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Announcing new HTML5 based Self-Service Portal

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Finally!!! We are excited to announce that we are releasing new Self Service Portal for Service Manager 2012 R2 next week. This version of Self Service Portal is re-designed from scratch to help us in providing improved performance and easy manageability, key points which were hurting customers with previous version. Here are key highlights of this new release –

  • ASP.NET MVC Razor Based HTML 5 Web App– Supported on all Web browsers and operating system.

  • Caching on web server to improve response times for frequently fetched data.

  • No local data storage makes easy Web Farm Deployment. All data fetched/saved from/in CMDB directly.

  • Multi-Language Support – Supports all 23 language supported on Service Manager. Help your end users to access portal in language of their choice.

  • No Dependency on SharePoint/Silverlight.

  • No separate WCS Service specifically for Portal. Directly configure portal to use any of Secondary SM Server (SDK Service)

  • Windows Authentication by default to avoid user to enter credentials every time they access portal and provide secure access without any overhead of using SSL specifically for authentication.

  • Easily customizable using custom CSS and JavaScript. Supports add-on links helping customers to provide one-stop shop for IT needs to their End Users.

     

 

Here are list of Service Manager Features supported by new Self Service Portal (including new ones) –

  • Create/View/Update Tickets (Incident/Service Requests). Reactivate resolved tickets.

  • Knowledge Management - Search/View/share knowledge articles.

  • Approve/Reject Review Activity.

  • Make Manual Activity Complete/Fail.

  • Mark Requests/Knowledge Articles as Favorites for quick access in future.

  • Provide star rating to knowledge articles to help in building reliable knowledge base based on continues feedback from end users.

  • Notification of number of activity pending when user login to portal.

  • Announcements are back.

  • Generic Request is configurable.

     

Sample Screen Shots

Home Page

 

My Requests

 

Help Article

 

Search


In order to use new Portal you need to:

    • Have System Center 2012 R2 – Service Manager Update Rollup 7.  It is a prerequisite due new type projection introduced for portal.
    • Windows Server 2012 R2 – This portal is based on latest ASP.NET Platform, which do not work properly on older version of Windows (IIS Server).

Please watch this space next week, when we will publish installer and more blogs on enable quick deployments for you.


Update Rollup 8 for Microsoft System Center 2012 R2 Service Manager is now available

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DOWNLOAD_thumb2System Center 2012 R2 Service Manager Update Rollup 8 (SCSM 2012 R2 UR8) has been released and is now available for download. The KB article below describes the issues that are fixed in UR8 as well as download and installation instructions.

For complete details please see the following:

KB3096383 - Update Rollup 8 for System Center 2012 R2 Service Manager (https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3096383)

J.C. Hornbeck| Solution Asset PM | Microsoft GBS Management and Security Division

Get the latest System Center news onFacebookandTwitter:

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Main System Center blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/systemcenter/

Configuration Manager Support Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/configurationmgr/
Data Protection Manager Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/dpm/
Orchestrator Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/orchestrator/
Operations Manager Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/momteam/
Service Manager Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/servicemanager
Virtual Machine Manager Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/scvmm

Microsoft Intune: http://blogs.technet.com/b/microsoftintune/
WSUS Support Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/sus/
RMS blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/rms/
App-V Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/appv/
MED-V Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/medv/
Server App-V Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/serverappv

Forefront Endpoint Protection blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/clientsecurity/
Forefront Identity Manager blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ms-identity-support/
Forefront TMG blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/isablog/
Forefront UAG blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/edgeaccessblog/
Application Proxy blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/applicationproxyblog/

An in-depth look at grooming in System Center Service Manager: Part 1

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~ Scott Walker | Senior Support Escalation Engineer

HOWThis post is the first in a three part series on grooming in System Center 2012 Service Manager (SCSM 2012 and SCSM 2012 R2). As we all know, grooming is the process of tidying up, and this is just what grooming does in Service Manager.

Note: Part 2 can be found here. Part 3 is here.

The CMDB in Service Manager is a place where a lot of work goes on behind the scenes to provide the various classes, relationships, and methods needed to automate your IT Service Management best practices.  As you might imagine, all this behind the scenes work requires creating temp tables, entering data that is used just for tracking, keeping tabs on points in time, as well as many other things.  All of this behind-the-scenes work needs to be tidied up from time to time in order to optimize performance and growth of the CMDB, and this is where grooming comes in. Service Manager employs several grooming jobs to get the job done and we’ll discuss these throughout the series.

Now you might be asking yourself “Why do I even need to know about this grooming stuff?” As a Service Manager admin, chances are you’ll encounter the grooming processes sooner or later, and just because all of this is happening in the background doesn't mean you shouldn't care about it.  For example, if grooming jobs start to fail, ultimately you may see performance issues in the Service Manager environment. Performance issues that can cause slowness doing mundane tasks in the console, delays when running workflows, and a possible list of other performance (slowness) related problems.  When grooming jobs consistently fail, the Service Manager database can become bloated in several key tables which eventually results in these performance troubles.  And once many of these key tables become very large, it's not always easy to clear up. In some cases, if things get bad enough then getting things cleaned up may, at the very least, require a support case for assistance.  As a Service Manager admin, if you're having a grooming related issue you want to know about it as soon as possible so you can address it before you start experiencing performance problems.

Getting Started

A good place to start our investigation into Service Manager grooming is in the InternalJobHistory table.  From that table, I've compiled a list of Stored Procedures that are run regularly to perform various grooming tasks.  We'll take a look at how these are used coming up.

This query returns a list of grooming commands that are performed regularly.  For now, I've removed the parameters passed and the duplicates to show just the stored procedures:

 

command 
Exec dbo.p_DataPurging 
Exec dbo.p_GroomStagedChangeLogs 
Exec dbo.p_GroomSubscriptionSpecificECLRows  
Exec dbo.p_GroomTypeSpecificLogTables  
Exec dbo.p_GroomPartitionedObjects and dbo.p_Grooming 
Exec dbo.p_GroomChangeLogs 
Exec dbo.p_GroomManagedEntity 

 

For a more detailed look at how these are executed, let's take a look at one of the Managed Type tables in the CMDB.

