Microsoft System Center Service Manager - Part 1: Introduction and Planning

Introduction
The newest entry in Microsofts System Center line, Service Manager further rounds out System Centers ITIL/MOFfocused architecture by bringing centralized, accessible incident and problem management capabilities to the table. Service Manager has hooks into Configuration Manager, Operations Manager and Active Directory, allowing it to act as a centralized repository of information from other products. In this series, you will learn how to install and use Service Manager. Part 1 will provide information about Service Managers features as well as providing detailed prerequisite information. Whether or not you are into fully implementing the various IT operational frameworks ITIL, MOF, etc. that are out there and available for consumption, the fact remains that there will always be baseline issues that all IT departments need to handle. One such broad function that always needs appropriate processes and procedures revolves around IT service management, a broad category that captures such functions as incident tracking and resolution, asset management and change control. In its simplest form, service management encompasses those aspects of Information Technology management that involve the end user. End user support is arguably one of the most critical and often the most challenging aspect of IT operations due to the sheer breadth of potential contact issues. Moreover, without methods in place for users to handle some of their own support needs, the IT service desk ends up being overwhelmed with common, repeated tasks. Microsofts System Center Service Manager aims to improve and simplify the operations of the IT service desk and can be used to streamline and normalize support processes across the IT organization as a whole as well. Besides simply providing end users with a support submission tool and self-service tools (which Ill discuss later in this article series), Service Manager hooks into the other System Center productsincluding Operations Manager and Configuration Managerin an effort to improve IT operations. For example, when an alert is raised in Operations Manager for, say, a disk space issue, Service Manager can automatically create an incident that is assigned to someone to handle. There is no need for a staffer to go through a manual ticket creation process since its all automated. Why is this important? After all, as long as the problem gets fixed, does it matter if a ticket is opened? The short answer is: Yes, its very important. Any request, whether generated by a user or automatically generated due to a server fault should generate a work log of some kind. Besides helping to make sure that tasks dont fall off the radar, tracking all tasks helps IT management better assess true workloads in order to be able to make decisions regarding staffing and budgets.

Service Manager Components

The Service Manager product is broken down into a number of individual components, each providing important services leading to a cohesive product. In the case of Service Manager, there are six individual components:

Service Manager management server - This is the primary software portion of your Service Manager installation. Service Manager database - Database servers are what makes the world work these days. In your Service Manager environment, the database contains a number of different items, including: - Configuration items from across the organization - Incident records

- Change requests - Service Manager environment configuration

Data warehouse management server - On this system youll find the server portion of the data warehouse. Data warehouse database - Without reporting capability, there is no way to gauge the effectiveness of the Service Manager environment. The data warehousing database handles long-term storage as well as reporting needs. Service Manager console - The console provides the portal into the Service Manager environment, used by Help Desk staff and other administrators, the console is the method by which these employees manage incidents, tasks and change requests. Self-service portal - One of the best ways to reduce IT workload is to enable users to handle some of their own tasks such as password resets and providing users with a knowledgebase that they can use to try to find their own solutions to problem. Under Service Manager, the self-service portal provides the first component necessary to enable some of these capabilities. Although its a great role, I wont be focusing on the self-service portal in this article but will come back to it in a future part.

System Requirements
System Center Service Manager has a number of hardware and software requirements that need to be considered prior to deployment.

Hardware Requirements
As is the case with almost all of the products in the System Center line, Service Managers hardware requirements are dependent on the level of support being provided by the product. At a minimum, if you intend to deploy all of the Service Manager components, you need at least two servers. Bear in mind that you can't install the data warehouse component on the same server that holds the management server; the two roles are incompatible with one another. If youre short of hardware and are running Service Manager in a relatively small environment, you can actually install everything to a single physical server. Install everything other than the data warehouse to the physical server and then deploy the data warehouse component inside a virtual machine on the same physical hardware. Microsofts virtualization licensing policies make this a no-additional-cost option that can save you a few bucks since you dont need to buy two separate physical servers. As per Microsoft guidance, for medium-sized deployments, two separate servers are required. The first server will hold:

