Microsoft System Center 2012 Service Manager Cookbook

Microsoft System Center 2012 Service Manager Cookbook

Overview of this book

Microsoft System Center Service Manager (SCSM) offers enterprises a complete, integrated platform for automating and adapting IT Service Management best practices to your organization's requirements. "Microsoft System Center Service Manager Cookbook" provides you with real-world, immediately usable recipes which will show you how to configure and administer System Center Service Manager 2012 and understand how to solve particular problems and scenarios to take this tool further. In Microsoft System Center Service Manager Cookbook, you will get to grips with practical recipes which will show you how to configure and administer System Center Service Manager 2012. This cookbook features distinct recipes on the practical implementation of ITSM Frameworks and Processes, Microsoft System Center 2012 Service Manager Administration, how to configure Service Level Agreements (SLAs). It will also cover incident and problem management, the design of change and release management as well as implementing and editing security roles.

Microsoft System Center 2012 Service Manager Cookbook

Credits

About the Authors

About the Reviewers

www.PacktPub.com

Preface

Free Chapter

ITSM Frameworks and Processes

Introduction

Understanding ITSM frameworks

ITIL© processes

Creating an Asset Management process

Creating a Configuration Management System (CMS) process

Creating a Service Request Fulfillment process

Creating an Incident and Problem Management process

Creating a Change and Release Management process

Creating an IT Service Desk process

Service Level Management process

Personalizing SCSM 2012 Administration

Introduction

Configuring how long to keep your SCSM data

Configuring the Incident Management global settings

Configuring the Service Requests, Activity, Release, Knowledge, and Change Management global settings

Configuring the behavior of child incidents when resolving, reactivating, and closing the parent Incident

Configuring Priority and Urgency for your SLA targets

Configuring global e-mail notification infrastructure settings

Creating Management Packs in the Authoring tool to save your SCSM personalization

Creating formatted e-mail notification templates

Creating a basic queue

Configuring Service Level Agreements (SLAs)

Introduction

Creating Priority Queues

Configuring business hours and non-working days

Creating SLA metrics

Creating Service Level Objectives

Creating Incident Management SLAs

Creating Service Request SLAs

Viewing SLA warning and breaches

Creating notifications for SLA warning and breaches

Creating repeated notifications before SLA breaches with escalation

Building the Configuration Management Database (CMDB)