 

SELECT 

StoredProcedure 

,Criteria 

,RetentionPeriodInMinutes 

,BatchSize 

FROM dbo.MT_GroomingConfiguration 

 

 

StoredProcedure 
Criteria 
RetentionPeriodInMinutes 
BatchSize 
p_GroomManagedEntity 
SELECT TOP(@NumOfEntities) BME.[BaseManagedEntityId] FROM dbo.[BaseManagedEntity] BME JOIN dbo.MT_System$WorkItem$ReleaseRecord R ON R.BaseManagedEntityId = BME.BaseManagedEntityId WHERE BME.[IsDeleted] = 0 AND BME.[LastModified] < @Retention AND BME.BaseManagedTypeId = @TargetTypeId AND R.Status_F7BFD782_80B2_10C2_04B3_7F4C042DB5D2 = '221155FC-AD9F-1E40-C50E-9028EE303137' 
525600 
1000 
p_GroomChangeLogs 
 
525600 
1000 
p_GroomSubscriptionLogs 
 
0 
1000 
p_GroomManagedEntity 
SELECT TOP(@NumOfEntities) BME.[BaseManagedEntityId] FROM dbo.[BaseManagedEntity] BME JOIN dbo.MT_System$WorkItem$Problem P ON P.BaseManagedEntityId = BME.BaseManagedEntityId WHERE BME.[IsDeleted] = 0 AND BME.[LastModified] < @Retention AND BME.BaseManagedTypeId = @TargetTypeId AND P.Status_3C8876F4_FCBF_148C_FBAF_4CF4F02C6187 = '25EAC210-E091-8AE8-A713-FEA2472F32FF' 
525600 
100 
p_GroomManagedEntity 
SELECT TOP(@NumOfEntities) BME.[BaseManagedEntityId] FROM dbo.[BaseManagedEntity] BME JOIN dbo.MT_System$WorkItem$Incident I ON I.BaseManagedEntityId = BME.BaseManagedEntityId WHERE BME.[IsDeleted] = 0 AND BME.[LastModified] < @Retention AND BME.BaseManagedTypeId = @TargetTypeId AND I.Status_785407A9_729D_3A74_A383_575DB0CD50ED = 'BD0AE7C4-3315-2EB3-7933-82DFC482DBAF' 
129600 
100 
p_GroomStagedChangeLogs 
 
0 
1000 
p_GroomManagedEntity 
SELECT TOP(@NumOfEntities) BME.[BaseManagedEntityId] FROM dbo.[BaseManagedEntity] BME JOIN dbo.MT_System$WorkItem$ServiceRequest SR ON SR.BaseManagedEntityId = BME.BaseManagedEntityId WHERE BME.[IsDeleted] = 0 AND BME.[LastModified] < @Retention AND BME.BaseManagedTypeId = @TargetTypeId AND SR.Status_6DBB4A46_48F2_4D89_CBF6_215182E99E0F = 'C7B65747-F99E-C108-1E17-3C1062138FC4' 
525600 
1000 
p_GroomManagedEntity 
SELECT TOP(@NumOfEntities) BME.[BaseManagedEntityId] FROM dbo.[BaseManagedEntity] BME JOIN dbo.MT_System$WorkItem$ChangeRequest C ON C.BaseManagedEntityId = BME.BaseManagedEntityId WHERE BME.[IsDeleted] = 0 AND BME.[LastModified] < @Retention AND BME.BaseManagedTypeId = @TargetTypeId AND C.Status_72C1BC70_443C_C96F_A624_A94F1C857138 = 'F228D50B-2B5A-010F-B1A4-5C7D95703A9B' 
525600 
100 

 

Now, some of the entries in InternalJobHistory will make more sense, so let's take a look at the full commands:

SELECT DISTINCT command  

FROM dbo.InternalJobHistory

 

command 
Exec dbo.p_GroomManagedEntity E6C9CF6E-D7FE-1B5D-216C-C3F5D2C7670C, 525600, SELECT TOP(@NumOfEntities) BME.[BaseManagedEntityId] FROM dbo.[BaseManagedEntity] BME JOIN dbo.MT_Sy, 100 
Exec dbo.p_DataPurging 
Exec dbo.p_GroomStagedChangeLogs 55270A70-AC47-C853-C617-236B0CFF9B4C, 0, , 1000 
Exec dbo.p_GroomManagedEntity D02DC3B6-D709-46F8-CB72-452FA5E082B8, 525600, SELECT TOP(@NumOfEntities) BME.[BaseManagedEntityId] FROM dbo.[BaseManagedEntity] BME JOIN dbo.MT_Sy, 1000 
Exec dbo.p_GroomSubscriptionSpecificRECLRows 55270A70-AC47-C853-C617-236B0CFF9B4C, 0, , 1000 
Exec dbo.p_GroomManagedEntity 04B69835-6343-4DE2-4B19-6BE08C612989, 525600, SELECT TOP(@NumOfEntities) BME.[BaseManagedEntityId] FROM dbo.[BaseManagedEntity] BME JOIN dbo.MT_Sy, 1000 
Exec dbo.p_GroomSubscriptionSpecificECLRows 55270A70-AC47-C853-C617-236B0CFF9B4C, 0, , 1000 
Exec dbo.p_GroomTypeSpecificLogTables  
Exec dbo.p_GroomPartitionedObjects and dbo.p_Grooming 
Exec dbo.p_GroomManagedEntity A604B942-4C7B-2FB2-28DC-61DC6F465C68, 129600, SELECT TOP(@NumOfEntities) BME.[BaseManagedEntityId] FROM dbo.[BaseManagedEntity] BME JOIN dbo.MT_Sy, 100 
Exec dbo.p_GroomChangeLogs 55270A70-AC47-C853-C617-236B0CFF9B4C, 525600, , 1000 
Exec dbo.p_GroomManagedEntity 422AFC88-5EFF-F4C5-F8F6-E01038CDE67F, 525600, SELECT TOP(@NumOfEntities) BME.[BaseManagedEntityId] FROM dbo.[BaseManagedEntity] BME JOIN dbo.MT_Sy, 100 

Now we can see that many of the Stored Procedures are invoked with a list of parameters.  The first parameter is often a GUID.  This GUID is a Service Manager Managed Type, so to find out what is being groomed let's take a look at the stored procedure p_GroomManagedEntity. The first one in the list is passing the first parameter E6C9CF6E-D7FE-1B5D-216C-C3F5D2C7670C but in this list we can see several entries for p_GroomManagedEntity so let's just see what all of them are:

SELECTTypeName  

FROMManagedType 

WHEREManagedTypeIDIN  

('E6C9CF6E-D7FE-1B5D-216C-C3F5D2C7670C' 

,'D02DC3B6-D709-46F8-CB72-452FA5E082B8' 

,'04B69835-6343-4DE2-4B19-6BE08C612989' 

,'A604B942-4C7B-2FB2-28DC-61DC6F465C68' 

,'422AFC88-5EFF-F4C5-F8F6-E01038CDE67F') 

These are the various Managed Types being groomed by p_GroomManagedEntity:

 

TypeName 
System.WorkItem.ReleaseRecord 
System.WorkItem.Incident 
System.WorkItem.ServiceRequest 
System.WorkItem.ChangeRequest 
System.WorkItem.Problem 

For the rest of the parameters being passed, refer back to the results from the MT_GroomingConfiguration table.  The second parameter being passed is RetentionPeriodInMinutes, the third parameter is the Criteria, followed by the BatchSize. These procedures are often run against a large set of data, so to keep table locking to a minimum, the grooming is done in batches.

