The System Center Service Manager – Exchange Connector connects Service Manager to Exchange for processing incoming emails related to incidents and change requests. The emails can update the incident action log or change the status of an incident to resolved or closed. Incoming emails with special keywords allow a change request reviewer to approve or reject a review activity and activity implementers can mark activities assigned to them as completed. The SendEmail solution allows analysts to send messages to users via email from the console.

Feature Summary
This release is compatible with Service Manager 2010 SP1. It contains the final set of features for this version, including

• Create incident from email
• Update incident action log from email
• Resolve or close incidents from email
• Approve/reject change requests from email
• Update change request “action log” from email
• Mark manual activities completed from email
• Add email file attachment to work items as attachments
• Send notifications to users from the console

Download the connector from here

Kuwait
February 1, 2011
Venue: JW Marriott, Kuwait City

Agenda:

09:00         Registration
09:30         Welcome and Introduction
Adel El Hallak, System x Market Segment Manager, IBM Middle East & Africa
09:45         Intelligent Servers
Andy Nehme, Business Development Director, GCC, Intel Corporation
10:30         Next Generation of x86 Systems
Derek Yuill, Field Technical Sales Specialist, System x,  IBM MENA
11:15         Tea Break
11:30         Microsoft Virtualization Technologies
Mohamed Baher, Kuwait DataCenter Solutions Specialist, Microsoft
12:15         Live Demonstration on IBM Systems
Mohamed Baher, Kuwait DataCenter Solutions Specialist, Microsoft
12:30         Q&A
13:00         Networking and Lunch

See the details of this news and other exciting news coming out of CES; please see the CES Virtual Pressroom here

Forefront Endpoint Protection 2010

Forefront Endpoint Protection 2010 enables businesses to align security and management to improve endpoint protection while greatly reducing operational costs. It builds on System Center Configuration Manager 2007 R2 and R3, allowing you to use your existing client management infrastructure to deploy and manage endpoint protection. Download both trials and discover their combined benefits.

http://www.microsoft.com/forefront/endpoint-protection/en/us/try-it.aspx

Configuration Manager & SMS

Steve Rachui’s Manageability blog – ConfigMgr/OpsMgr

http://blogs.msdn.com/steverac/

System Center WebLog by Russ Slaten

http://blogs.msdn.com/rslaten/

The Configuration Manager Support Team Blog

http://blogs.technet.com/configurationmgr/

The Deployment Guys

http://blogs.technet.com/deploymentguys

System Center Configuration Manager Solutions

http://blogs.technet.com/mwiles/

Carlos Santiago's Manageability Blog - Configuration Manager

http://blogs.technet.com/carlossantiago/

Michael Niehaus' Windows and Office deployment ramblings

http://blogs.technet.com/mniehaus/

Paul Thomsen at myITforum.com

http://myitforum.com/cs2/blogs/pthomsen/default.aspx

Jeff Gilbert's Web blog at myITforum.com

http://myitforum.com/cs2/blogs/jgilbert/default.aspx

Operations Manager & MOM

The Operations Manager Support Team Blog

http://blogs.technet.com/b/operationsmgr/

Kevin Holman's OpsMgr Blog - Site Home - TechNet Blogs

http://blogs.technet.com/b/kevinholman/

Jonathan Almquist on Operations Manager - Site Home - TechNet Blogs

http://blogs.technet.com/b/jonathanalmquist/

Jimmy Harper’s Operations Manager Bog - Site Home - TechNet Blogs

http://blogs.technet.com/b/jimmyharper/

Other

System Center Virtual Machine Manager

http://blogs.technet.com/b/scvmm/

The App-V Blog

http://blogs.technet.com/b/appv/

The Out of Band Management Support Team Blog

http://blogs.technet.com/oob/

Tweets

Operations Manager & MOM

@OpsMgr

Tweets from the Ops manager team

@MPReleases

Notification of new Management Pack Releases as they happen.

