SQL Query for Custom Reports – concatenate values in 1:many relationships

Posted on 14/05/2013 by

As soon as it comes to custom reporting in Service Manager, you are sooner or later dealing with SQL queries to get the needed data out of the data warehouse and into your reports. One of my customers came up with the request for a business service report that allows him to display information about business services with all related objects, e.g. service owner, contacts, related items etc. Knowing the data warehouse model helps here, but there are still some things that you have to take care about when it comes to reporting on 1:many relationships.

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System Center Universe DACH/Europe (SCU DACH) #SysCtr

Posted on 29/04/2013 by

Have you ever heard of the famous System Center Universe (SCU) hosted by Catapult Systems? If not then it’s about time to visit http://www.systemcenteruniverse.com and check out the excellent content.

After talking to Catapult Systems we decided to bring this great event to Europe. We are now in the planning phase, talking to partners, speakers, sponsors etc. that are interested to partner with us and help making this event coming true. Visit the event web site where we will start publishing more information shortly!

http://www.systemcenteruniverse.ch

Cheers
Marcel

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Quick Info: Exchange Connector 3.0 is now RTM and finally supported!

Posted on 27/04/2013 by

We had to go a long way, but now it’s finally here: the Exchange Connector 3.0 for Service Manager is now RTM and officially supported by Microsoft. You can download it from here –> http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=38791

Cheers
Marcel

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PDT – Install System Center in 1 (one) hour

Posted on 27/04/2013 by

If you are a Microsoft System Center enthusiast like me, then you are faced with the challenge to install all those products over and over again. Well, when using the PowerShell Deployment Toolkit this gets a bit easier because it helps you to deploy the complete suite in one hour – wow! I will post some additional information on how to use the PDT later on this blog. For now, enjoy this video (not recorded by me) or get more information here –> http://blogs.technet.com/b/privatecloud/archive/2013/02/08/deployment-introducing-powershell-deployment-toolkit.aspx

Cheers
Marcel

PowerShell Deployment Toolkit in Action
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Another Intake Form – less pain in this (Service Manager) world

Posted on 22/04/2013 by

Service Desk employees are often faced with the situation that they do not know if the user that is calling is reporting an incident or has a request for service. By using a good questioning technique he can try to find out what the caller really wants and can then open the correct ticket. But until it is clear what the caller really needs or wants, no ticket can be opened because the decision if it will be an Incident Request or a Service Request must be made first. There is no out of the box “conversion” if the ticket afterwards. So how to deal with that?

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Posted in Incidents, Service Requests, Tasks | Tagged , , , , , , | 2 Comments

MVP 2013 “System Center Cloud and Datacenter Management” – #MVP #MVPBuzz rocks!

Posted on 01/04/2013 by

Today I received one of the most important Mails of the year Smiley My MVP Status was renewed for another year!

MVP_small

The MVP program allows you to get in touch with lots of specialists, enthusiasts and geeks, some of them becoming good friends over time. I really enjoy to be part of this family and am looking forward for an other exciting year!

Cheers
Marcel

Posted in Non Technical | Tagged , | 1 Comment

“How to create HP ProLiant objects manually in the CMDB”

Posted on 15/03/2013 by

Many of my customers start their Service Manager implementation by implementing Configuration Management first. This indeed makes sense, because as soon as objects and relationships are available in the CMDB and under change control, they know what’s going on behind the scenes and get the needed transparency for the infrastructure and their services. And of course they have an excellent base for supporting their processes, e.g. Change Management, Incident Management or Request Fulfillment. The big question here is how all these objects and relations are brought to the CMDB. Well, we all know that one cool thing about Service Manager is the fact that we have different connectors available to easily bring objects from ADDS, SCCM or SCOM to the CMDB.

The HP ProLiant Management Pack for SCOM discovers physical ProLiant Servers and monitors them. By using the SCOM connector in SCSM you have all those Servers in the CMDB within minutes. But I often face customers that either do not have all ProLiant Server monitored by SCOM or are running older ProLiant Server for ESX (why ever …) that are not discovered. One thing you might think of is “Hey easy, I just create these ProLiant CIs manually in the Service Manager console”. Good thought, but impossible.

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