Service Manager Exchange Connector in different domains #sysctr

Early this year, the Exchange connector for Service Manager was released. The Exchange Connector provides the following capabilities:

• Create incident from email (replaces out of the box functionality; just turn it off)
• The sending user is looked up in the CMDB and related to the incident as the affected user
• The email subject becomes the incident title
• The email body becomes the incident description
• 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
• Emails can be sent in from outside the organization
• Emails can be sent from users which do not exist in the CMDB yet and a new user record will be created for them and related to the incident

Implementing Service Manager Exchange connector for a customer last week brings me to the following challange; the Service Manager setup is installed in domain X but the Exchange environment was installed in domain Y without any chains or trusts. Service Manager workflow Account (domain X) requires permissions to domain Y accessing the mailbox defined.

Troubleshooting Service Manager 2010 Reporting #sysctr

Last week I had some challenges getting Service Manager Reporting working properly in a scenario with a remote SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) as shown below.

Context.
During deployment of the Service Manager data warehouse management server, you can specify the server to which Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) will be deployed. By default, the computer that is hosting the data warehouse management server is selected during setup. If you specify a different computer, you are prompted to follow this procedure to configure the remote SSRS server. Before you follow this procedure, you must perform the following actions:

• Copy Microsoft.EnterpriseManagement.Reporting.Code.dll from the Service Manager installation media to the computer that is hosting SSRS.
• Add a code segment to a configuration file on the computer that is hosting SSRS.

Manual Steps to Configure the Remote SQL Server Reporting Services http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff461215.aspx

Using Collection Variables on collections and sub-collections #sysctr #sccm

Using Configuration Manager collection variables be aware these variables set on parent collections aren’t inherented by sub-collections.

Based on a scenario of multiple Divisions and underlaying Departmental collections structure workstations are deployed by Configuration Manager OS-Deployment. Two variables will be used to automatic determine the OU path. Workstations will be joined to Active Directory (AD) and dynamicaly placed in the correct Organizational Unit (OU).

LDAP://OU=WORKSTATION,OU=%DEP%,OU=%DIV%,DC=CONTOSO,DC=COM

Collection variables can be configured two ways: 

1. Both Division and Department variables are configured on a single collection where the clients are member off.
2. Division variable to parent collection and Department variable on sub-collection. Clients should be member of both collections.

 

Use the Collection Variables tab of the Configuration Manager 2007 Collection Name Settings dialog box to define custom task sequence variables and their associated values to be used by the resources in this collection. For more information about task sequence variables use the following link: About Task Sequence Variables

Tip for SCCM 2012 Product Team feature request enabling collection variable equals advertisement applies to sub collections!

Upgrade Service Manager 2010 SP1 “System Center Service Manager is not in a valid state”

Make sure when you’re upgrading SCSM 2010 RTM (7.0.5826.0) to SP1 (7.0.6555.0) the account you’re using has te required permisions on both ‘ServiceManager’ and ‘DWStagingAndConfig’ database. Otherwise the upgrade wizard will fail. See message below:

The logfiles of the upgrade path are located at ‘c:\users\%currentusers%\appdata\local\temp\’. As stated in the SCSMSetupWizard.log I’m running the setup without the necessary rights as you can see in the logfile:

02:07:33:**************************************************
02:07:33:CheckPrerequisites: Return Value 1
02:07:34:Getting Management Group information from SERVER\SCSM:DWStagingAndConfig
02:07:34:[GetManagementGroupPropertiesFromDB]:  Opened the DB connection using Data Source=SERVER\SCSM;Initial Catalog=DWStagingAndConfig;Integrated Security=True;Persist Security Info=False.
02:07:34:[GetManagementGroupPropertiesFromDB]:  Error: We hit exception type System.Data.SqlClient.SqlException. Message:The EXECUTE permission was denied on the object ‘p_MOMManagementGroupInfoSelect’, database ‘DWStagingAndConfig’, schema ‘dbo’.
02:07:34:Error:ERROR: Failed to get installed product details, Exception Type: System.Exception, Exception Message: System Center Service Manager is not in a valid state.
02:07:34:StackTrace:   at Microsoft.SystemCenter.Essentials.SetupFramework.InstallationSummaryPage.workerThread_DoWork(Object sender, DoWorkEventArgs e)
02:16:56:Application Ended

When running the upgrade with proper permissions the installation wizard will pass. This applies to upgrading both service manager management- and data warehouse server.