Another day in the bits

There seems to be an issue when you create an incident in the System Center Service Manager (SCSM) portal that the priority is calculated after the incident is saved. This results in the update incident notification workflow been triggered. So I had to figure out how to calculate priority when an incident is saved in the portal.

I’ll show you two ways to do it the first way is with the SDK and the second with the SCSM façade api.

var emg = new EnterpriseManagementGroup("Your SCSM Server");

// ManagementPackReferences is a class in Microsoft.Mom.BuildConstants.dll
var settingsId = new Guid(ManagementPackReferences.SYSTEM_WORKITEM_INCIDENT_GENERALSETTING_REFERENCE);
var mp = emg.ManagementPacks.GetManagementPack(settingsId);
var @class = mp.GetClass("System.WorkItem.Incident.GeneralSetting");

// Why "DisplayName IS NOT NULL"? I borrowed it from somewhere

var criteria = new EnterpriseManagementObjectCriteria("DisplayName IS NOT NULL", @class);
var settings = emg.EntityObjects.GetObjectReader<EnterpriseManagementObject>(criteria, ObjectQueryOptions.Default).FirstOrDefault();
if (settings == null)
{
    throw new InvalidOperationException("Could not retrieve Default Incident Settings");
}
var priorityMatrix = settings[null, "PriorityMatrix"].Value.ToString();

Guid urgency, inpact; // set these to the input valuew

var el = XElement.Parse(priorityMatrix);

// linq abuse , but I wanted to see if I can do it in one line
var priority = el.Elements().Where(x => x.Attribute("Id").Value == urgency.ToString()).First().Elements().Where(x => x.Attribute("Id").Value == impact.ToString()).First();

var priorityValue = int.Parse(priority.Value);

I know I am showing off but her is how I do it

var priorityValue = SCSMServer.IncidentSettings.GetPriority(new Guid(urgencyId), new Guid(impactId));

you can set the priority in the portal code web part CreatRequest.cs in the SetValues method

 dataItem[Microsoft.EnterpriseManagement.ServiceManager.Portal.Common.Constants.Priority] =
                PortalHelper.GetPriority(urgency["Id"].ToString(), impact["Id"].ToString());

PortalHelper is a helper class I use, but I am sure you can figure it out.

I was up all night working on this and I can’t sleep so what better way to make me sleepy them write blog posts. I’ll let you know if it works.

Like many of you on the forums and blogs you may have experienced the System Center Service Manager (SCSM) monitoringhost.exe consuming all available CPU resources for a long period of time. I opened the case with Microsoft and we proceeded to work a decision tree into well in the night with no solution. We did determined the issue was related to the sending of e-mails whether they be notification e-mails or subscription e-mails.

This morning while waiting for the Microsoft SCSM engineer to call back and continue our diagnosis I decided to create an SMTP server locally on the SCSM server and pointed the e-mail channel to the local SMTP server instead of Exchange. After having done this the problem went away. I created about 30 change requests and incidents all with notifications and subscriptions and monitoringhost.exe did not consume the CPU as it had done before.

Soon after the engineer called back, I was able to walk him through this solution we changed the SMTP channel back to exchange and reproduced the problem. We changed it back to the SMTP server and did not have a problem. The engineer is going to work this solution in the lab at Microsoft. While this is a work around there still is an issue for those of you who must use Exchange for the SMTP channel.

The case is still open and I will post any resolution on this blog.

I don’t know about you guys but my people were giving me hell over the fact that you could not get parent data into activity email notifications. This was a huge problem for our implementation. Below is how I solved it.

In a nutshell I created a custom workflow activity and then bound it to whenever a change request or incident is created. The workflow activity then copies fields into an extension class for review and manual activities. Let’s start with the management pack that extends review and manual activities

<ClassTypes>
        <ClassType ID="Interclick.ManualActivity.ExtensionClass" Accessibility="Public" Abstract="false" Base="CoreActivity!System.WorkItem.Activity.ManualActivity" Hosted="false" Singleton="false" Extension="true">
          <Property ID="ParentTitle" Type="string" AutoIncrement="false" Key="false" CaseSensitive="false" MaxLength="256" MinLength="0" Required="false"  />
          <Property ID="ParentDescription" Type="string" AutoIncrement="false" Key="false" CaseSensitive="false" MaxLength="256" MinLength="0" Required="false"  />
          <Property ID="ParentArea" Type="string" AutoIncrement="false" Key="false" CaseSensitive="false" MaxLength="256" MinLength="0" Required="false"  />
          <Property ID="ParentImpact" Type="string" AutoIncrement="false" Key="false" CaseSensitive="false" MaxLength="256" MinLength="0" Required="false"  />
          <Property ID="ParentPriority" Type="string" AutoIncrement="false" Key="false" CaseSensitive="false" MaxLength="256" MinLength="0" Required="false"  />
          <Property ID="ParentRisk" Type="string" AutoIncrement="false" Key="false" CaseSensitive="false" MaxLength="256" MinLength="0" Required="false"  />
          <Property ID="ParentScheduledStart" Type="string" AutoIncrement="false" Key="false" CaseSensitive="false" MaxLength="256" MinLength="0" Required="false"  />
          <Property ID="ParentScheduledEnd" Type="string" AutoIncrement="false" Key="false" CaseSensitive="false" MaxLength="256" MinLength="0" Required="false"  />
        </ClassType>