Service Manager management server Service Manager database On the second server, deploy the following:

Data warehouse management server Data warehouse database For large installationsthose that encompass tens of thousands of usersdeploy Service Manager to four different servers. Below, Im going to outline Microsofts recommendations regarding server sizing which hold true whether youre deploying Service Manager to physical servers or to virtual ones. Personally, I believe that these requirements are

significantly overstated for all but the largest of environments. To follow the guidance to the letter in a virtual environment, for example, would seriously tax the pooled resources in a way that would make a virtual deployment not make much sense. Below the hardware requirements chart, Ive provided some guidance as to how Im deploying Service Manager. Role Service Manager database Service Manager management server Service Manager console Data warehouse management server Data warehouse database Self-service portal Processor Dual Quad-Core 2.66 GHz Dual Quad-Core 2.66 GHz Dual-Core 2.0 GHz Dual-Core 2.66 GHz Dual Quad-core 2.66 GHz Dual-core 2.66 GHz RAM 8 GB 8 GB 2 GB 8 GB 8 GB 8 GB Disk 80 GB 10 GB 10 GB 10 GB 400 GB 10 GB

For the example Ill be using in this article, Ill be deploying an English-only Service Manager environment to two virtual machines, each with 2 GB of RAM and a single virtual processor. This will be for testing only. In my real world deployment at Westminster College, Service Manager is also a dual server deployment, but each server has 4 GB of RAM and has been assigned two virtual processors. Westminster College has fewer than 200 employees and around 1,100 students. Given the expected load, which I dont expect to be significant, Im confident that weve assigned enough resources to the virtual machines. However, if we find that were having performance issues, its very easy to add more resources to each of the virtual machines.

Software Requirements
Before you embark on your Service Manager journey, there are some software needs that require your attention. First, all Service Manager components, with the exception of the service console, require the use of 64-bit editions of Windows Server 2008 or Windows Server 2008 R2. As a best practice, make sure that you also install the latest service pack for whichever Windows version you select. Although some of the Service Manager roles may work under Windows Server 2003, not all roles are supported on this operating system, so stick with a newer operating system. For the database roles, you need to deploy the 64-bit edition of SQL Server 2008 SP1. When you do so, make sure to also install the SQL Server Reporting Services role. For ease of deployment, I also recommend that you deploy both the .NET Framework 3.5 with SP1and PowerShell 1.0 and/or 2.0 to each machine to which you will install Service Manager components. Im not going to cover the self-service portal requirements in this article as I will be fully covering that component in another part of this series. In order to prevent conflicts, before you deploy Service Manager, you should remove any Operations Manager agents you may have installed on the Service Manager systems. Once Service Manager is deployed, you can reinstall the Operations Manager agents.

SQL Server Specifics

When you install SQL Server 2008 SP1, there are some specific requirements that you need to handle at installation time:

Make sure to install the SQL Full-Text Service. During installation, install and configure the Reporting Services component in the native mode default configuration. SQL Server must be configured to use case-insensitive databases.

You should not use the default SQL collation as this will prevent Service Manager from being able to support multiple languages. If youre English-only, youll be fine, but if you later decide to add additional languages, you will need to reinstall SQL Server. Configure the SQL Server execution account to be the Local System account. Ive included four screenshots below (Figures 1, 2, 3& 4) that show you screenshots from the SQL Server 2008 installation process.

Figure1 Figure 1 shows you which components you should select as a part of the SQL Server installation.

Figure 2 For Service Manager, configure SQL Server to use a Local System account.

Figure 3 Configure SQL Server with an accent sensitive Latin1_General_100 collation.

Figure 4 For Reporting Services, select the Install the native mode configuration option.

Active Directory Task

As the final step in your pre-deployment work, youll need to do a little Active Directory work. Create an Active Directory group for Service Manager administrative usersfor both the data warehouse and Service Manager management groups. Ill be using a group named SM-Admins, as per Microsoft documentation.

