“We’re delighted to welcome someone of Chris’s stature to Cireson,” said Cireson’s Managing Partner,Paul Sutton. “Chris’s impressive background and expertise will help Cireson navigate our rapid growth as we continue the path of being among the largest and most well-respected Microsoft System Center partners in the world.”

And there’s good reason for the anticipation, as Mr. Ross’s background speaks volumes about his ability to help Cireson grow.

First, as a System Center Cloud and Datacenter Management veteran, Mr. Ross is a two-time recipient of the elite Microsoft® “Most Valuable Professionals” (MVP) award for his leadership and outstanding contributions to the System Center community at large.

Second, Mr. Ross is the founder of the Service Manager User Group (http://scsm.us/ ) for North America, and he contributes to the community avidly through Twitter. His tweets can be accessed at @SCSMUS and in the #SCSM and #SysCtr communities.

Finally, Mr. Ross brings a vast knowledge of Information Technology experience with more than 18 years spent successfully navigating industry changes. He also spent the last five years gaining a variety of consulting, management and leadership experience.

In spite of his many accomplishments, Mr. Ross views employment with Cireson as an opportunity to break new ground and help a growing company go all the way to the top.

“Cireson is the most exciting player in the System Center market today!” says Mr. Ross. “Their apps take the System Center components to a higher level.”

And Mr. Ross knows excitement. Originally from Louisville, Kentucky, he has called Colorado home for thirty years. When not working hard, he enjoys golf, boating, fishing, wakeboarding and the activeColorado lifestyle.

About Cireson

Founded in 2010, Cireson is a leading Microsoft System Center partner widely recognized as the de facto System Center experts.

The company was founded on a simple, powerful idea: to be the forward thinkers on all things surrounding Microsoft System Center.

Passionate about technology, the Cireson team has deep System Center knowledge and decades of experience working with a diverse range of clients.

Cireson offers world-class full-service consultancy, deployments, training, and market-leading apps to help companies harness the power of System Center.

For further information on Cireson and the market leading SCSM Asset Management and SCSM Analyst Web Console apps, visit www.cireson.com or find us @TeamCireson.

Anyone who has ever installed and configured Service Manager knows the pain involved in setting up notification workflows for work item re-assignment. This becomes even more time consuming when setting up notifications for support group changes or reviewer changes.

A large part of this pain is because you almost always need to export Management Pack XML and configure relationship subscriptions and notification template Guids. It is also not uncommon to have to create two workflows for each Support Group, one for create and another for update.

Cireson now have an app – the Notify Analyst app – that takes away a large part of this pain.

Take a look at the image above, this is the free version of the app.

All you need to do to get this working is:

1. Import 2 Management Packs.
2. Copy a DLL to your workflow server.
3. Create two notification templates, one for Incidents and another for Service Requests.
4. Select the templates in the settings GUI and enable the workflows.

No more exporting Management Packs and fiddling around in XML!

You can request a download of this free app from here:

Notify Analyst App

This version is free, but of course, there is full version available for purchase and I will now explain what you get for the paid version.

General Settings

The app can send notifications when Incident or Service Request Support Groups change automatically. The workflows look for an AD group that matches the name of the new Support Group and sends a notification to all members. You can opt to have all of these groups start with a given prefix, for example, “SCSM-”.

You can also skip Support Group notifications for an analyst if the work item is already assigned to that person or if the analyst assigned the work item to themselves.

Incident Settings

You can select a template for Support Group change notifications, and enable the workflow for creating and/or updating. You can also opt to skip notifications for the default support group configured in the Service Manager Incident Settings.

When these workflows are enabled, your analysts will automatically receive notifications for any tier that they are a member of. Just one workflow for all incident tiers! All you need to do is create AD groups with matching names and populate these with your analysts.

Service Request Settings

Service Requests have the same settings as Incidents except there is no option to skip a default Support Group as SCSM does not have such a setting.

Problem, Change Request and Release Record Settings

For Problems, Change Requests and Release Records, you can specify templates for assignment changes and enable or disable the workflows.

Manual Activity Settings

You can select notification templates and enable workflows for when Manual Activities are assigned and for when their status changes to in-progress. This allows you to control whether emails are sent to analysts immediately or only when the MA is in-progress.

Review Activity Settings

Review Activities have similar settings, one workflow for when a Reviewer is added, another for when the status changes to in-progress.

Other Activity Class Settings

The remaining Activity classes all have settings for assignment and status changing to in-progress.

So, using the Cireson Notify Analyst app you can now setup and control all of your assignment, support group and reviewer notifications from one place. Nice!