        <ClassType ID="Interclick.ReviewActivity.ExtensionClass" Accessibility="Public" Abstract="false" Base="CoreActivity!System.WorkItem.Activity.ReviewActivity" Hosted="false" Singleton="false" Extension="true">
          <Property ID="ParentTitle" Type="string" AutoIncrement="false" Key="false" CaseSensitive="false" MaxLength="256" MinLength="0" Required="false"  />
          <Property ID="ParentDescription" Type="string" AutoIncrement="false" Key="false" CaseSensitive="false" MaxLength="256" MinLength="0" Required="false"  />
          <Property ID="ParentArea" Type="string" AutoIncrement="false" Key="false" CaseSensitive="false" MaxLength="256" MinLength="0" Required="false"  />
          <Property ID="ParentImpact" Type="string" AutoIncrement="false" Key="false" CaseSensitive="false" MaxLength="256" MinLength="0" Required="false"  />
          <Property ID="ParentPriority" Type="string" AutoIncrement="false" Key="false" CaseSensitive="false" MaxLength="256" MinLength="0" Required="false"  />
          <Property ID="ParentRisk" Type="string" AutoIncrement="false" Key="false" CaseSensitive="false" MaxLength="256" MinLength="0" Required="false"  />
          <Property ID="ParentScheduledStart" Type="string" AutoIncrement="false" Key="false" CaseSensitive="false" MaxLength="256" MinLength="0" Required="false"  />
          <Property ID="ParentScheduledEnd" Type="string" AutoIncrement="false" Key="false" CaseSensitive="false" MaxLength="256" MinLength="0" Required="false"  />
        </ClassType>
      </ClassTypes>

You can modify this to support the fields you need for your use cases. I created as many as I could so wouldn’t have to keep changing it.

Now create a Windows workflow activity library application in Visual Studio. Reference the following assemblies

• System.Drawing – if you don’t know where that is you need another job.
• Microsoft.EnterpriseManagement.Core – this can be found in the “SDK Binaries” directory on the SCSM server
• Microsoft.ServiceManager.WorkflowAuthoring.ActivityLibrary – this can be found in the SCSM authoring “PackagesToLoad” directory
• System.ServiceManager.Facade – you can get this on CodePlex by downloading the current source code and compiling

Below is the code that I used in my workflow activity, I was under a very tight deadline so no comments from the peanut gallery. I will clean it up later.

 protected override ActivityExecutionStatus Execute(ActivityExecutionContext executionContext)
        {
            SCSMServer.SetCurrentManagementGroup("localhost");
            var changeRequestProjection = SCSMChangeRequest.GetChangeRequest(WorkItemId);
            
            foreach (var activityProjection in changeRequestProjection)
            {
                var activity = activityProjection.Value.Object;
                if (activity[null, "Id"] == null) break;

                activity[null, "ParentId"].Value = (changeRequestProjection.Object[null, "Id"].Value != null)
                                                         ? changeRequestProjection.Object[null, "Id"].Value.ToString
                                                               ()
                                                         : null;

                activity[null, "ParentTitle"].Value = (changeRequestProjection.Object[null, "Title"].Value != null)
                                                           ? changeRequestProjection.Object[null, "Title"].Value.ToString
                                                                 ()
                                                           : null;

                activity[null, "ParentDescription"].Value =
                    (changeRequestProjection.Object[null, "Description"].Value != null)
                        ? changeRequestProjection.Object[null, "Description"].Value.ToString()
                        : null;

                activity[null, "ParentArea"].Value = (changeRequestProjection.Object[null, "Area"].Value != null) ? ((ManagementPackEnumeration)changeRequestProjection.Object[null, "Area"].Value).DisplayName : null;

                activity[null, "ParentImpact"].Value = (changeRequestProjection.Object[null, "Impact"].Value != null) ? ((ManagementPackEnumeration)changeRequestProjection.Object[null, "Impact"].Value).DisplayName : null;

                activity[null, "ParentPriority"].Value = (changeRequestProjection.Object[null, "Priority"].Value != null) ? ((ManagementPackEnumeration)changeRequestProjection.Object[null, "Priority"].Value).DisplayName : null;

                activity[null, "ParentRisk"].Value = (changeRequestProjection.Object[null, "Risk"].Value != null) ? ((ManagementPackEnumeration)changeRequestProjection.Object[null, "Risk"].Value).DisplayName : null;

                if ((changeRequestProjection.Object[null, "ScheduledStartDate"].Value != null))
                {
                    var value = changeRequestProjection.Object[null, "ScheduledStartDate"].Value.ToString();
                    var date = DateTime.Parse(value);
                    activity[null, "ParentScheduledStart"].Value = date.ToString("g");
                }

                if ((changeRequestProjection.Object[null, "ScheduledEndDate"].Value != null))
                {
                    var value = changeRequestProjection.Object[null, "ScheduledEndDate"].Value.ToString();
                    var date = DateTime.Parse(value);
                    activity[null, "ParentScheduledEnd"].Value = date.ToString("g");
                }
                changeRequestProjection.Overwrite();               
               
            }

          return ActivityExecutionStatus.Closed;

        }

Please note “if (activity[null, "Id"] == null) break;” for some reason at least on my box the foreach loop does not stop on the last activity and so without this statement it throws null reference exceptions.

To get all that in a workflow see this link. On a side note I would use the management pack that you used to extend the activity types.

In the System Center Service Manager (SCSM) authoring tool you will need to create two workflows using your custom activity. One workflow is for when incident is created and the other for when a change request is created assuming you want to do this on both objects.

So import your management pack and create a change request or incident save it and when you go back to the activities, open one of them and you should see the following at least this is what I see

You can then use these fields in manual and review activity notifications. I am working on a solution to the problem of adding activities once a change request or incident has been created. Since the parent ID is stored in a sibling activity I should be able to figure it out. Same Bat Time Same Bat Channel.

As Travis said “Sweet Hotness”.