Introduction
Microsoft continually improves the System Center line in their quest to provide IT organizations with one-stop shopping for their service and management needs. As the newest entry to the System Center line, Service Desk fills the end-user void in the companys management line. In this article, you will learn how to install Service Desks base services as well as the products data warehouse components. As a brand new product in Microsofts System Center line, Service Manager rounds out Microsofts ITIL/MOF-focused architecture by bringing centralized, accessible incident and problem management capabilities to bear. In Part 1 of this series, I discussed in detail the requirements that must be in place before you can install Service Manager. In this part, Ill walk through the products installation step-by-step.

Install the Service Manager Management Server

As is typically the case with a new software installation, you will need to start the process by presenting the Service Manager media to your new server. Either insert the installation DVD or mount the Service Manager ISO on the new server. Once the media has been provided, navigate to the AMD-64 directory and double-click setup.exe. This begins

the setup process and results in the screen you see in Figure 1 below. From this screen choose the Install a Service Manager management server option.

Figure 1: The Service Manager installation window The installation programs second step involves providing your name, organization name and agreeing to the product license agreement. Click the Next button to continue the process. Figure 2 shows you this window.

Figure 2: Service Manager license agreement The default installation location for Service Manager is C:\Program Files\Microsoft System Center\Service Manager 2010. If youd like to choose an alternate location, click the Browse button and identify the location to which youd like to install Service Manager. The installation location window is shown in Figure 3. Click the Next button to move on with the process.

Figure 3: Choose a Service Manager installation location At this point, the installation tool verifies that your server meets the requirements. The installer checks the amount of RAM in the system, the processor speed and also checks to see whether or not two prerequisites have been installed. If either of those two prerequisites are missing, a download link will appear in the system check results window. As you can see in Figure 4, my lab system has only 1GB of RAM installed while Microsoft recommends having at least 4GB installed.

Before installing Start downloading Authorization Manager Hotfix

Figure 4: Service Manager system check results The real work starts on the next page of the installation wizard where youre asked to provide information about the Service Manager database. The primary need here is to specify the name of the database server on which the Service Manager database is to be housed. If you are running a SQL Server instance that is not supported by Service Manager, that instance will not be listed for your use. Once you provide the name of a database server, the other details, including the database name, initial database size and data and log file locations will be filled in automatically. You can change any of these options. In Figure 5, youll note that Ive selected the default options for my Service Manager installation.

Figure 5: Service management database configuration Like other System Center products including Operations Manager, Service Manager creates a management group that can represent one of a number of different aspects of your company name, division, department, location or anything else you might like. Ive decided to create my service manager management group with a name of HQ. Further, you need to tell Service Manager the name of the Active Directory group that contains user accounts allowed to management this management group. In part 1 of this series, I created an Active Directory group named SMadmins and populated it with some user accounts. Ive specified that Active Directory group name on the management group configuration page shown in Figure 6.

Figure 6: Configure the initial management group Service Managers services can run under the context of the Local System account or under a domain account. For security reasons, the use of a domain account is generally preferred. During the installation process, you can click the Test Account button to make sure that the credentials are correctly configured. In Figure 7, youll notice that the account provided was not a member of the Administrators group on the local machine. Once that account was added to the local Administrators group Figure 8 the credentials are accepted as valid.

Figure 7: The account is not yet correctly configured

Figure 8: The account is configured correctly Service Manager routes information using workflows which run under a separate service account. As is the case with the basic Service Manager service account, this account can be either Local System or a domain service account. In Figure 9, you will notice that Im using the same domain account for both the Service Manager and the Service Manager workflow services.

Figure 9: Service Manager workflow account With many of their products, Microsoft gathers usage information that can help the company correct any issues that might arise during program use. If youd like to take part in this Customer Experience Improvement Program, select Yes and click Next.

Figure 10: Customer Experience Improvement Program participation Software updates keep your new installation protected from flaws that crop up from time to time. Some administrators prefer to handle all updates manually in order to test them in a lab environment before deployment while other simply want updates to be installed as quickly as possible. If you want updates quickly and automatically, choose the Use Microsoft Update option on the next screen of this wizard. Otherwise, select I do not want to use Microsoft Updatesoption.