But, there is more, the app also includes a reminder notification email that can be sent to analysts to remind them of their currently assigned work items…

Reminder Settings

These settings allow you to configure and enable a workflow that can run daily at a set time, or every x number of hours or minutes.

You can specify the email subject and from address and you must also set an AD group that contains the analysts to send the notifications to.

The notification for each analyst includes all of their directly assigned work items and also optionally any unassigned work items with a Support Groups that they are a member of via matching AD groups.

Optionally you can include failed and cancelled work items.

An example of the notification sent looks like this (click to view full size image):

First, I would like to thank all the Microsoft MVP for the Incident Extension blogs and video, and others who have provided information on extending the Incident and Service Request. We all know the Authoring Tool can be tricky. To complement what is already out there, I have provided the instructions to add the fields perfectly to the right of existing fields. It will show up as if Microsoft put it there in the first place. Great links on extending the Incident are at the bottom of this blog.

Results of following all three procedures: Image of Entire Incident Form with all 3 fields Added

This blog will show how to add:
A List Picker to the Right of the Contact Method Field
A Date Picker to the Right of the Priority Field
A Text Box to the Right of the Classification Category Field

However, this technique can easily be modified for a User Picker, or Single Item Picker.

I chose the above locations, because some fields on the Incident Form have plenty of space to spare to the right. After you have extended your Incident class and have selected to “Customize” your form, follow these steps.

To Add a List Picker to the Right of the [ContactMethod] Field

Console View for New List Picker (Division)

1. Modify the Contact Method Label
Horizontal Alignment = Left

2. Modify the Contact Method Text Box
Width = 200
Horizontal Alignment = Left

3. Add a New Label and New List Picker
Drag a Label and drop it into the grey box that includes the Contact Method label and text box when you hovering over it. 

Drag a List Picker and drop it into the grey box that includes the Contact Method label and text box, and Label1 when you hovering over it. 

4. Modify the New Label (in this order to see how everything aligns)
Top Margin = – 45
Vertical Alignment = Top
Left Margin = 215
Width = Auto
Rename Content Text: Used “Division:” for example 

5. Modify the New List Picker
Top Margin = – 22
Left Margin = 215
Width = Auto
Horizontal Alignment = Stretch 

6. Save Management Pack
Import, Verify its correct, Seal Mgt Pack, delete original imported xml, and Import Sealed one

7. Authoring Tool View for New List Picker (Division)



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To Add a Date Picker to the Right of the [Priority] Field

Console View for New Date Picker (Delivery Date)

1. Modify the Priority Label
Horizontal Alignment = Left

2. Modify the Priority Text Box
Minimum Width = 45

3. Add a New Label and New Date Picker
Drag a Label and drop it into the grey box that includes the Priority label and text box when you hovering over it.

Drag a Date Picker and drop it into the grey box that includes the Priority label , text box, and Label2 when you hovering over it.

4. Modify the New Label (in this order to see how everything aligns)
Top Margin = – 43
Vertical Alignment = Top
Minimum Height = 22
Left Margin = 60
Width = 80
Rename Content Text: Used “Delivery Date:” for example

5. Modify the New Date Picker
Top Margin = – 22
Minimum Width = 0
Left Margin = 60

6. Save Management Pack
Import, Verify its correct, Seal Mgt Pack, delete original imported xml, and Import Sealed one

7. Authoring Tool View for New Date Picker (Delivery Date)

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To Add a Text Box to the Right of the [Classification] Field

Console View for New Text Box (Reference #)

1. Modify the Classification Label
Horizontal Alignment = Left

2. Modify the Classification List Picker
Horizontal Alignment = Left
Minimum Width = 300

3. Add a New Label and New Text Box
Drag a Label and drop it into the grey box that includes the Classification label and text box when you hovering over it.

Drag a Text Box and drop it into the grey box that includes the Classification label, text box, and Label3 when you hovering over it.

4. Modify the New Label (in this order to see how everything aligns)
Top Margin = -44
Vertical Alignment = Top
Minimum Height = 22
Left Margin = 310
Width = Auto
Horizontal Alignment = Stretch
Rename Content Text: Used “Reference #:” for example

5. Modify the New Text Box
Top Margin = -22
Left Margin = 310
Minimum Width = 0
Horizontal Alignment = Stretch
Width = Auto
Height = Auto
Minimum Height = 22
Delete Text: TextBox1

6. Save Management Pack
Import, Verify its correct, Seal Mgt Pack, delete original imported xml, and Import Sealed one 

7. Authoring Tool View for New Text Box (Reference #)

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Image of Entire Incident Form with all 3 fields Added

This should help explain how to add the fields correctly. If you have any questions in regards to this, send me a message on Twitter (https://twitter.com/Damon_Mulligan) and follow https://twitter.com/teamcireson. Hope this helps everyone out there and makes life a little easier for you.