Downloads

Configuration Manager & SMS

Security Compliance Manager

The Microsoft Security Compliance Manager provides centralized security baseline management features, a baseline portfolio, customization capabilities, and security baseline export flexibility to accelerate your organization’s ability to efficiently manage the security and compliance process for the most widely used Microsoft technologies.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?familyid=5534bee1-3cad-4bf0-b92b-a8e545573a3e

Operations Manager & MOM

Forefront Endpoint Protection Server Health Management Pack

The Forefront Endpoint Protection Server Health Management Pack monitors health of the FEP servers and alerts on server health changes. As most of FEP functionality is based on Configuration Manager infrastructure, this MP only monitors two standalone components:
1) SQL agent job that copies data from Configuration Manager database to FEP Data Warehouse
2) FEP alerting service
Management Pack also alerts on events in Windows Event Log that indicate error conditions of FEP Server.

http://pinpoint.microsoft.com/en-us/applications/forefront-endpoint-protection-server-health-monitoring-management-pack-12884909405

Forefront Endpoint Protection Security Management Pack

The Forefront Endpoint Protection Security Management Pack provides real-time monitoring of your Forefront Endpoint Protection clients by using System Center Operations Manager. Alerts can be configured for virus activity, firewall downtime, or update failures. In addition to real-time event monitoring, the Forefront Endpoint Protection Security Management Pack also provides automated response capabilities to remediate security related issues.

http://pinpoint.microsoft.com/en-us/applications/forefront-end-point-protection-2010-security-management-pack-12884909636

Lync Server 2010 Group Chat management pack

The Lync Server 2010 Group Chat management pack monitors the Group Chat Server event logs to detect any issues with the following Group Chat Server roles (Channel service, Lookup service, and Compliance service).

http://pinpoint.microsoft.com/en-us/applications/lync-server-2010-group-chat-monitoring-management-pack-12884909664

Other

Security Compliance Manager

The Microsoft Security Compliance Manager provides centralized security baseline management features, a baseline portfolio, customization capabilities, and security baseline export flexibility to accelerate your organization’s ability to efficiently manage the security and compliance process for the most widely used Microsoft technologies.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?familyid=5534bee1-3cad-4bf0-b92b-a8e545573a3e

Configuration Manager Dashboard

Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2007 Dashboard lets customers track application and operating system deployments, security updates, the health status, and IT compliance with key regulations—with an easy to use, customizable Web interface. Because the Dashboard is built on Windows® SharePoint® Services, IT staff can access information without using the Configuration Manager console.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?familyid=27fe0d80-38c6-464a-953a-1c2edcf35c2d

Events/Webcasts

Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2007 On-Demand Webcasts

http://www.microsoft.com/events/series/technetmms.aspx?tab=webcasts&id=42364#42364

Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) On-Demand Webcasts

http://www.microsoft.com/events/series/technetmms.aspx?tab=webcasts&id=42363

Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007 On-Demand Webcasts

http://www.microsoft.com/events/series/technetmms.aspx?tab=webcasts&id=42365

Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager 2007 On-Demand Webcasts

http://www.microsoft.com/events/series/technetmms.aspx?tab=webcasts&id=42555

Microsoft System Center Overview On-Demand Webcasts

http://www.microsoft.com/events/series/technetmms.aspx?tab=webcasts&id=42366

If you have questions or feedback, contact us.

https://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032454027&culture=en-US

New KB's

Configuration Manager & SMS

Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2007: System Center Configuration Manager 2007 clients running Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 reboot even though deployment management settings are configured to suppress reboots

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2476479/en-US

Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2007: System Center Configuration Manager 2007 Hotfix Installation Guidance

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2477182/en-US

Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2007 Service Pack 2: The second Search paths may not discovered when you enable the Active Directory System Discovery method or the Active Directory User Discovery method that runs on a System Center Configuration Manager 2007 SP2 site server

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/978757/en-US

Operations Manager & MOM

Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007: OpsMgr 2007: Backup programs may fail to backup the event log when the 64-bit agent is installed

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/970219/en-US

Other

Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager 2007: How System Center Data Protection Manager works with EFS encrypted files

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2476276/en-US

Microsoft System Center Service Manager 2010: Improperly configured views in the Service Manager 2010 console generate the error "An error occurred while loading the items"

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2477329/en-US

Microsoft Gulf Community blog is an Excellent blog for the Gulf community, you will find interesting posts by our community leads and news about upcoming events within the region. I encourage all of the Gulf Dev and IT Pros to visit the blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/b/msgulfcommunity/

If you are within the Gulf region, It will be also valuable for you to profile yourself in our database, you can do so by following the below steps:

1. Go to the Microsoft Profile Center
2. Sign in with your LiveID
3. Update "My Personal Information" to make sure that your country is one of the Gulf countries: UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, Yemen
4. Update "My Business Information" to make sure that the "primary role" is correct, select "Developer, Solutions Architect, ..." whatever matches

YOU ARE ALL SET!