Introduction

Adding configuration items manually

Importing active directory configuration items

Importing Configuration Manager configuration items

Importing Operations Manager configuration items

Importing Virtual Machine Manager configuration items

Importing Orchestrator runbooks

Using a CSV file to import items into the CMDB

Creating a business service

Personalizing and organizing configuration item views

Creating a configuration item group

Deploying Service Request Fulfillment

Introduction

Creating Support Groups for Service Requests

Creating Service Request templates

Creating Service Request activities

Creating Service Offering categories

Creating Service Catalog Request offerings

Creating Service Catalog Service offerings

Publishing Service offerings and Request offerings

Working with Service Requests in the portal

Creating Service Request notifications

Working with Incident and Problem Management

Introduction

Configuring Incident and Problem lists

Creating an Incident template

Adding a task to the Incident form

Creating a workflow to notify the affected user upon the creation of an Incident

Creating a view to display the Problem Records created in the last 30 days

Configuring the Global Operators Group

Downloading, installing, and configuring the Exchange Connector

Making the description field in the Incident form to auto grow

Extending the Incident class with a new property

Designing Change and Release Management

Introduction

Creating and configuring Change Request Templates

Creating and managing Change Management Review Activities

Creating Manual Activities for Change Management

Creating and managing Dependent Activities in Change Management

Creating and personalizing Change Management Parallel Activities

Creating and personalizing Change Management Sequential Activities

Creating and personalizing Change Management Activity notifications

Creating and managing Build and Environment Release Records

Creating and managing Release Record Templates

Working with Change Requests and Release Records

Implementing Security Roles

Introduction

Viewing basic settings for Security roles

Adding users to the End User role

Creating and managing Service Request roles

Creating and managing Incident Management roles

Creating and managing Problem Management roles

Reporting

Introduction

Viewing SCSM reports

Creating Favorite and Linked Reports

Creating reports with Report Builder

Configuring report permissions

Delivering reports automatically using report subscriptions

Analyzing data with Microsoft Excel

Using the Analysis Library to publish Excel reports

Using SharePoint for advanced dashboards

Extending SCSM with Advanced Personalization

Introduction

Using the SCSM Authoring Tool

Extending Service Manager classes

Sealing management packs

Creating new classes

Customizing default forms

Creating your own forms

Using an XML editor to modify management packs

Automating Service Manager 2012

Introduction

Routing Incidents automatically using workflows

Downloading and installing SMLets

Using SMLets to delete a Work Item

Export your unsealed Management Packs using the Service Manager cmdlets

Creating a custom workflow in the Authoring Tool - export your unsealed Management Packs

Autoclose resolved Incidents with SMLets and a custom workflow

Automating your Request Offerings with Orchestrator

Community Extensions and Third-party Commercial SCSM Solutions

Introduction

Provance® - IT Asset Management, Data Management, and Bar Code for Microsoft® System Center

Derdack Enterprise Alert®

Seven-Winds Call Script Manager

WebFront for Service Manager 2012

Useful Websites and Community Resources

Introduction

Useful community blogs

Frameworks and processes

Valuable community forums and user groups

Websites for SCSM solutions and extensions

Online Wikis

Social network resources

Index

Customer Reviews

5 star

4 star

3 star

2 star

1 star

Creating an Asset Management process

This recipe will provide steps for creating a sample Asset Management process.

Getting ready

For this recipe the authors recommend you read up on the difference between asset inventory and asset management as an organizational process.

How to do it...

Asset Management is a life cycle process, which tracks an IT asset with its associated financial data from when the asset is requested to when the asset is retired as shown in the following figure:

An example of the steps for creating an Asset management process is as follows:

Agree and document the organization's asset management policy.
Document the operational process to support the asset management policy.
Create and assign people roles to manage the process. At a minimum you should plan to include the following:
- Hardware Asset Managers
- Hardware Asset Inventory agents
- Software Asset Managers
- Software Asset Inventory agents
Identify and agree on an asset register management system. An asset register in its basic form is a manual process. It should capture the following:
- IT Asset type
- Financial information
- Align the IT asset to its financial data
- Input to a configuration Management system (CMS)
- Continually aligned to the CMS
Implement Asset Management in SCSM using one of the following methods:
- Manually extend the Configuration Items (CI) class to include financial data for assets
- Purchase an asset management solution for SCSM (for example, Provance IT Asset Management Pack for SCSM)
Continually review the policy and operational process. The goal of this step is to improve the process and ensure compliance.

How it works...

Asset Management begins and ends with people and ultimately can cost or add value to a business. A non-IT related analogy is the lessons from retail stock takes, which typically happen annually. The stocktake is the best opportunity for a retail shop to get the most accurate figure for its profit or loss on stock. Two forms of lost revenues are:

Damaged goods
Missing goods

IT asset management is the stocktake required for all your technological assets, and its resultant analysis for intelligent decision making to provide factual compliance measurements. The IT equivalent of the stock take process is referred to as audits for software and hardware. SCSM with partner extensions or in-house authoring provides 80 percent of the Asset Management for the organization. People and process critically account for the high value 20 percent.

There's more...

There are various tools (products) labeled as Asset Management tools. The true Asset Management tools should have the capability of tracking assets from order to decommission.

Asset Management is an end-to-end process, and the tools are enablers of successful implementation. The successful Asset Management organization programs recognize the full life cycle management of assets.

Microsoft System Center 2012 Service Manager Cookbook

Microsoft System Center 2012 Service Manager Cookbook

Overview of this book

Related Content you might be interested in

Current Title:

Microsoft System Center 2012 Service Manager Cookbook

Creating an Asset Management process

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

See also