This week I have tested to import knowledge into Service Manager. Knowledge can be used for example as guides in the self service portal for end-users, system documentation for engineers or troubleshooting guides for service desk personnel. One of the ways to get knowledge into Service Manager is to use the CSV import feature. The CSV import feature allows you to bulk-import instances of any class type or projection type defined in the Service Manager Configuration Management Database (SMCMDB). More info about CSV import here.

I started to map the labels on the knowledge form with properties of the knowledge class. When you use the CSV import feature you have one XML file with the properties that you will write data to and in which order they are, then you have a CSV file with the data itself.

There are a couple of fields where you cant use normal display values, for example the status property, when you import knowledge articles you cant use “Draft” you will have to use “10F171DF-3AB1-648D-D151-D83A5171DD7B” in the CSV file. That is because the knowledge form use StringIds then there is a “translation table” in the database to translate the string into the correct work and language. So how do you get hold of these values?
They are all in the LocalizedText table in the Service Manager database. For example to get the StringID for draft status you can run the following query

SELECT [LTStringId]
,[LanguageCode]
,[LTStringType]
,[ManagementPackId]
,[ElementName]
,[MPElementId]
,[SubElementName]
,[LTValue]
,[TimeAdded]
,[LastModified]
,[DisplayStringId]
FROM [ServiceManager].[dbo].[LocalizedText] WHERE ElementName LIKE '%knowledge%status%draft%'

It will give you a result like this

As you can see there are different values for different languages. When you need to get StringIds for your values you will need to check in this table. During my test I found that you need to do this for status, tag and category.

There are two other intresting properties,  AnalystContent and EndUserContent. When you use these two with the CSV import feature is looking for files in the C:\Program Files\Microsoft System Center\Service Manager 2010 folder (default path). The content in these two files will be uploaded to the corresponding text field in the knowledge article form.

 
The following is a example of a CSV file and a XML file I used to import a knowledge article. If you save them to a folder and import them into Service Manager you will get a new knowledge article with some guidelines in each text field, so you easy can identify where to put your text.

10F171DF-3AB1-648D-D151-D83A5171DD7B,
F982E5B1-7864-7FC5-D0A4-8E000C91C241,75F786E2-CAA7-E7E9-47A0-BCC714BF1EDF,ArticleOwner,Comments,
CreatedBy,VendorArticleID,Title,Abstract,keyword,,
ExternalURLSource,http://www.contoso.se,
comment01.txt,comment02.txt

and the XML file used with the CSV file

Travis Wright in the Service Manager product team has written a good post with more info about this.

In a collaborative project we, Patrik Sundqvist and Anders Bengtsson have created an embryo of an Asset Management extension for Service Manager. Our thoughts behind this management pack are to build a version one that we could extend in the future. It is not a feature complete asset management solution for enterprise organizations, but it is a foundation that could give you some ideas what you could do with Service Manager 2010.

Download management pack here and there management pack guide here. If you have any ideas or feedback, send us a e-mail.

I tested to modify my announcement customization management pack from this post to extend the package class instead. It works really well, I can target packages to a group of users or to everyone. The following post can be a little bit confusing if you have not read this first, please do.

The management pack looks like this

I can configure a package for which group it will be available in the self service portal. The user can then request the software, a change request must still be approved before they get it. The result is that instead of all users see all packages from Configuration Manager in the self service portal, they only see the package assigned to their group. When I was testing it I used the same groups as in this post.

I tested to modify my announcement customization management pack from this post to extend the knowledge article class instead. It works really well, I can target knowledge articles to a group of users or to everyone. The following can be a little bit confusing if you have not read this first, please do.

1. Added one new property to the System.Knowledge.Article class, called Group
2. On the extension tab of the knowledge article form, I configured target group for the article, for exaple 5 for all and 2 for HR
3. Create a new dynamic group for each department, for example the HR group
   1. Name: Contoso – Knowledge – 2 HR or Everyone
   2. Management Pack: Contoso Knowledge Extension (same as the class extension)
   3. Dynamic members 
   4. For everything else in the group wizard I use default settings
4. Updated the security user roles from the other post to include also this new group
5. That would do it 🙂

 

 

 

This week I have done some tests with IT announcements in Service Manager 2010. What I wanted to do was to target a IT announcements to a group of users and another announcements to another group of users. This can be done, but includes a number of steps and some XML coding. These are the general steps

1. Extend the announcement class with a new property
2. Sort your announcements in different categories with the new property
3. Include you different announcement categories in dynamic groups
4. Create new security user roles for your end users, one role for each target group of users

Travis has a good post about extending classes. In this example I extend the announcement class and adds a property named “group”.

Service Manager is using a standard form when creating new announcements in the console. That is default, if not form is target it will use a default form and show you all properties for the class. So In this scenario you dont need to customize the form. As soon as you import the management pack with the extension, and creates a new announcement the new property is in the form.

Next step is to sort your announcements. There is a number of ways to do it but one example could be that your company contains of four departments and that you want to base announcements on departments. You assign each department a number and then one for all departments, for example 

1. IT
2. HR
3. Manufacturing
4. Development
5. All departments

Now open all your announcements and configure them with the correct announcements target number (department number) in the group field. After that we need to create groups that contains the correct announcements. We will use the groups in security user roles to control who will see which announcement. Create one group for each department, for example for the HR department

• Group Name: Contoso – Announcement – 2 HR
• Management Pack: Contoso Announcement Extension
• Dynamic Members: [Contoso.Announcement.ExtensionClass] Assigned to group equals 2 OR  [Contoso.Announcement.ExtensionClass] Assigned to group equals 5

We will need to include 5 in each group as we want all departments get announcement target to 5 – ALL. There is a “View group members” task that you can use to verify that you have the correct annoncements in each group. Remember to save your groups in the customization management pack you imported.

 

Next step is to configure user roles. With default settings all authenticated users can read all IT announcements. Start by removing authenticated users from the default end-user user security role. Then create a new advanced operator user security role for each department. For example for HR

• General, Name: Contoso – Advanced Operator – HR
• Management Packs: Select All
• Queues: select provide access to only the selected queues and don’t select any
• Groups: Select the Contoso – Announcements – 2 HR group
• Tasks: select provide access to only the selected tasks and don’t select any
• Views: select provide access to only the selected views and dont select any
• Form Templates: All forms can be accessed
• Users: Select your HR users
• Summary: Click Create and close the wizard

If you now log-on to the self service portal as a user from the HR department you will only see announcements target to ALL (5) and HR (2). If you include that use in the default end-user security user role it will see all announcements again, even if it is still in the restricted HR security user role. If a user in one of the new advanced operator roles open the Service Manager console they will see the work items, Library and Configuration Items (DW not installed) workspaces including sub views. But there is no information anywhere in the console, for example they will not see any incidents and no computers.

My collegue Patrik and I is playing with Service Manager in the sandbox today. We just notice a nice feature when creating views. You can create them based on related dates. For example if you want to show all items modified the last week you could configure the view according to the picture below.