Question: Where does the GroomingConfiguration table get its information?  

Answer: From the Service Manager Grooming Configuration Management Pack (ServiceManager.Grooming.Configuration.mp).

We can break down the other Stored Procedures in a similar manner and see, for instance, that p_GroomStagedChangedLogs and GroomChangeLogs both tidy up System.Entity Managed Types, and so on.

This should give us a good basis for understanding how some of these grooming tasks are run. In the next post we’ll take a look at InternalJobHistory a bit more in-depth.

Scott Walker | Senior Support Escalation Engineer | Microsoft GBS Management and Security Division

Get the latest System Center news onFacebookandTwitter:

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System Center All Up: http://blogs.technet.com/b/systemcenter/

Configuration Manager Support Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/configurationmgr/ 
Data Protection Manager Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/dpm/ 
Orchestrator Support Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/orchestrator/ 
Operations Manager Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/momteam/ 
Service Manager Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/servicemanager 
Virtual Machine Manager Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/scvmm

Microsoft Intune: http://blogs.technet.com/b/microsoftintune/
WSUS Support Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/sus/
The RMS blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/rms/
App-V Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/appv/
MED-V Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/medv/
Server App-V Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/serverappv
The Surface Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/surface/
The Application Proxy blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/applicationproxyblog/

The Forefront Endpoint Protection blog : http://blogs.technet.com/b/clientsecurity/
The Forefront Identity Manager blog : http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ms-identity-support/
The Forefront TMG blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/isablog/
The Forefront UAG blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/edgeaccessblog/

SCSM 2012 R2

An in-depth look at grooming in System Center Service Manager: Part 2

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    • ~ Scott Walker | Senior Support Escalation Engineer

      In the first installment in this series, I discussed a few items related to grooming.  In this post I'm going to focus in on the Internal Job History which keeps track of which grooming jobs ran, when they ran, and whether or not they completed successfully.

      Note: Part 1 can be found here. Part 3 is here.

      Throughout this post I will be using information from other posts, and in the last installment I’ll include a references section to give credit to the excellent blog writers who created content that I am referencing in this series. Now, back to Internal Job History.

      To get started, let's query the InternalJobHistory table in Service Manager to see what's been happening over the last two weeks:

      SELECT*FROMdbo.InternalJobHistory 

      WHERETimeStarted>getdate()-15 ANDStatusCode<> 1 

      ORDERBYTimeStartedDESC

      Ideally, we want to see no results from this query, however if you have results then you'll want to see if any of those that didn't complete successfully eventually did complete.  From time to time, grooming jobs do fail, but if that same job completes at a future time then you generally don't need to be concerned with it.

      Personally, I like to take out the StatusCode qualifier and then save the results out to a tab delimited file so I can slice and dice the results in Excel. This allows us to filter by each command (job) and see if there are any that haven't completed at all, or at least haven't completed in recent days.  Here's the query and what the results look like after filtering them in Excel:

      SELECT*FROMdbo.InternalJobHistory 

      WHERETimeStarted>getdate()-15 

      ORDERBYTimeStartedDESC

      image

      All of these have a StatusCode of 0, meaning they didn't complete successfully.  0 typically means the job timed out, so to see if this is happening a lot, change your Excel filter to show just one of the failed commands.  This snippet shows that the job I've selected failed, but later looks like it's been completing successfully (where the status code is 1):

      image

      Remember, the ones you need to be concerned with are the ones that don't ever complete, like this one where the status code is 0:

      image

      Your Service Manager/Operations Manager Event logs are also a good place to look so you can correlate the results.  The following events provide confirmation of grooming failures:

      EventID: 10870
      Severity: Error
      Description:
      SqlJob execution failed.
      Mom failed executing SQL Job <Jobname>

      EventID: 10871
      Severity: Error
      Description: 
      Grooming of disabled subscription workflow watermarks failed.

      EventID: 10880
      Severity: Error
      Description:
      Service Manager CMDB Grooming failed.
      Service Manager CMDB Grooming failed.
      GroomingType: <Grooming Type>
      The following error was encountered: <Error>

      Once you know you have jobs that are consistently failing and not completing due to a 0 StatusCode, it's time to ask some questions:

      1. What has changed in the Service Manager environment recently

      One change I see a lot in support that causes grooming to get behind is a change in connectors, namely deleting a connector that was responsible for pulling in a lot of data or deleting a large number of connectors at one time.

      2. Is there a performance issue on the SQL Server hosting the Service Manager Database?

      This may require the assistance of your DB team to investigate further.

      3. How much data is being groomed by the failing jobs?  

      This is a tough one to analyze but it's necessary to know the answer before you proceed with any manual grooming.  If the dataset to be groomed is very large, it may be necessary to incrementally groom, and then ultimately prevent the built-in job from running for hours, or even days which can negatively affect performance in SQL and Service Manager.

      In part 3 I'll show you how to answer this last question for some of the most common grooming jobs.

    Scott Walker | Senior Support Escalation Engineer | Microsoft GBS Management and Security Division

    Get the latest System Center news onFacebookandTwitter:

    clip_image001clip_image002

    System Center All Up: http://blogs.technet.com/b/systemcenter/

    Configuration Manager Support Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/configurationmgr/ 
    Data Protection Manager Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/dpm/ 
    Orchestrator Support Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/orchestrator/ 
    Operations Manager Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/momteam/ 
    Service Manager Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/servicemanager 
    Virtual Machine Manager Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/scvmm

    Microsoft Intune: http://blogs.technet.com/b/microsoftintune/
    WSUS Support Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/sus/
    The RMS blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/rms/
    App-V Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/appv/
    MED-V Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/medv/
    Server App-V Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/serverappv
    The Surface Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/surface/
    The Application Proxy blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/applicationproxyblog/

    The Forefront Endpoint Protection blog : http://blogs.technet.com/b/clientsecurity/
    The Forefront Identity Manager blog : http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ms-identity-support/
    The Forefront TMG blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/isablog/
    The Forefront UAG blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/edgeaccessblog/

An in-depth look at grooming in Microsoft System Center Service Manager: Part 3

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~ Scott Walker | Senior Support Escalation Engineer

In the first installment in this series, I discussed a few items related to grooming. In Part 2 we focused on the Internal Job History which keeps track of which grooming jobs ran, when they ran, and whether or not they completed successfully. Now in our third and final post in the series, we’re going to focus on some of the tools (SQL queries) you can use to answer the question "How much needs to be groomed?"

Note: Part 1 can be found here. Part 2 is here.

Many of the grooming related stored procedures call other stored procedures and functions, so rather than go through all the many depths of all the grooming jobs, I'm going to cover the most common ones I've seen in support.