Figure 11: Decide how you want to handle software updates At this point, youve made the necessary choices that get Service Manager up and running. On the Installation summary page, click the Install button to commence the installation.

Figure 12: Service Manager installation summary When the product is finished installing, youll get a completion screen like the one shown below in Figure 13.

Figure 13: Service Manager is installed

Install the Data Warehouse Management Server

With the base management server now installed, you can turn your attention to installing the data warehouse management server which manages, as you might guess, Service Managers data warehouse components. These components add to System Manager the ability to report against historical data and provides a historical analysis about whats been going on in your environment. To get started with installing the data warehouse component, navigate back to the installation location and doubleclick setup.exe. On the launch page, click Install a Service Manager data warehouse management server. If youd like a refresher on what this screen looks like, take a look back at Figure 1. Since a lot of the data warehouse installation is identical to the base Service Manager installation, Im not going to rehash all of those screens again but will show you what is different. Before you begin the installation, there is one important configuration step that you must take if you decide to use different SQL servers for the data warehouse components and reporting services. You must make some manual configuration changes to SQL Server Reporting Services in order to enable it to work with Service Manager. Microsoft makes available very clear instructions for this step. The first screen of the installation wizard thats of interest is the one on which you configure the data warehouse databases. In Figure 14, you see that there are three default databases created during installation:

DWstagingAndConfig DWRepository DWDataMart As was the case with the main Service Manager product, the data warehouse components database needs to be configured. During the installation, youll see a window that looks very much like the one shown in Figure 14. Unless youre in a huge infrastructure, you can use the same database server as you do for Service Manager itself. You can choose different options for different Service Manager databases if you like. You can also name the databases anything you like and choose the storage location for the database files.

Figure 14: Data warehouse default installation options

You might recall that you had to create a Service Manager management group during the earlier installation. With the data warehouse component, you also need to create a management group, but this time for the data warehouse component. In Figure 15, youll see that Ive chosen to use the name DW_EXAMPLE for this article. Ive also decided to use the same SM-admins group administrators that I used for the Service Manager installation.

Figure 15: Data warehouse management group During the installation of SQL Server, you probably didnt do a whole lot with regard to the configuration of SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS). SSRS is used heavily by Service Managers data warehouse component and needs to be configured. In Figure 17, you can see that I will be using the server named SCSM for the various Service Manager databases as well as for the Service Manager reporting component.

Figure 16: Provide reporting services information For reporting to work, Service Manager usesa domain account that you configure to generate reports and to read the data warehouse data sources. In the interest of simplicity, Im using the sm account here that Ive used for the various service accounts.

Figure 17: Reporting account Once youve run through the various configuration items, the data warehouse installer provides you with an installation summary that you should review. Once youve made sure that the selections are correct, click the Install button to proceed with the installation.

Figure 18: Data warehouse installation summary

Summary
So far, in part one of this series, youve learned how to handle all of Service Managers prerequisites and part two has demonstrated a successful installation process. In the next article in this series, youll learn how to start using Service Manager.

Microsoft System Center Service Manager - Part 3: Initial Configuration

Introduction
Microsoft continually improves the System Center line in their quest to provide IT organizations with one-stop shopping for their service and management needs. As the newest entry to the System Center line, Service Desk fills the end-user void in the companys management line. In this article, you will learn how to install Service Desks base services as well as the products data warehouse components. As a brand new product in Microsofts System Center line, Service Manager rounds out Microsofts ITIL/MOF-focused architecture by bringing centralized, accessible incident and problem management capabilities to bear. In Part 1 of this series, I discussed in detail the requirements that must be in place before you can install Service Manager.

In Part 2, you learned how to install the various Service Manager components. In this part, you will learn how to initially use and configure Service Manager to most effectively meet the needs of your organization.

