Marc Umeno's Blog : Service Desk

Service Manager Test Drive Available Now

mumeno — Mon, 04 May 2009 21:06:08 GMT

I have exciting news to share!

We have a Service Manager Test Drive preview of Beta 2 available to try out now. It’s on hosted VMs, so all you need to do is log in with your Windows Live ID and start playing with it.

The VMs have all of the same sample data we used in our demonstrations at the Microsoft Management Summit. You will be able to evaluate the core Incident, Change, and Configuration Management features, as well as integration with Active Directory, System Center Configuration Manager and System Center Operations Manager. There is also some sample data for a few reports available in the Test Drive.

Please check it out and let us know what you think – you can post feedback and questions in the Service Manager TechNet forum.

Desired Configuration Management Integration in Service Manager Beta 1

mumeno — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 10:34:09 GMT

System Center Configuration Manager 2007(SCCM) has introduced a valuable feature, Desired Configuration Management (DCM), that enables assessment of client configuration compliance with specified configuration baselines. With Service Manager Beta 1, we have introduced integration with DCM where incidents are created for out-of-compliance clients.

We do this by collecting DCM non-compliance data using the SCCM connector and then continuously running a Service Manager workflow that creates incidents for non-compliant SCCM clients. You decide which specific DCM Baselines and DCM CIs generate incidents.

To initiate DCM incidents, you must create an connector to an SCCM site that is using the DCM feature. Next, select the Incident Settings view and start configuring the Desired Configuration Management settings using the Configure Workflow task.

This launches a dialog where all DCM workflows are managed:

The Add button launches the Add Desired Configuration Management Workflow wizard.

You can select DCM baselines and DCM CIs to include in the workflow – for each client that has a non-compliant report, an incident will be created. You can apply a pre-configured template and notification rules for the workflow as well. Once you have configured your first DCM workflow, incidents will be created for any current non-compliant clients. After the first DCM workflows are run, incidents will only be created for new non-compliant issues.

Note: You should be careful about which DCM Baselines and CIs you choose to create incidents – for example, if you choose DCM CIs that describe software update non-compliance, you could potentially generate an incident for each unpatched computer in your SCCM site, which could result in thousands of excess incidents.

Newly-created DCM incidents can be viewed in the Work Items –> Incident Management –> All Open DCM Incidents view.

DCM incident forms have a special Compliance Errors tab that adds additional details about the affected SCCM computer, including computer owner, computer name, DCM baseline, DCM scan date, and details from the DCM report about why the computer was non-compliant.

Once DCM incidents are created, they can managed like any other incidents in Service Manager.

System Center Service Manager Beta 1 is Released!

mumeno — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 09:29:22 GMT

System Center Service Manager Beta 1 has shipped!

You can download the Beta from Connect:

https://connect.microsoft.com/SelfNomination.aspx?ProgramID=2733&pageType=1&SiteID=446

System Center Service Manager Beta 1

mumeno — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 08:15:46 GMT

It’s been a while since I posted as we have been feverishly working on the Beta 1 for System Center Service Manager. Now that we are getting close to shipping Beta 1, I will start blogging again.

Beta 1 has a number of great features, including Incident Management (including automatic creation of incidents from SCCM Desired Configuration Management compliance errors), Change Management, Configuration Management/CMDB, and Connectors to Active Directory & System Center Configuration Manager.

We are very excited about sharing what we have been putting together – it’s coming soon!