One point of trouble that I often see involves grooming the Service Manager EntityChangeLog table. This table maps roughly to your History retention settings, and tracks changes for Service Manager "entities".  Entities are Service Manager's way of referring to items stored in Service Manager such as Configuration Items, Work Items, etc.  For more about entities and the way Service Manager models things in the database, I suggest reading Travis Wright's post here:

The System Center Platform in Service Manager

The EntityChangeLog and RelatedEntityChange log can grow for various reasons.  The growth can be caused over time from using high History Retention settings in the console (not recommended), tracking lots of changes for many Configuration Items, and more.

Before I start down the recommendation path, I must throw out a disclaimer that every environment is different, so I'm going to just make a few assumptions and go from there.  Just know that you may or may not see grooming issues depending on your specific Service Manager configuration. You must monitor the grooming on a regular basis to determine what is happening for you in your deployment.

So with that out of the way, if you have a fairly moderately sized environment with, for example, 5,000 Configuration Items, and you’re using Service Manager for Incident, Change, and Service Management, then setting your History to 365 days is likely OK. However, if you have a fairly large environment with, say 30,000 Configuration items, and you're tracking lots of Configuration Item Changes, and you have a very active IT service department using Service Manager for SLA/SLO, Incident Management, Change and Request Management, plus you have several connectors for AD, and possibly even Configuration Manager, then you should consider setting your History Retention to something around 6 months, or 120 days.  This is because tracking all these changes adds more and more to the EntityChangeLog table. Again, this is very environment specific. If you have an extremely capable SQL configuration and EntityChangeLog contains between 25 and 50 million rows, you may not have a problem.  As a rule of thumb, I like to start looking into possible grooming failures if the EntityChangeLog (ECL) is above 10 million rows.  This applies to RelatedEntityChangeLog (RECL) as well.

If your ECL and/or RECL tables are over 10 million rows, you're not seeing any grooming failures, and performance in Service Manager is good, then don't worry, be happy, but be wary. Keep tabs on the total row counts for these tables and monitor the grooming jobs.  A random grooming failure now and again is nothing to worry about, but consistent failure is not good, and the earlier you detect it the better, and the sooner something can be done to fix the problem before you start seeing performance issues in Service Manager.

Now let's get to the meat of this post, and that is how to tell how much needs to be groomed.  EntityChangeLog has three different grooming procedures that all result in a final groom of EntityChangeLog:

GroomChangeLogs
GroomStagedChangeLogs
GroomSubscriptionSpecificECLRows

Let's start with GroomChangeLogs. You need to know your History Retention time from Service Manager –> Administration –> Settings –> Data Retention Settings –> History, or you can just use various settings in the queries below to see how it changes the counts that need to be groomed based on the number of days to retain history.  I'm using 120 days in these examples.

How many Entities need to be groomed from ECL based on the GroomChangeLogs criteria?

--declare variables

DECLARE @RetentionDateTimeDateTime;

DECLARE @SubscriptionWatermarkbigint;

DECLARE @RetentionPeriodint= 120;  --<<<<< This is where you set your retention days, 120 days in this example

 

--Set variables

 SELECT @SubscriptionWatermark= dbo.fn_GetEntityChangeLogGroomingWatermark();

 SELECT @RetentionDateTime=DATEADD(d,-@RetentionPeriod,getutcdate())

 

 --Count entities to be groomed

        SELECTcount(1)EntityChangeLogId

        FROM   (SELECTEntityChangeLogId,

                    LastModified,

                    EntityTransactionLogId,

                    ROW_NUMBER()OVER (PARTITIONBYEntityId,EntityTypeIdORDER  BYEntityChangeLogIdDESC)ASRowNum

                FROM dbo.EntityChangeLog

                WHERERelatedEntityIdISNULL

                ANDSubscriptionSpecific= 0)AS D

        WHERE D.RowNum > 1 AND

            D.LastModified < @RetentionDateTimeAND

            D.EntityTransactionLogId <= @SubscriptionWatermark;

How many Relationships need to be groomed from ECL based on the GroomChangeLogs criteria?

--declare variables

DECLARE @RetentionDateTimeDateTime;

DECLARE @SubscriptionWatermarkbigint;

DECLARE @RetentionPeriodint= 120;  --<<<<< This is where you set your retention days, 120 days in this example 

 

--Set variables

 SELECT @SubscriptionWatermark= dbo.fn_GetEntityChangeLogGroomingWatermark();

 SELECT @RetentionDateTime= DATEADD(d, -@RetentionPeriod, getutcdate())

 

--Count Relationships to be groomed

   SELECT count (1)EntityChangeLogId

        FROM dbo.EntityChangeLog

        WHERERelatedEntityIdISNOTNULLAND

            LastModified< @RetentionDateTimeAND

            EntityTransactionLogId<= @SubscriptionWatermark;

Next is GroomStagedChangeLogs. How many entities need to be groomed from ECL based on the GroomStagedChangeLogs criteria?

--declare variables

DECLARE @RetentionDateTimeDateTime;

DECLARE @RetentionPeriodint= 120;  --<<<<< This is where you set your retention days, 120 days in this example

 

--Set variables

SELECT @RetentionDateTime=DATEADD(d,-@RetentionPeriod,getutcdate())

 

--Count entities to be groomed by GroomStagedChangeLogs

        SELECTcount(1)EntityChangeLogId

        FROMEntityChangeLog ECL

        WHERE ECL.ChangeType = 3 AND-- 3:Staged

        ECL.LastModified < @RetentionDateTime;

Finally, GroomSubscriptionSpecificECLRows. How many entities need to be groomed based on the GroomSubscriptionSpecificECLRows criteria?

--Declare and set the subscription watermark

  DECLARE @SubscriptionWatermarkbigint= dbo.fn_GetEntityChangeLogGroomingWatermark();

         

        SELECTcount(1)EntityChangeLogId

        FROM dbo.EntityChangeLog ECL

        WHERE ECL.SubscriptionSpecific = 1

        AND ECL.EntityTransactionLogId <= @SubscriptionWatermark;

All three of the above stored procedures call into GroomChangeLogsInternal to do the actual work of the grooming.  Keep in mind that GroomChangeLogsInternal keeps the database integrity intact during the groom process which can result in a cascading deletion of the specific Managed Type Log tables too. This means that the counts above are only an estimate. Running the above grooming jobs may actually result in more rows being groomed than the results of these queries show. This is especially true for the deletion of the EntityChangeLog rows.

You will likely find that one of the above grooming areas is more overgrown than another, so knowing the counts from each allows you to focus on a single area or areas. For instance, if you're seeing GroomStagedChangeLogs failures in the event log, and your counts are fairly high in this area, you can run the stored procedure manually. Just be sure that you have a good backup of the CMDB first, and then do this in quiet times after hours with the Services stopped on all the Service Manager Management Servers.