A First Look
At the end of Part 2 of this series, we left Service Manager in a fully installed, ready to be run state. Now, its time to run the software to discover how it operates and to learn how to unlock its capabilities. To start Service Manager, from any machine to which youve installed the Service Manager Console, go to Start >All Programs > Microsoft System Center > Service Manager 2010 > Service Manager Console. The first time you run Service Manager on a new system, youll be presented with the dialog box that you see below in Figure 1. You need to specify the name of your Service Manager server and click the Connect button in order to proceed. Once you do so, the system is initialized, a process that can take a few moments to complete.

Figure 1: Connect to a Service Manager system Once the initialization process is complete, you get your first look at the Service Manager console itself, which you can also see below in Figure 2.

V Figure 2: The Service Manager console As you can see, there are a number of first steps that you need to take in order to make your Service Manager system usable. However, the first step you need to perform is to register your Service Manager system with the Data Warehouse component. This is the step that enables reporting in your Service Manager environment.

Register with the data warehouse

The registration process is run via a wizard that you initiate by clicking the link entitled Register with Service Manager Data Warehouse. The first screen of the registration wizard is shown in Figure 3. This is an information screen that outlines the purpose of the wizard. Click the Next button to continue.

Figure 3: Start the Data Warehouse Registration Wizard The first screen of significance (Figure 4) asks you to specify the name of your warehouse management server. Type the server name and to make sure that the connection works, click the Test Connection button.

Figure 4: Choose the DW server name Tip: If the connection doesnt succeed, verify that the Windows firewall on your data warehouse server is configured to allow communication from your Service Manager Management server. In Figure 5, Ive provided a communications diagram to help you configure the Windows firewall for each of your Service Manager components. For example, if you intend to eventually import information from your Active Directory, you need to allow incoming traffic from your Service Manager system on port 389.

Figure 5: A Service Manager Communications diagram Once youve verified that communications with your Data Warehouse server work correctly, move on to configuring the credentials that you plan to use to access the data warehouse server. In Figure 6 you will see that Ive chosen the default account of DW_EXAMPLE SecureReference. This account name will be different for you unless youve named your environment EXAMPLE! Whatever account you choose needs to be a member of the local Administrators group on the data warehouse server.

Figure 6: Provide credentials to use for the DW Before you click the Create button to initiate the process, review your options to make sure that they will work in your installation.

Figure 7: Review your selections After the registration is complete, you will receive a notice indicating that the data warehouse registration was complete. Click the Close button to finish.

Figure 8: DW registration was successful It can take quite some time (read: hours) for the full deployment process to take place and for your console to be able to access all of the information stored in the data warehouse. Youll get a message like the one shown in Figure 9. You can safely ignore this message as its for information purposes only. Just understand that youll need to wait to get to your information.

Figure 9: Notification message regarding report availability Even if the process has not yet completed, youll see a couple of new options in the navigation area. Specifically, as shown in Figure 10, there are now Data Warehouse and Reporting items on the menu. Select the Data Warehouseoption and then click Data Warehouse Jobs to get a list of the jobs related to the Service Manager Data warehouse component. This figure also shows you a list of some of Service Managers default jobs.

Figure 10: A new navigation option is available

Configure the Data Warehouse jobs

By default, not all of the schedules for these jobs are enabled, but you can fix that. To enable the jobs necessary for the Data Warehouse component, you need to start PowerShell as an administrator. Once youve done so, execute the commands that you see in the table below. Command Add-PSSnapIn SMCmdletSnapIn Enable-SCDWJobSchedule -JobName Extract_DW_Example Enable-SCDWJobSchedule -JobName Extract_HQ Command description This adds a snap-in to PowerShell that enables the Service Manager commands. Enable the job schedule that handles data warehouse synchronization. Replace "DW_Example" with the name of your Data Warehouse management group. Enable the job schedule that handles extraction of data from the Service Manager database. Replace "HQ" with the name of your Service Manager management group. Enables the job that takes raw data and cleanses, reformats, and aggregates it in order to get it into a final format for reporting. This command enables the job that queries the data from the data warehouse.

