Best Of
Re: Cireson ITSM Awards
Do you have:
- A process within your organization that makes managing work (Incidents, Service Requests, Changes, Releases, Problems, or Assets) easier?
- An automation in Orchestrator, Power Automate, PowerShell, custom SCSM workflows or something else that generates time savings for you? your team? the entire organization?
- Something integrated into SCSM to further round out your Service or Asset management stories like CRMs, anti-virus platforms, or vendor's ticketing solutions?
If you've built something that fits into any of the above then YOU should submit an entry! No submission is too simple nor too complex. Entry is open until the end of the month.
Re: 2021 Roadmaps
Just wanted to provide an update to our roadmap that now includes the recent announcement of the Cloud Connector at Innovate!
This will provide simplified Work Item Rest APIs as well as Webhooks to integrate SCSM with external services.
SMP Helper
SMP Helper v6.0
What's New:
PlatformCache Tab:
- The ability to delete all Platform Log files older than 1 day to help save space
Fixes:
PlatformCache Tab:
- Open Platform Log files now works correctly
- View Platform Event Log now works correctly
Platform Log file is now correctly attached to the zip file
PS. If you download the App can you please like this comment ;-)
James_Atance
10
Re: Change Management Assignee or Category
Thank you for all the help Shane. I finally found the right tables that I needed to join to get the information I wanted. IN case anyone else is interested, I have attached the full SQL query for Open Change Requests that are waiting on CAB Approval.
Re: Active Work Items badges on menu items
Hello all.
I've created a GitHub repository for this one and hope you can all join to make it even better:
Future Features:
I've created a GitHub repository for this one and hope you can all join to make it even better:
https://github.com/BrettMoff/CiresonBadgesWe've added a few new features to the badges code in this repository.
Version 1.1
- You can now configure the badges from the settings menu and turn on or off badges for certain views.
- Some views now have a count for "Number of Work Items that have not been updated in 3 days"
NOTE: it makes no sense to show number of WI's not assigned in My Work as, by definition, they are assigned so a count will be shown.
Future Features:
- Disable\Enable Count
- Setting for refresh time
- Setting for number of days not modified
Re: SCSM DB Meltdown
The entity change log is an interesting beast. - @Brett_Moffett
EntityChangeLog table has got to be one of the most complex topics within SCSM because so much depends on it. Brett is spot on in that it's responsible for all History of Work Items. Every change is a row in this table which means depending on how much work is happening in the system you can see a lot of activity on this table.
Not to mention, it's not just the day to day use of SCSM that will contribute to growth in ECL but also your Connectors (AD, SCOM, SCCM, SCO, SCVMM, Exchange, and Cireson Asset Management). What's more, given how much relies on this table a poorly maintained ECL table will lead to performance woes across different (Microsoft and Cireson) aspects of SCSM. But if the idea of "maintaining" a single table within a SQL database for an application makes you say "That's ridiculous" then fret not as the good news is there is a host of things you can do. Here's some tips for ensuring an autonomous and well maintained ECL table.
1. Connector scheduling: Make sure connectors are spaced out and run during the quietest times of SCSM operations. This ensures the volume of data getting loaded isn't competing with Analysts for resources.
2. Connector optimization: One setting that can be overlooked is that ALL of your connectors if possible should have "Do not write null values for properties that are not set in..." checked off. Why all of them? Because if you're using the AD connector and SCOM CI connector - it's possible one is writing values while the other is nulling them out. This leads to noise in the DB and unnecessary growth of the ECL table. Regardless of the connectors you're using, make sure all these have the value checked.
3. Cireson Asset Connectors - These pull a lot of information out of SCCM and as such have the potential to hit their configured max run time. Strongly advise to run these after hours.
4. History retention: Administration -> Settings -> Data Retention Settings. This is a balancing act between what departments using SCSM reasonably expect to see when searching items in the console and what you can afford to purge and then ultimately search in the DW. That said, you want numbers to be as low is as acceptable for your deployment. The "History" section generally has a fairly direct correlation with ECL table size.
5. SCOM Alerts: If you've integrated SCOM Alerts to fire SCSM Incidents, some Alerts feature a Repeat count metric. Depending on how you've configured the Alert in SCOM, it's possible SCOM could be writing a lot of nonstop updates into SCSM to a single Work Item.
6. Custom Workflows: This is Brett's original point, it sounds like automation or some workflow maybe causing this. It's worth checking out any custom workflows in the admin pane, their last run times, and their status
Next, there are a few SQL queries you can use against the ServiceManager database for troubleshooting.
Loudest Objects in SCSM - This is great because you can possibly identify what is making the most noise in SCSM. To analyze this data keep in mind that large numbers aren't necessarily bad, so what you should be focused on is if you have a huge gap between objects. For example, if the first is 1000 but the second is 30...
<div>SELECT TOP 25 BME.FullName, COUNT(1)
FROM EntityChangeLog AS ECL WITH(NOLOCK)
JOIN BaseManagedEntity AS BME WITH(NOLOCK)
ON ECL.EntityId = BME.BaseManagedEntityId
WHERE RelatedEntityId IS NULL
GROUP BY BME.FullName
ORDER BY COUNT(1) DESC
</div>These and a few other classic queries I also posted over here on building a SCSM Dashboard in the Portal so you don't have to run queries all the time to check in on this and instead just have a quick Web UI to check things out in.
Config Mgr Ticker Features Poll
What features of the current Configuration Manager ticker are most important to you, this could help to determine future ticker improvements!
Re: SMP Helper - a cool little troubleshooting tool.
SMP Helper v5.0
What's New:
Logging
- Logging is now available and is set to enabled by default, this can be adjusted in the Settings Tab
- Logs user running the App
- Logs Service restart Activity
- Logs Reports run
- Log file stored in \AppData\Local\SMPHelper for reference
Settings preferences saved
- Any changes made to the Settings tab will now be automatically saved upon exiting the App
- Settings file stored in \AppData\Local\SMPHelper for reference
SCSMDW & License Tabs - Auto Hide Inactive Tabs
- If you don’t have a Data Warehouse present in your SCSM environment then this tab will not be shown
- If you don't have the Cireson Licensees DLL present then this tab will not be shown
SCSM Tab
- New button - 'Get SCSM/Cireson App Process:' this will show process info, ie memory usage etc, also this info will be added to the Build Report if ran
- New button - 'Reset Local Heath Store:' this will stop the local HealthService and rename the Health Service State folder to current date then restart the service again, clearing the local health service of the Management server
- New button - 'Get Failed Workflows:' this will display info around any failed Workflow Jobs that you have in SCSM
SCSMDW Tab
- New button - 'SCSMDW/Cireson App Process:' to view process info, ie memory usage etc, also this info will be added to the Build Report if ran
Fixes:
Corrected 'Restart Portal Cache Service' button not working
Corrected Date/Time stamp on files
PS. If you download the App can you please like this
comment ;-)
James_Atance
13