Below are the commands to run each of the above stored procedures manually. You must set the Data Retention time in minutes, so you'll need to convert your History Retention setting from days to minutes.  In the examples below I'll again use 120 days as my retention setting.  Note that only the first one takes a true retention period in minutes, the rest simply use 0 minutes.

The first parameter passed is for System.Entity, the second is the retention time in minutes, the third is NULL and not needed for these procedures, and the fourth is the batch size, which I've set specifically to 5000.  You may want to raise this a bit more, or lower it depending on how long it takes each of these to run. You may find that your optimal setting is something other than the 5000 I have here in the examples:

GroomChangeLogs:

Exec dbo.p_GroomChangeLogs '55270A70-AC47-C853-C617-236B0CFF9B4C', 172800, N'', 5000

GroomStagedChangeLogs:

Exec dbo.p_GroomStagedChangeLogs '55270A70-AC47-C853-C617-236B0CFF9B4C', 0, N'' , 5000

GroomSubscriptionSpecificECLRows:

Exec dbo.p_GroomSubscriptionSpecificECLRows '55270A70-AC47-C853-C617-236B0CFF9B4C', 0, N'', 5000

Let me toss in one more wrinkle: Since RelatedEntityChangeLog is closely tied into EntityChangeLog by the way it works to track relationships, we need to look at one more stored procedure:

GroomSubscriptionSpecificRECLRows:

How many rows need to be deleted from RelatedEntityChangeLog based on the GroomSubscriptionSpecificRECLRows criteria?

--Declare and set the subscription watermark

  DECLARE @SubscriptionWatermarkbigint= dbo.fn_GetEntityChangeLogGroomingWatermark();

 

     -- Count rows that need to be groomed from the RelatedEntityChangeLog

        SELECTCOUNT(1) RECL

        FROM dbo.RelatedEntityChangeLog RECL

        WHERE RECL.EntityTransactionLogId <= @SubscriptionWatermark

To run GroomSubscriptionSpecificRECLRows manually:

Exec dbo.p_GroomSubscriptionSpecificRECLRows '55270A70-AC47-C853-C617-236B0CFF9B4C', 0, N'',

One more query for you, and then we're done. To get an overall look at your top row counts in Service Manager, run the "Large Table Query" at the top of Kevin Holman's post for Operations Manager (see Useful Operations Manager 2007 SQL queries). This works fine on the Service Manager database and gives you the top 1000 tables. Look at the row counts. If you've got some very big ones, you may need to investigate whether or not they're related to grooming and/or grooming-related issues.

This series of posts just touches the surface of what Service Manager grooming does behind the scenes to keep things neat and tidy in the Service Manager database.  There are many more grooming stored procedures, and not all of them have "groom" in the name, so they can be difficult to spot.

Remember to always back up the Service Manager Database (CMDB) before running any stored procedures manually as these do delete rows from the database. That way if you notice something went awry and you're not happy with the results, you'll be happy have that backup.

Scott Walker | Senior Support Escalation Engineer| Microsoft GBS Management and Security Division

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System Center All Up: http://blogs.technet.com/b/systemcenter/

Configuration Manager Support Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/configurationmgr/ 
Data Protection Manager Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/dpm/ 
Orchestrator Support Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/orchestrator/ 
Operations Manager Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/momteam/ 
Service Manager Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/servicemanager 
Virtual Machine Manager Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/scvmm

Microsoft Intune: http://blogs.technet.com/b/microsoftintune/
WSUS Support Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/sus/
The RMS blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/rms/
App-V Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/appv/
MED-V Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/medv/
Server App-V Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/serverappv
The Surface Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/surface/
The Application Proxy blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/applicationproxyblog/

The Forefront Endpoint Protection blog : http://blogs.technet.com/b/clientsecurity/
The Forefront Identity Manager blog : http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ms-identity-support/
The Forefront TMG blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/isablog/
The Forefront UAG blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/edgeaccessblog/

SCSM 2012 R2

A hotfix (build 7.5.3079.523) is available for the System Center 2012 R2 Service Manager Self-Service Portal

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HF2Just a quick note to let you know that we published a new hotfix that includes a couple new features and some fixes for existing issues in the Microsoft System Center 2012 R2 Service Manager Self-Service Portal.

New features that are included

  • Nested enumeration lists are now supported in the request offering forms.
  • The Self-Service Portal now lets you share and access different objects in the portal by using direct URLs.

Issues that are fixed

  • The Affected user and Created by user fields are incorrectly set to the service account.
  • The query type form element isn't working for the Incident and User classes.
  • Request offering forms are failing to load if a Query type form element is part of the form.
  • The username token isn't passing values to the mapped field.
  • Canceling a request form doesn't work.
  • Long strings of text overlap in the list in the middle pane.
  • Related activities in My Requests always show the state as active.
  • Filters inside My Requests and My Activities don't work for some languages.
  • Announcement displays "Invalid Date" in the Expired Date column for some languages.
  • Comments in the request use an incorrect class.
  • Required (mandatory) restriction isn't working on the query type form element.
  • Query form element allows for multiple selections even when it's configured for single-item selection.
  • Scroll bar doesn't work on some reduced screen resolutions.
  • A double scroll bar appears while you're browsing Help articles.
  • Some areas of the portal aren't rendering in the Mozilla Firefox web browser.
  • My Activities displays 0 (zero) instead of removing the notification sticker when no activity is in progress.
  • With SSL enabled, the browser regularly displays the message "Only secure content is displayed" together with a Show all content button while you're browsing the portal.
  • Added by in the action logs displays domain\username instead of the display name of the user.

For all the details, including known issues, a download link and installation instructions, please see the following:

KB3124091 - A hotfix (build 7.5.3079.523) is available for the System Center 2012 R2 Service Manager Self-Service Portal (https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3124091)

J.C. Hornbeck| Solution Asset PM | Microsoft GBS Management and Security Division

Get the latest System Center news onFacebookandTwitter:

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Main System Center blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/systemcenter/

Configuration Manager Support Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/configurationmgr/
Data Protection Manager Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/dpm/
Orchestrator Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/orchestrator/
Operations Manager Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/momteam/
Service Manager Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/servicemanager
Virtual Machine Manager Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/scvmm

Microsoft Intune: http://blogs.technet.com/b/microsoftintune/
WSUS Support Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/sus/
RMS blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/rms/
App-V Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/appv/
MED-V Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/medv/
Server App-V Team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/serverappv

Forefront Endpoint Protection blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/clientsecurity/
Forefront Identity Manager blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ms-identity-support/
Forefront TMG blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/isablog/
Forefront UAG blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/edgeaccessblog/
Application Proxy blog: http://blogs.technet.com/b/applicationproxyblog/

SCSM 2012 R2

Service Manager December 2015 #LyncUp Call available for download

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It has been 2 months since I hosted this call, with a crazy work travel schedule, I really missed hearing from all our great Service Manager Customers.  Our call on Tuesday was well attended and Harsh Verma filled the agenda by covering:

·         Service Manager Technical Preview 4

·         New HTML Portal

·         What’s in Update Rollup 9

·         Our #LyncUp

 
You can download the recording here https://t.co/mQAvO7c1QU and a really good summary blog post here by Stefan Johner @JohnerStefan
 
Wishing you all a happy holiday season and all the best for 2016
 
Kathleen Wilson and Harsh Verma

Have you tried SM 2016 TP4?