Enable-SCDWJobSchedule -JobName Transform.Common Enable-SCDWJobSchedule -JobName Load.Common

As a side note, once youve enabled a job and its running, you can get a look at the specifics by double-clicking the job name in the Service Manager console. For example, if I double-clicked on Extract_DW_Example as shown in

Figure 10, Id see a screen much like the one shown in Figure 11. This tells you exactly which modules have completed. For now, dont worry too much about the modules. Just understand that you can see status.

Figure 11: Job status

Connecting to Active Directory

With your data warehouse connected to your Service Manager system, turn your attention to connecting to Active Directory. Service Managers Active Directory connector allows you to import users, groups, printers, and computers from Active Directory as configuration items in the Service Manager database. Youre able to import items from the whole domain or from a single organizational unit. Create the connector by clicking the Import user accounts with the Active Directory connector option on the Administration Overview screen you saw in Figure 2. This starts the Active Directory Connector, the details screen for which is shown in Figure 12.

Figure 12: Start up the Active Directory connector wizard You need to provide a name for your new Active Directory connector. If you like, you can also provide a description, but this is optional. Figure 13 gives you a look at the screen on which you provide this information.

Figure 13: Provide a name for the connector The next step of the wizard (Figure 14) is one of the two most important parts of the wizard. In this step, you need to decide on a scope for the Active Directory connector; do you want to allow the connector an unfettered look at the current Active Directory domain (Use the domain: example.com) or would you rather choose a different domain or limit the connectors scope to an organizational unit (Let me choose the domain or OU). In the Run As account box, provide credentials for a user account that has read rights to Active Directory. Ive chosen to use the Operational System Account. This is the same account you specified at the time that you installed Service Manager. In my case, the Operational System Account is linked to example.com\sm. Once youve clicked the Nextbutton to move on, the Credentials dialog box will open asking you to provide the password for the account.

Figure 14: Determine the connector scope Once youve decided on a scope, move on to object selection. This is the second major part of this wizard. You can choose to import everything by choosing the All computers, printers, users and user groups option or you can import specific items by selecting Select individual computers, printers, users and user groups option. If you choose to select individual objects, click the Add button, choose the object type and then choose the individual objects. In Figure 16, Ive chosen to add individual computers to Service Manager.

Figure 15: Decide which objects should be included

Figure 16: Object selection As always, Microsofts wizards are most helpful when it comes to helping you to avoid errors by providing you with a summary screen outlining the decisions you made during the process. Click the Create button to create the new Active Directory connector.

Figure 17: Confirm your selections Success means a green arrow is in your future! If you see a green arrow like the one in Figure 18, youve done well. To verify that the connector actually exists in your Service Manager environment, go to Administration > Connectors. Figure 19 shows you the new ADtoSM connector that I just created. If the synchronization has yet to commence, select the connector and click the Synchronize Now button. To view the status of the synchronization, you might need to move the Task Pane out of the way (click the > symbol to the left of the word Tasks). Figure 20 shows you more.

Figure 18: The connector was created

Figure 19: The new connector has been created

Figure 20: Connector synchronization status At the end of the synchronization process, you can get a look at a number of the objects that were imported from Active Directory such as the list of computer objects by going to the Configuration Items navigation area and chooseConfiguration Items > Computers > All Windows Computers. In Figure 21, youll see that three computer objects have been imported from Active Directory. These are the Service Manager systems (plus the domain controller) in my example domain. In Figure 22, Ive selected the Users option under Configuration Items to give you a look at the users that were imported.

Figure 21: Three computer objects were imported

Figure 22: A list of the users imported into Service Manager

Summary
At the conclusion of part three of this series, your new Service Manager systems installation is complete and the Service Manager and data warehouse components are talking nicely to one another. In part 4, youll learn about configuration steps that you need to take to start using your Service Manager system, including settings options related to problems, incidents, activities, change requests and data retention

Microsoft System Center Service Manager - Part 4: Initial use of the product
In the first three parts of this series, you learned about the prerequisites, installation and initial configuration steps associated with Microsofts newest entry in the System Center line: Microsoft System Center Service Manager. As the newest entry to the System Center line, Service Desk fills the end-user void in the companys management line. In this article, you will move from the more behind-the-scene items related to Service Manager to initial actual use of the product. Specifically, youll learn about configuration steps that you need to take to start using your Service Manager system, including settings options related to users, problems, incidents, activities, change requests and data retention.

