Module 17:

Maintenance

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Lesson objectives
Maintenance Requirements for Service
Manager

IT announcements

Notifications

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Maintenance Requirements for
Service Manager

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Maintenance
Perform Review of the processes
Incident
Problem
Change
Review KPIs to understand progress
Conduct Operations Review Meetings
Backup & Recovery

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Maintenance
Review KPIs to understand progress
Review KPIs for each IT-Process
Identify areas that could be improved
Compare KPIs against expected measures
If KPIs are showing poor performance,
understand why so they can be explained.

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Maintenance
Conduct Operations Review Meetings

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Maintenance
Backup & Recovery
Backup & Recovery
Backup All SCSM + DW Databases
Backup Encryption Key on Service Manager
Server
Test restore for Service Manager
Test Failover Scenarios

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Maintenance
Backup & Recovery
Management Server
Replace the computer with another computer
Install SCSM Management Server
Restore SCSM Encryption Key

From a backup and disaster recovery point of

view, both the Service Manager and data
warehouse management servers are handled
in the same way
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IT Announcements

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IT Announcements
Are used to tell end-users about IT
Announcements
Can be viewed from the End User Portal
Can be created from the Service Manager
Console or from the Analyst Portal
Can be modified from the following Places
Service Manager Console
Analyst Portal

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IT Announcements
Two types of IT Announcements
Active
Non-Active
IT Announcements must have an expiration
date
When an IT Announcement expires it will no
longer be shown on the Self Service Portal

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IT Announcements
Announcements can be viewed from the
Administration pane under Announcements
Two Views
Active Announcements
All Announcements

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IT Announcements
Creating an IT Announcement

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IT Announcements
Viewing IT Announcements from the Self
Service Portal

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IT Announcements
Modifying IT Announcements from the IT
Analyst Portal

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Notifications

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Notifications
Design goals:
Reduce the cost of maintaining notification
configuration
Empower Service Manager to notify users
Support redundant SMTP servers

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Notifications
Mechanism to deliver messages to various users
Sending incidents / problems to owners at any
place, any time
Notification message customizable to include
relevant information about the “object”

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Notification Configuration
Notification channels – transport to deliver
message
SMTP
Recipient
Who – Recipient of message
How – Devices and channels to use
When – schedule
Subscription
What – format of message
Notification Templates

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Notification Configuration
Default templates are:
Escalation Notification template
End User Template
Assign To User Notification Template

Must be target at a Class (e.g. Incident)

Must be saved to an unsealed Management
Pack

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Notification Channels
For Service Manager 2010, we will have only one Notification Channel:
E-mail
Hint: many cellular providers allow you to relay SMS messages by
sending an email (i.e.5555555555@verizon.net)
You can use your Exchange Server or any other SMTP server. It can be
installed on the SM MS or remotely.
High availability: you can configure up to 5 SMTP servers
They will be tried in a loop with no delay in between failures of each
server.
If all servers fail SM will wait the specified number of seconds and then try
the primary again.
Each time the notification workflow runs it will try the primary first.
Login types:
Anonymous (not recommended)
Windows Integrated
If you use Windows Integrated make sure that the Workflows Run As Account has a
mailbox and permission to send

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Notification Templates
A Notification Template allows you to format an
email for specific scenarios
“High priority incident assigned to you. Get on it!”
“Thanks for submitting an incident”
“We’ve resolved your incident”
“The server you are the custodian of has been deleted from the
CMDB”
Notification templates are stored in an MP for
transportability from pre-prod to prod
Notification templates are targeted at a Class
Subscription class targets must match Notification
template class targets (more on that later)
You can substitute properties of the targeted class and
classes related to the targeted class
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Providing Context: Substitution Strings
You can insert properties of the target class or properties of a related
class – but only one “hop” away
There can potentially be many classes related by a given relationship
type
Example: Work Item relates to Config Item
In the template mode the substitution string will look like this:

Later, when the email is sent the $....$ will be replaced with the value:

If there are multiple related objects when the notification is sent the
values will be separated by a semi-colon (but there is a bug in Beta 2)
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Formatting Templates
Notification templates can use HTML (optional)
Use a WYSIWYG HTML authoring tool like Word to make it
easier
Make sure that the recipients’ E-mail clients can render HTML
You can insert a substitution string inside of an HTML tag
<a href=“http://myserver/mypage.aspx?myparam=$....$”>click here</a>
Use the <Pre> tag at the beginning of the template body to
preserve basic formatting like line breaks

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Notification Subscriptions
Subscription = Criteria + Template + Recipient
Two flavors of subscriptions:
Administrative subscriptions
only for SM Administrators
configured in the Administration workspace
can add any user as a recipient
My subscriptions
for any user
configured on Tools My Notifications menu
the creating user is the only recipient

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Subscription Criteria
Notification subscriptions are targeted at a Class
Think to yourself ‘what kind of thing do I want to be notified
about?’ Incident? Computer? Change Request?
Subscription class target must match the selected Notification
template class target
You can choose to be notified when the object is
created, updated, or deleted
This selection drives other options:
Queue (work items)/ Property Level Criteria
Group (config items) filter
Created No Yes
Updated Yes (optional) Yes (before and after)
Deleted No No

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Workflow Notifications
Notifications can also be sent in the context of a
workflow
Incident Event Workflow
DCM Event Workflow
Activity Event Workflow
Change Request Event Workflow
In this situation, you can choose a contextual user
to be the recipient
Example: the user that the incident is assigned to
We provide a Windows Workflow Foundation
notification activity for use in your own custom
workflows
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Notification Configuration

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Notification Configuration
Variables can be used in Template design
Encoding and other e-mail settings can also be set.

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Recipients
User == Recipient
Each user can manage his/her own recipient
settings:
E-mail addresses
auto sync’d in from AD via AD connector if present
Time zone (not in AD)
Locale (not in AD)
Console users can do this in Tools  My Recipient
Information menu
No way to do this on the portal right now
unfortunately
PowerShell ! We will provide example of how to
set these properties in bulk 31
Testing Notifications
Use a pre-production environment
Store all notification subscriptions,
templates in a management pack(s)
Cause the condition to occur
Example: create a new incident
Example: change the urgency from high to low
Export MPs from pre-prod, import into prod

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Summary
Understand maintenance procedures
Operations Review Meetings
KPI tracking

Understanding IT Announcements

Understand Notifications

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Service Manager Maintenance
Questions
How can you review your processes?

What are IT Announcements used for and

where can they be seen?

What are Notifications and who can use

them?

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Hands on Lab

Service Manager
Maintenance

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The information herein is for informational purposes only and represents the current view of Microsoft Corporation as of the date of this presentation. Because Microsoft must respond to changing market conditions, it should not
be interpreted to be a commitment on the part of Microsoft, and Microsoft cannot guarantee the accuracy of any information provided after the date of this presentation.
MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR STATUTORY, AS TO THE INFORMATION IN THIS PRESENTATION.
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