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Hi everyone, Service Manager 2016 Technical Preview 4 (TP4) is available for download and you can get it from here.

 

It’s a preview release for upcoming  Service Manager 2016 which you can test in your deployments and get yourself prepared before the final release. TP4 brings in many new features which can help in improving your overall Service Manager experience. These new features and improvements include -

 

  • SM 2016 TP4 now supports integration with Lync 2013 and Skype for Business in Microsoft Office suite 2013 and 2016.
  • This release contains a new inbox HTML-based Self Service Portal which offers the following enhancements:
    • Updated modern UI with easy-to-use navigation
    • Multiple browser support
    • Announcements are now supported in the portal
    • New Service Catalog
    • Rich browser for help articles
    • My Activities and My Request management
    • Server caching to reduce database calls and improve portal performance
    • Rich customization
  • Functionality to disable ECL logs for much faster SCCM & AD connector synchronization
  • Improved grooming for ECL logs which makes it 3 to 4 times faster than before
  • Enhancements in Incident workflows for reduced lags and faster processing
  • Optimized and Integrated ADGroupExpansion Workflow with ADConnector synchronization cycle, which makes it more predictable and faster.

 

You can read more about above mentioned improvements and more from here - What's New in Service Manager for Technical Preview

 

Do try out these updates, and share your experience and feedback in the comment section below. We are looking forward to hearing your thoughts about these enhancements.


ServiceManager Lync Up call available

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Happy New Year, our first Service Manager #LyncUp Call for 2016  is available for download.  Even though SCU was also on, our call was well attended by our Customers and partners.
 
 
The January call covered:
 

·         Cased Dimension’s Management Pack introduction, thank you to the Managing Director Liam Murray for his time and quick overview.

·         Service Manager Technical Preview 4

o   New iteration in SM 2016 Technical Preview series has many new improvements –

o   SCCM & AD connectors become 65%* and 50%* faster respectively with ECL log disabling feature (optional)

o   Incident workflows have become 50%* faster

o   AD group expansion enhancements have made it schedulable and 75%* faster

o   ECL grooming has become 3 times* faster

o   Read more about what’s new: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/mt346039.aspx

o   Get evaluation VHD from here - https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=49967

 

·         Shared the upcoming Update Rollup 9 and next hotfix for the portal, coming January 26, 2016

o   More details on UR9 in last month’s LyncUp call http://blogs.technet.com/b/servicemanager/archive/2015/12/17/service-manager-december-2015-lyncup-call-available-for-download.aspx

 
You can download the recording here https://t.co/mQAvO7c1QU
 
Thank you
 
Kathleen Wilson and Harsh Verma

Update Rollup 9 for System Center 2012 R2 Service Manager is now available

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Update Rollup 9 for System Center 2012 R2 Service Manager (SCSM 2012 R2 UR9) is now available to download. For complete details including issues fixed, installation instructions and a download link, please see the following:

3129780 - Update Rollup 9 for System Center 2012 R2 Service Manager (https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3129780)

J.C. Hornbeck | Solution Asset PM | Microsoft

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Update is available for the System Center 2012 R2 Service Manager Self-Service Portal

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We are pleased to announce second cumulative update for new HTML5 Self Service Portal and it can be downloaded from here.  As this is cumulative update, you can either install this update directly on RTM Release or even if you have previous update installed on RTM.

Please note that this release is independent of Service Manager UR9 Release and do not need UR9 to be installed on machines. This specific patch needs to be applied only on machine(s) which are hosting new Self Service Portal to enable following features and fixes. Installing UR9 on Machine won’t fix Self Service Portal issue.

Here are key features of this release -

  • Query form element in request offerings now supported on all configurations

  • Portal now filters the service offerings based on language.

  • Portal now lets you configure a generic request button to associate default and language-specific request offerings. Read more about this here.

  • A share button has been added in all Portal pages to easily share a request offering, submitted request, activity, or Help article.

  • User inputs are now getting populated in service requests when they are filed from the Self-Service Portal.

  • The date picker is now available for date type fields in Request Offerings forms.

Here are other bugs fixed in this release -

  • You cannot remove a Favorites item for request offerings.

  • Query UI Issues Fixed –

    • Query allows multiple selection even when they configured to allow a single selection only.

    • Pagination in a query does not work if the query is configured not to show object details.

    • Search box in query form element does not appear if the query is configured not to show object details.

    • Query field shows “No results found” by default instead of asking the user to refresh and fetch the results.

    • Multiple refreshes distort the query UI.

  • Attachments issues fixed –

    • The Attached by field is not populated in the work item when you attach a file from the Portal.

    • Mandatory attachments inside a service request do not work.

    • Action log does not show an entry if a file is attached during the creation or update of a request.

    • Full path is displayed in file name when you attach a file from the Portal.

  • Submitting request to create SR in end-user role reports error.

  • Access for Announcements can now be controlled by using user roles.

  • Submitted service requests and incidents in the Portal enter a closed state.

  • Help Article Search does not return results from all Knowledge Base articles.

  • Activities listed under the "My Request" section are not sorted per their sequence.

  • Regex tooltip does not appear for text fields in request offerings if it is constrained by .Net Regular Expression criteria.

  • Action logs don't expand when any request is opened by using a direct URL.

  • My Activity does not show the priority display name correctly.

  • User Inputs data is displayed as XML in the related request of My Activities.

  • Request Offerings user templates that have predefined service items or configuration items generate an error during submission.

  • Notes tab is missing from My Activities.

  • Service offerings appear in an arbitrary order (they are now sorted alphabetically).

  • Description/Notes field does not show multiple lines.

  • My Activities filter does not work in the Portuguese-Brazil language locale.

Update Rollup 9 for System Center 2012 R2 Service Manager is now available

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Update Rollup 9 for System Center 2012 R2 Service Manager (SCSM 2012 R2 UR9) is now available to download. For complete details including issues fixed, installation instructions and a download link, please see the following:

3129780Update Rollup 9 for System Center 2012 R2 Service Manager (https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3129780)

3134286 Update for System Center R2 Service Manager Self Service Portal (https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3134286 )

J.C. Hornbeck | Solution Asset PM | Microsoft

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Update is available for the System Center 2012 R2 Service Manager Self-Service Portal

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We are pleased to announce second cumulative update for new HTML5 Self Service Portal and it can be downloaded from here.  As this is cumulative update, you can either install this update directly on RTM Release or even if you have previous update installed on RTM.