Terminology
You can tell that massive frameworks are complex when they require thousands of pages of literature and teams of consultants to implement them. The Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) is an example of one such framework. Based on ITIL, the Microsoft Operations Framework (MOF) has the following definitions:

Incident. In ITIL-speak, an incident is defined as anything that takes place that results in any kind of failure in the infrastructure. In some cases, an incident may be symptomatic of a larger problem. An example of an incident might be a failed network switch or a crashed PC. Problem. Problems arise as a result of incident identification in an environment. A problem comes into play when an incident cant be solved or when a group of incidents begins to point to some common root cause that needs to be solved. For example, if the same user keeps calling with a PC crashing incident and a reboot solves the incident, there is evidence of a larger problem that needs to be solved. Change Request. Any kind of modification addition, change, removal of anything to or from currently supported and baselined infrastructure items such as desktop computers, network components, application settings or software programs. Activity. An activity is a unit of work that is performed as part of managing a problem, resolving an incident, or completing a change request or any other work item.

Configuring incident settings

Bearing in mind that incidents will be the most common item addressed by the service desk, well start by discussing some configuration options that you have with regard to incidents. These settings are configured by going to Administration > Settings > Incident Settings. Select Incident Settings and from the Tasks pane at the right-hand side of the screen, click Properties. This opens the Incident Settings window. On the General tab of the Incident Settings window, shown in Figure 1, provide to Service Manager a prefix that will be used as new incidents are raised. As users report incidents to the service desk, more detail is better. Therefore, users might be inclined to attach files to the incident report to help define the scope of the incident. Also on the General tab, specify the maximum number of files as well as the maximum size of the files that can be attached to an incident report. Finally, choose the default support group to which incoming incidents are assigned.

Figure 1: Incident General Settings When you click on the Priority Calculation option in the Incident Settings window, you will get the screen shown in Figure 2. On this screen, you see that there is a matrix that shows Urgency and Impact on a chart. By default, there are nine drop down items with each accepting a value from 1 to 9. In Service Managers defaults, 9 is the lowest priority while 1 is the highest. So, a high urgency, high impact incident would be a priority 1 item while a low impact, low urgency incident deserves a 9 priority. These priority calculations are created based on the needs of each individual organization.

Figure 2: Incident priority calculation When it comes to service desk response time, a priority 1 issue certainly requires faster turnaround than a priority 9 issue. On the Resolution Time tab, choose a target resolution time for each priority level. As you can see in Figure 3, you can associate each priority level a target resolution time. For example, for priority 1 issue high urgency, high impact might have a 1 hour resolution time, but priority 9 issues might get a week, a month or even a year by default. Make sure that you define realistic resolution times.

Figure 3: Determine resolution SLAs per priority level Service Manager can integrate with both Configuration Manager and Operations Manager to create a full-service IT management and monitoring system. If youre running System Center Operations Manager and you want to integrate it with Service Manager, provide the address for the web console URL on the Incident Settings tab shown in Figure 4.

Figure 4: Provide the Operations Manager web console URL Finally, if you want to enable your Service Manager installation to pick up email messages, configure the settings on the Incoming E-Mail tab with locations for both the SMTP drop folder and the bad folder. Also, if you want to limit the number of incoming messages, change the value in the field next to Maximum number of e-mail messages to process at a time.

Figure 5: Configure incoming e-mail settings You probably noticed that everything shown was defaults blanks and a default number of urgency and impact options. You can add additional impact and urgency levels if you like. Go to the Library navigation item and choose Lists. On the list of Lists, youll see options for Impact and Urgency (Figure 6). Double-click one of the lists to open the Properties page for that list. On the List Properties page, click the Add Item button to add a new item to the list. Youll be asked to choose a management pack in which to store updates. You can save them to the unsealed Default Management Pack or create a new management pack just for changes. You should avoid using the Default Management Pack for these kinds of changes when you can and choose instead to create a new management pack by clicking the New button on the requested screen (Figure 7).

