would be a non R2 version), you will not be able to upgrade to SCSM 2012 the day it is released. Another important thing to note is that you won’t be able to install the SCSM 2012 client on a Windows XP machine. (Okey, we’re in a beta, so all this could change, but i highly doubt it…)

As the Self-service Portal is completly re-done, it will now require SharePoint 2010 (and all clients that connects to the portal requires Silverlight 4.0 – which only works in IE).

–

Allright, so in my scenario I have a freshly installed Windows Server 2008 R2 Sp1 x64 which will act as my SCSM 2012 management server. The databases will be placed on a separate SQL server. All required accounts has been pre-created and given the correct permissions.
(Take a look at this link for required accounts and permissions: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh519599.aspx)

1. When running the setup I will be prompted that .NET framework 3.5 SP1 is required. It allows me to press Ok to download and install it, so let’s do that…
   Even though this looks all good, it will result in an error message and a failed installation. But don’t worry – the error message is actually helpful (for once).
   
2. Press OK to close the error message and close the little setup windows. Now open Server Manager – go to Features and press the Add Features button. Expand the .NET Framework 3.5.1 Features and check .NET Framework 3.5.1. Then hit Next followed by Install.
   
3. When that’s done we can start the setup again. Once the setup wizard is loaded, we’ll chose to install a Service Manager management server.
4. On the next page we’ll check the “Install as an evaluation edition” and that we’ve “Read and understood the license terms” (and remember to read everything!! ;P )
5. Next, the wizard will check if you fulfill all the requirements to be able to install SCSM 2012. I do not…
   
6. The report viewer redist. can be installed from the wizard, so start by doing that. The “Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Native Client” and the “Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Analysis Management Objects” cannot however. The wizard does provide us with link to where we can get it though. So go to those links, download and install these. Please note that these download pages is a bit messy with loads of different downloads. Be careful to read what you are actually downloading!
7. After you’ve installed the mising requirements, you are actually forced to restart the setup. Clicking the “Check prerequsities again” doesn’t work on the “Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Analysis Management Objects”. This time when you get to this page, you should be able to continue though.
8. On the next page we’ll have to specify where the database should be hosted. There’s nothing special to this page, just enter the information asked for and hit Next.
   
9. Here you’re supposed to enter a management group name and an admin group. Just make sure to use a unique management group name here and if you haven’t created the necessary groups and accounts in AD – now is the time to do so 🙂
10. The next two pages requires you to enter the service account credentials and the workflow account credentials. Then you’re basicly done.
11. When you’ve pressed the install button, the actually installation will begin and we’ll be able to follow the installation process. If something goes wrong revise the installation log for more information. I’ll gladly help you troubleshoot failed installations – just post a comment in this blogpost and we’ll sort it out 🙂
12. And we’re finished! We can now start exploring SCSM 2012!
    We would need to install the rest of the server roles to get full functionallity, but the installation process hasn’t really been touch and it’s not like it’s rocket science to get through these wizards. The portal installation which requires SharePoint 2010 might cause some headache though, so I might do an installation blog-post on that later on.

No, this isn’t a typo. The public beta of System Center Service Manager 2012 is finally here!

This means that we now can discuss and blog about all the new exiciting features, improvements and fixes that are included in this version. My guess is that we will see loads of new blogposts on various SCSM blogs all over the internet now, including www.scsm.se of course! 🙂

Download link:
http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=27844&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3a+MicrosoftDownloadCenter+$Microsoft+Download+Center$

Edit – TechNet is also updated with the SCSM 2012 documentations, take a look here:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh305220.aspx

So MMS was last week and loads of new information regarding Service Manager 2012 was released.

This is what we know so far:

Planned public beta: Q3, 2011
Planned release: Q4, 2011

Major Investment Areas

• Service Requests
• Self-Service Portal
• Release Management
• Data Warehouse/Reporting
• Orchestrator(Opalis)/VMM Integration

Incremental Improvements

• Incident SLA
• Parent/Child Work Items
• AD Connector Improvements
• Powershell
• Subscription Infrastructure
• Parallel Activities
• Performance Improvements
• Bug Fixes

Let’s go through all these one at a time:

Service Requests

Service Manager will now support the Service Request process that’s been requested since beta. Solutions like this: http://scsmservicerequest.codeplex.com/ won’t be necessary anymore. By the look, Service Request is pretty similar to a Change Request and is also focused around activities. I’ll provide some more information on how a Service Request can be used in part 2 of this post.

Service Request Views

Service Request Form

Self-Service Portal

The Self-Service Portal in SCSM 2010 is really limited and Microsoft has gotten plenty of complaints and negative feedback on it. That’s why they decided to create an entirely new Portal based on SharePoint 2010 and Silverlight. This new portal has many of the requested features that the old one didn’t have, such as the simple function to allow end users to post comments on their own active Work Items. The layout and functions on the portal itself is based upon a Service Catalog and is defined from within the console. Another useful function is that you can configure different security setting depending on which role the user is member of. More details on the Self-Service Portal in part 2 of this post.

Microsoft has also written custom SharePoint webpart controls, that allows easy customization for all Service Manager related webparts.

The new Self Service Portal

Self Service Portal Customization

Release Management

Just like the Service Request, this is a new process that Service Manager now is supporting. A Release Record has a close relationship with a Change Request and the Work Item itself is focused around activities.

Release Record Form

Data Warehouse/Reporting

In SCSM 2012 you will be able to gather data from SCCM, SCOM, SCSM and custom sources (such as SAP or HR) to the same Data Warehouse. By defining OLAP cubes within SCSM you can easily create reports by drag and drop in Sharepoint or Excel. The goal is to make reporting as codeless as possible.

OLAP Cubes

Sharepoint report

Excel PowerPivot Report

Orchestrator(Opalis)/VMM Integration

Two new connectors are available in SCSM2012; the Orchestrator and the VMM connector. The Orchestrator connector is used to import runbooks from Orchestrator so these can be used from within SCSM. The VMM connector imports information on different clouds and VM templates so these can be used when creating Service Offerings in the Service Catalog. More on how these new connectors are used in part 2.

Orchestrator Runbooks

VMM Clouds View

Incremental Improvements

Unfortunately, almost no information has been released regarding these improvements yet with one exception. That exception is maybe the most important incremental improvements, and is used in Service Request and Release Records. I’m of course talking about the parallel activities. You can now group several activities into a parallel activity group. This parallel activity won’t be completed until all activities within it have been completed. Sounds complicated? Well, it isn’t. Just take a look at the picture and you’ll understand.

If the parallel activities will work within a Change Request is still unclear, but we do know that the look and feel in the activities tab for a Change Request will remain the same as it is now.

Parallel Activities

In the next part of this blogpost, I’ll try to explain how several of these new features and functions ties together.

Disclaimer: All the information and screenshots are from the session named “Service Manager 2012 Overview” that were presented in MMS2011. Remember that all pictures is from an early build of SCSM 2012.