Please note that this release is independent of Service Manager UR9 Release and do not need UR9 to be installed on machines. This specific patch needs to be applied only on machine(s) which are hosting new Self Service Portal to enable following features and fixes. Installing UR9 on Machine won’t fix Self Service Portal issue.

Here are key features of this release –

  • Query form element in request offerings now supported on all configurations

  • Portal now filters the service offerings based on language.

  • Portal now lets you configure a generic request button to associate default and language-specific request offerings. Read more about this here.

  • A share button has been added in all Portal pages to easily share a request offering, submitted request, activity, or Help article.

  • User inputs are now getting populated in service requests when they are filed from the Self-Service Portal.

  • The date picker is now available for date type fields in Request Offerings forms.

Here are other bugs fixed in this release –

  • You cannot remove a Favorites item for request offerings.

  • Query UI Issues Fixed –

    • Query allows multiple selection even when they configured to allow a single selection only.

    • Pagination in a query does not work if the query is configured not to show object details.

    • Search box in query form element does not appear if the query is configured not to show object details.

    • Query field shows “No results found” by default instead of asking the user to refresh and fetch the results.

    • Multiple refreshes distort the query UI.

  • Attachments issues fixed –

    • The Attached by field is not populated in the work item when you attach a file from the Portal.

    • Mandatory attachments inside a service request do not work.

    • Action log does not show an entry if a file is attached during the creation or update of a request.

    • Full path is displayed in file name when you attach a file from the Portal.

  • Submitting request to create SR in end-user role reports error.

  • Access for Announcements can now be controlled by using user roles.

  • Submitted service requests and incidents in the Portal enter a closed state.

  • Help Article Search does not return results from all Knowledge Base articles.

  • Activities listed under the “My Request” section are not sorted per their sequence.

  • Regex tooltip does not appear for text fields in request offerings if it is constrained by .Net Regular Expression criteria.

  • Action logs don’t expand when any request is opened by using a direct URL.

  • My Activity does not show the priority display name correctly.

  • User Inputs data is displayed as XML in the related request of My Activities.

  • Request Offerings user templates that have predefined service items or configuration items generate an error during submission.

  • Notes tab is missing from My Activities.

  • Service offerings appear in an arbitrary order (they are now sorted alphabetically).

  • Description/Notes field does not show multiple lines.

  • My Activities filter does not work in the Portuguese-Brazil language locale.

Service Manager UR9 re-release – status

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[Current State – 18th Feb 2016, 11AM IST] New patch for Update Rollup 9 is now available for download.

[State – 15th Feb 2016, 11AM IST] Beta testing is in progress. No issues have got reported so far, if this trend continues, then the re-release will happen by Wednesday (17th feb).

[State – 12th Feb 2016, 11AM IST] Updated UR9 bits are being shared with affected customers for their validation. Please reach us at veharshv@microsoft.com if you are also interested in validating the bits.

[State- 11th Feb 2016,  11 AM IST] Updated UR9 bits will go into beta testing by tomorrow and will be made public after validation.

——

We would like to inform you that the re-release of Update Rollup 9 is pulled back after the reports of console crashes in non-English deployments. We are investigating the cause of the problem and request you to refrain from installing the existing UR9 patches (if you have already downloaded them), until the new updated patches are available from our side.

We have reports of two issues which we are actively looking into –

  • Update Rollup 9 (v 3079.571 – Released Jan 26th) is resetting the customizations because it replaces the following unsealed Management Packs –
    1. ServiceManager.IncidentManagement.Configuration.xml
    2. ServiceManager.ServiceRequest.Configuration.xml
    3. ServiceManager.ProblemManagement.Configuration.xml
    4. ServiceManager.KnowledgeManagement.Configuration.xml
  • Re-release of Update Rollup 9 (v 3079.601 – Released Feb 8th) is causing console crashes while opening forms in non-English Service Manager console.

We sincerely regret the inconvenience caused, and would like to assure you that providing UR9 is our top priority and we are actively working to resolve all the issues. We will use this blogpost as the medium to keep you regularly updated about the progress, and you can contact us at servicemanager@microsoft.com for any more queries or concerns.

Announcing support of SQL 2012 SP3

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Hi everyone. This is just a small post to make an announcement. As some of you were waiting to upgrade your SQL servers, the Service Manager 2012 R2 with Update Rollup 9 installed, now officially supports Service Pack 3 for SQL Server 2012.

We have done a fair amount of validation to make sure that everything continues to work as expected. That said, if there is anything which seems suspicious let us know via your comments below.


Our February Service Manager #LyncUp Call is Available for Download.

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The February call covered, we had over 110 participants and a lively audience, as always.

  • Chris Ross and Will Udovich as our special Partner guests and presented/demoed  Cireson’s new Portal as well as their other amazing addins from the Cireson Platform
  • Service Manager UR9 re-release
  • Technical Preview 5 Highlights
  • Improved data processing
  • Improved console performance
  • Higher work item per minute processing

You can download the recording here http://1drv.ms/1KX9VRp

Thank you and we will chat next month

Kathleen Wilson and Harsh Verma

Basic UI customization in the new Self Service Portal (HTML5)

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With the new HTML5 Self Service portal, one of the key aspects is the level of customization which it supports. One of the basic things that everyone wants is to change the look and feel of the portal based on their requirements. Customization can be done very easily by adding a custom.css file in the \Content\css website folder, where styles defined in the custom.css file override the default styles (defined in \Content\css\main.css) of the Self Service Portal.

Donato Pasqualicchio from the Service Manager community has published a few blog posts that provide details on how you can customize UI to your liking. You can refer to the following links from his blog:

Please note that Microsoft is only supporting customizations that are defined in these files: web.config, custom.css and sidebar.cshtml. During patching and upgrading to Service Manager 2016 (SCSM 2016) we will ensure that these files do not get updated.  The remaining files (such as .cshtml/.css/.js/.dll files) can be updated in a patch or during an upgrade, which could result in loss of any customization previously made.  In case if you have any changes in .cshtml, .css , .js or .dll, back them up before patching or upgrading, then merge the changes back in once the update is complete.

Introducing Date Dimensions in System Center Service Manager 2016 Data Warehouse cubes

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Service Manager customers store their long term data in Service Manager Data Warehouse and create cubes over them for generating reports and analysing the data. Trend analysis and operating on data queried for different time periods is often required, but the cubes offered by Service Manager 2012 R2 Data Warehouse (DW) lack date dimensions for many common date type properties of Incidents, Problems, Change requests, Service requests, Activities etc which is not providing the SM users the time-based levels of granularity for analysis and reporting.