Figure 6: Library list items

Figure 7: Select management pack In Figure 8, youll see that Ive clicked the New button and I am creating a new management pack called Customizations. Ive provided a name for the management pack as well as a description.

Figure 8: Create a new management pack Once youve created the new management pack, you can add new items to the list. Youll see in Figure 9 that Ive added two new items Low/Medium & Medium/High to the list. Now, if I go back to the Incident Settings page, I see the priority options show in Figure 10. As a note, youll see that there are no assigned priorities for the new options. You have to set those after you create the new list items.

Figure 9: New list options have been added

Figure 10: The new priority matrix

Configuring problem settings

You learned earlier about the differences between incidents and problems and also learned that you should have fewer problems than incidents in your organization. In Figure 11, youll see the settings available for configuring Problem records. As was the case with incidents, problem records get a prefix, which defaults to PR. In the Priority section, youll see that the new urgency and impact items we created earlier have made their way to the problems page.

Figure 11: Problem settings configuration

Configuring change settings

Changes that are made to your infrastructure are recorded via change requests in Service Manager with the default prefix of CR, as you can see in Figure 12. Change requests can include files that document the change. On the Change Request Settings page, you can decide how many files can be attached and the size of those files.

Figure 12: Configure your change request settings

Configuring activity settings

Any time a technician works on a problem, incident or change request, that activity should be logged so that there is a clear activity record that can be traced for future reference, if necessary. If you go to the Activity Settings area (Figure 13), youll have a place where you can decide which prefixes to use for different kinds of activity logging. There are three activity prefixes to configure:

Activity prefix. The default prefix is AC. Manual activity prefix. The default prefix is MA. Review activity prefix. The default prefix is RA. When activities are reviewed, this prefix will be used.

Figure 13: Configure activity request settings

Configuring e-mail notifications

Go to Administration > Notifications > Channels and select E-Mail Notification Channel. Next, from the Tasks pane, click the Configure option. Your first task is the select the checkbox next to Enable e-mail notifications. Then, click the Add button to open the Add SMTP Server window. Provide the fully-qualified domain name for your SMTP server, a port number and an authentication method. If you choose an anonymous authentication, make sure to configure your mail server for relay from the Service Manager system. If you use multiple SMTP servers, use the Up and Down buttons to change the order in which SMTP servers will be used. Figure 14 shows you more.

Figure 14: Configure an e-mail notification channel

Managing incident classifications

Service Manager comes with a number of default incident classifications, including networking problems, software problems, e-mail problems and more. Its expected that you will change the default incident classifications list to meet the needs of your organization. To do so, go to the Library, select Lists and choose Incident Classification. From the Tasks pane, click the Properties option. Use the Add Item button to add new items to the list. You can also choose to remove existing items by selecting that item and clicking the Delete button.

Figure 15

Creating an incident
With some basic information now in place, lets create a sample incident using the Service Manager console and see what happens. Go to the Work Items navigation area and choose Work Items > Incident Management. From the Tasks pane, click Create Incident. This opens up a page like the one shown in Figure 16.

Figure 16: New incident creation form On the page shown in Figure 16,

Affected user. Ive selected an affected user by clicking the button to the right of the Affected user box. Title & description. In the title and description boxes, Ive typed in relevant information. Classification category. Use the drop down arrow at the right hand side of the box and choose an appropriate category. Source. There are many ways for a new incident to be raised in Service Manager. In this case, Ive used the console to add a new incident. Other options include e-mail, phone, the self-service portal and Operations Manager. Impact. What kind of impact does this incident have? Urgency. What is the urgency for getting the incident resolved? Priority. You cant change the priority here since its a function of the matrix we discussed earlier. This is pulled from that matrix. Support group. To what group is this incident assigned. Assigned to. The name of the specific person handling the request.

Summary
In this part of the series, you learned how to start using Service Manager to record incidents and learned what impact your configuration changes have on the process.