Thursday 2 December 2010

Asset Management - Service Manager Management Pack

I posted a while ago about the management pack I was working on to satisfy our requirements for where I work.
http://systemscentre.blogspot.com/search/label/Asset%20Management

What I didn't do was get it finished as quick as I hoped to.

Well I'm nearly there now and after replying to a forum thread about this, I thought I'd best post an update here as well.

I've broken the MP off from Configuration Items where it lived before and it's now got it's own Wunderbar tab.  There's a common form across most of the MP as shown, but it differs slightly for Mobile, Remote access tokens etc.


I've extended the Windows Computer class to record some extra properties such as department, section etc as well as making it less cluttered to manually add an asset.  The idea being that you can add basic details as soon as the item arrives and then let AD & SCCM connectors add more detailed information as the device gets onto the network.


 I've got a deadline for this going into our live production that is looming so I'm hoping to wrap this all up before Christmas.

Asset Items Covered:
  • Peripherals (Scanners, Digital Cameras, Camcorders, Monitors, Fax Machines etc)
  • Remote Access Tokens (RAS SecurID etc)
  • Cisco IPT Phone Hardware
  • Mobile Phones (Made up of 3 Assets: Handset, Phone Number & SIM Card)
  • Network Infrastructure (Switches, ASA's etc)
  • Server Infrastructure (Fibre Switches, UPS, SAN DAE's, Tape Drives etc)
  • Computers (Extended views from OOB and additional class extensions)
  • Users & Groups  (Extended views from OOB)
Things left to do/expand on:
  • Reports - I've got basic data flowing across to the DW, just need to write some useful reports but these might wait until after Christmas now.
  • Dashboards - I'm going to utilise the SCSM Dashboard Solution Accelerator and the ability to integrate it into the console to provide simple dashboards such as number of devices deployed/in stock/awaiting delivery etc.
Issues:
  • Because in the forms you don't specify the Display name it creates a seemingly random display name:
  • In fact this is acutally the guid for the enumeration list value "Scanner".  Why it's putting the guid in instead of the friendly name I don't know, but I'm hoping to get a call logged with MS tomorrow to see if they can shed any light. It doesn't cause too many problems with views as I've purposefully worked around it, however, when using selction boxes for relationships it makes it hard to read which item you're after:

** Edit ** - You can now download the MP, check this post for more details: http://systemscentre.blogspot.com/2011/01/asset-management-solution-for-service.html

22 comments:

Anonymous said...

this is really wonderful work.. waiting for it

Jay said...

It is very interesting information about service management, keep it up good job.
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Anonymous said...

Graet job .
is there any way to edit the Equipment Type and add more things?

Anonymous said...

Thats exactly what we need..;-)
Great job !!

Is there a possibility to edit the Equiment or manufacturer?

THX

M.

Steve Beaumont said...

You should just be able to go to the library wunderbar, then lists and open and edit the list.

Anonymous said...

Hi Steve,
If I try to do it I get a error that I can't modify a sealed Managment pack. I assume that the reason that I can't modify the lists is the fact that these management packs are sealed??
Sorry, but I am totally new in SCSM but thats a great tool in combination to your Asset Mgmt..

Thanks
Markus

Anonymous said...

Think I can forget the modification wothout step by step procedure...:-(

Regds,

M.

Unknown said...

Great overview. I've been using the Service Manager pack for quite some time but I've been curious about other software for IT asset management. Has anyone else tried different offerings and compared them to Microsoft? So far I've tried AssetCentral, RackWise, and NLTYE... AssetCentral looks the most comparable thus far.

Anonymous said...

Hi Steve
when i will add a new Listitem to the List equipment type it says that i can not store in a sealed Management Pack. Also when i create a new MP. Any Idea or Workaround?
Andreas

Anonymous said...

hi :)

is there any possibility to import data from excel sheet into the asset management items ?

Anonymous said...

Hi, thanks for this, the management pack has been a great help, but I have the same problem as M above, when adding new items. It says the management pack is sealed. Is there a way around this please?

adam_jones said...

Nice post ,great and usefull information related to service management.

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mik kent said...

great one Steve, I think I asked about this 2 years ago, I was looking at others and today I find this, well done and a great bit of re-coding :-)

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sahil sharma said...

Graet job .
is there any way to edit the Equipment Type and add more things?
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