I don't know how I manage to find myself doing things that are "out of the ordinary" so often. Maybe it's just in my nature to want to tweak things so that they're "just right" or provide the exact user experience I'm looking for, rather than settling for less elegant ways of doing them. Maybe it's just my unique combination of A.D.D. and perfectionism that fuels this behavior, but in most cases, it leads me to finding new ways to do things or simply leads me to do things that aren't documented well...

I was trying out the Query Database object to see how I could get some information from Configuration Manager's database, and I decided to use the ODBC connection type, since it seemed like something that would be more usable from an enterprise perspective than putting credentials in the object itself. I went through the typical System DSN creation process using the ODBC Administrator, then added the name of the new DSN to my Query Database object. Next I opened the workflow in the testing console...

Opalis 6.3 introduces four new System Center Integration Packs (for SCCM, SCSM, SCVMM, and SCDPM) and updates the existing OpsMgr IP. We'll be posting a number of deep dives into the different Integration Packs to show some of the scenarios we used in creating them, but I thought that for Configuration Manager I would add a "Getting Started" article to walk through all of the different activities and how to quickly build useful workflows with them. What's In the Configuration Manager IP...

This post has been updated for Orchestrator and reposted to the Orchestrator blog here: Enabling Link Text But Getting Rid of “Link” in All Your Links

Here's a solution we ran across the other day and since I didn't see it published here I thought it would be worth a mention. Symptoms You may be unable to connect to BMC Remedy via Opalis Integration Server. When you attempt to do so you receive the following error when testing the BMC Remedy Connection: Connection test failed. Please make sure that the server name, username, password and application are correct. Details: AR System call failed. Details: Message number: 90: Cannot open...

Our very own Bruno Saille has written a very cool tool called the Opalis UI generator that lets an Opalis administrator browse graphically through all policies with a custom start activity, pick one of them, and generate one of these two files, or both: - A XML template that can be used by the Remote Policy Launcher executable – also provided in this package. This single executable adapts its UI to the XML file generated by the Opalis UI Generator - A Web page that can be used on an IIS server running...

This post has been updated for Orchestrator and reposted to the Orchestrator blog here: Enabling Link Text But Getting Rid of “Link” in All Your Links