There are times when we need to step away from the wizard-driven interfaces of the console and tools like MP Author. These times come when we are moving away from the common scenarios that can be catered for with a general tool. Fortunately, Microsoft has provided a better tool than editing the XML directly in a text editor like Notepad.

The scenario we will be working towards is one where, instead of having to monitor the Print Spooler service, we wish to monitor the service specified in the ServiceName registry key that was discovered right back at the beginning.

The tool that Microsoft has provided is a plugin for Visual Studio called System Center 2012 Visual Studio Authoring Extensions (VSAE). The link to download this plugin has been provided under the See also section of this recipe. While some editions of Visual Studio can be expensive, Microsoft has recently released a Community Edition of Visual Studio for free. This removes the price...