The inbox Data Warehouse cubes in System Center Service Manager 2016 Technical Preview 5 (SM)  now have date dimensions for common date properties, which can be sliced based on years, quarters, months, days etc. for rich reporting and trend analysis.

CUBE

Service Manager 2016 TP5 offers to either upgrade from SM 2012 R2 or do a fresh installation, to have the following date dimensions in the SM Data Warehouse cubes:

SystemCenterWorkItemsCube

  • Incident_CreatedDate
  • Incident_ResolvedDate
  • Incident_ClosedDate
  • Problem_CreatedDate
  • Problem_ResolvedDate
  • Problem_ClosedDate

SystemCenterChangeAndActivityManagementCube

  • ChangeRequest_CreatedDate
  • ChangeRequest_ScheduledStartDate
  • ChangeRequest_ScheduledEndDate
  • ChangeRequest_ActualStartDate
  • ChangeRequest_ActualEndDate
  • ChangeRequest_ActivityCreatedDate
  • ChangeRequest_ActivityScheduledStartDate
  • ChangeRequest_ActivityScheduledEndDate
  • ChangeRequest_ActivityActualStartDate
  • ChangeRequest_ActivityActualEndDate

SystemCenterServiceCatalogCube

  • ServiceRequest_CreatedDate
  • ServiceRequest_CompletedDate
  • ServiceRequest_ClosedDate
  • ServiceRequest_ScheduledStartDate
  • ServiceRequest_ScheduledEndDate
  • ServiceRequest_ActualStartDate
  • ServiceRequest_ActualEndDate
  • ServiceRequest_ActivityCreatedDate
  • ServiceRequest_ActivityScheduledStartDate
  • ServiceRequest_ActivityScheduledEndDate
  • ServiceRequest_ActivityActualStartDate
  • ServiceRequest_ActivityActualEndDate
  • ServiceRequest_ReviewActivityCreatedDate
  • ServiceRequest_ReviewActivityScheduledStartDate
  • ServiceRequest_ReviewActivityScheduledEndDate
  • ServiceRequest_ReviewActivityActualStartDate
  • ServiceRequest_ReviewActivityActualEndDate

Please note that cubes will start reflecting data in these new dimensions after successful MP sync and cube processing.

The customers upgrading from an existing SM 2012 R2 with any of the following date dimension solutions to SM 2016, will be able to see both the old and new date dimensions in their Data Warehouse cubes:

This solution can also be extended for creating date dimensions for date fields in the custom cubes by following these steps:
1. In the MP, defining the cube definition, add the named Calculations for the required field like mentioned below
<NamedCalculation ID=”Incident_CreatedDate__DateKey” Target=”IncidentDW!IncidentDim” ColumnType=”Int”>
<Calculation>isNull(CONVERT(nvarchar(8), CreatedDate, 112),’20000101′)</Calculation>
</NamedCalculation>
Please note that NamedCalculation ID should have string “__DateKey” in the end, and this field in the DW should not be NULL or 0.
2. Seal the MP and import it into SCSM.
3. Run the MPSyncJob on the Data Warehouse and wait until the MP is marked as ‘Completed’.
4. Process all the cubes, or wait for automatically processing during the night.
5. Now the Cubes will have new date dimensions.

You can read about all System Center 2016 TP5 features from here and can download Service Manager bits from https://aka.ms/getSM2016
Please feel free to use the comments section below for any queries or to share your feedback. We look forward to hearing from you..

Group calculation improvement in System Center Service Manager 2016 Technical Preview 5 (SM)

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Service Manager uses groups to manage CI and Queues for WI to scope the user view criteria.Groups/Queues can either contain objects of the same class or it can collection of objects for different classes. They can be dynamic collection of objects based on inclusion rules or a static list or a combination of both. In addition, Queues are used for SLO too. More details about Groups/Queues can be found here

The GroupCalculation module is used to calculate the membership for a given group/queue. Given a membership rule the module looks at the managed type of the instances in the CMDB, finds all the instances that satisfy the criteria and then creates a relationship between the group and instance and writes it back to CMDB. Once the initial membership calculation is done, the module then periodically detects (default is 30sec) if there is change in the managed type instance space (add/delete/update). If it detects change, then it runs the membership rule again and updates the relationship between the groups and instance. However, the calculation of membership is delayed for 30min if Service Manager is under high load. This means, you would see that instances are added to Groups and Queues only after 30min . In fact, the calculation of membership is delayed for 30min

For TP5, when SM is under high load the worst case time is brought down to 15min. Which means in R2 when it used to take more than 30min to see an instance in group or a queue, in TP5 this time is brought down to around 15min.

Also the time to view the list of groups in service manager console is brought down. In R2 if there are 100 groups defined in service manager, to view this list of 100 groups it used to take around 1.5 min. This time is now reduced to below 10sec.

You can read about all System Center 2016 TP5 features from here and can download Service Manager bits from https://aka.ms/getSM2016
Feel free to use the comment section below for any queries or to share your feedback. We are looking forward to hear from you.

Improved entity processing in Service Manager 2016

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In System Center Service Manager 2016 Technical Preview 5 (SM) we looked at the entity (work-items/config items) processing pipeline and made some performance improvements.

Entity related operations can be initiated by SM Console, Portal, Workflows, Connectors etc. via the SDK service. The SDK service submits these requests to the entity processing pipeline. Every entity change in this pipeline was earlier processed sequentially. With SM 2016 we have made changes to this pipeline and it now allows multiple non-conflicting concurrent operations to complete simultaneously.

This change has implications across various scenarios

Improved work-item commit performance for create/update
On SM 2012 R2 customers would notice freezing of the form window for a few seconds until the entity processing is complete and submitted. This behaviour would get worse as the entity operation load increased on the system.
With SM 2016, the commit/submit performance on work-items has improved. Here are the numbers from our internal testing.

1

Improved workflow processing
Since workflow processing also utilizes this processing pipeline, with this change the wait time for workflow processing is reduced considerably. This would result in fewer workflow lags and lagging workflows catching up faster.
Here are the results for 367 workflows to catch-up with around 5,400 work-item create/update operations.

2

Improved entity processing capacity
In SM 2016 the throughput of the entity processing pipeline has been increased. This means that SM 2016 can now handle many more entity operations while providing the same kind of performance as in SM 2012 R2.
From our internal tests the rate of entity transaction per second have gone up significantly.

3

You can read about all System Center 2016 TP5 features from here and can download Service Manager bits from https://aka.ms/getSM2016
Please feel free to use the comments section below for any queries or to share your feedback. We look forward to hearing from you.

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