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Links on Extending the Incident Form

(Travis Wright) Adding a Customer Field to the Incident Form in System Center Service Manager (Video)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5RSGAPwA9E
(Marcel Zehner) Adding a custom field to Incident Forms (Screenshots)
http://blog.scsmfaq.ch/2011/01/04/adding-a-custom-field-to-incident-forms/

There are 3 interesting concepts that need some discussion in regards to the Application Model in Configuration Manager 2012, and they are the following:

• Maintenance Windows
• Distribute on Demand
• Roaming clients

In no way are these three items necessities when setting up the application model, but they are new and old items that need to be discussed. The following are explanation, points of view and troubleshooting local client log tips.

Maintenance Windows are very necessary and most might remember them being a part of the collections section. They still very much are a part of Collections, but there is something to take into consideration. Maximum allowed run time is really only important when maintenance windows are in place; if maximum allowed run time is longer than the maintenance window then the deployment will fail out. Verification can be done through checking the CITaskMgr.log. If the following is present within the log then act accordingly:

• Not enough admin defined service window available – shown if Maintenance Windows are not existent, but will be in the eventual future.
• No Service Window defined to accommodate execution – shown if maximum allowed run time is longer than maintenance window.

Distribute On Demand is a new and very good feature that can be useful for keeping large content off of Distribution Points (DP), yet clients can still receive the content. The “Allow fallback source location for content” check box must not be checked (both on the DP and the Distribution Type), and the client must be part of a boundary. The deployment must be made available to the client. In the Software Center, the end-user must trigger the application once, but it will fail. Even though the install failed, the DP now knows it needs this content and begins downloading the content to the DP. The end-user can click Retry and it should begin installation (may need to do a few times according to source size). The Appenforce.log will describe the sequence of events of the application install such as the following:

• Download content into cache
• Execute command
• Verifies exit code for successful install
• Verifies detection of installation

A Roaming Client is definitely new, but is still worth reviewing. The purpose of roaming clients is for the client to be able to go from Site to Site/ Boundary to Boundary and still be able to communicate with Configuration Manager and receive content. The ContentTransferManager.log gives info on retrieval and download of content from which DP the client is using; this can be very handy with troubleshooting. The following scenarios are great examples of what a roaming client is:

• Client exist in one of the boundaries within the hierarchy – When the client switches to another boundary under another site (whether Primary or Secondary) then there will be a new Resident Management Point (Proxy Management Point only appears when in another Primary site’s boundaries) assigned; and the content will pull from the new sites DP as shown in log.
• Client does not exist in one of the boundaries within the hierarchy – “Allow fallback source location for content” must be checked on Deployment Type of application and one of the DPs in order for the client to communicate with Configuration Manager and receive content.

This should help explain different aspects of the application model. If you have any questions in regards to this then send me a message on my Twitter (https://twitter.com/JNewtonC) and follow https://twitter.com/teamcireson. Hope this helps everyone out there and makes life a little easier for you.

In a recent implementation, I enjoyed (and cried over) learning some lessons in regards to setting up Internet Based Client Management in multiple forests. There are several things that need to be put into place in order to get Configuration Manager (ConfigMgr) 2012 working properly with intranet clients, internet clients located in the same forest as ConfigMgr, and internet clients located in separate forests from ConfigMgr. The notes below are broken down as a high level overview along with some additional tidbits that might help others with getting their environment working properly. This is going with the scenario that there will be an intranet facing role server and internet facing role server located within the same forest while trying to get devices in other forests communicating via the internet, but these principles should be able to meet mostly all needs of configuration of Internet Based Client Management.

1. Make sure that you have a functioning ConfigMgr environment that works across forests and domains via intranet clients; easily done if there are trusts between the forests and domains.
2. Make sure the Certificate Authority is set up in each forest correctly or else you will run into issues, and never know there are problems because the Certificate Authority was setup incorrectly in the first place. Beware of doing an implementation when there is not a knowledgeable PKI admin in place that can confirm if the environment is stable or not.
3. Have the network team establish an Internet FQDN for the Internet facing role server.
4. Deploying the Web Server Certificate for Site Systems that run IIS (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg682023.aspx#BKMK_webserver2008_cm2012)
5. Deploying the Client Certificates for Windows Computers (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg682023.aspx#BKMK_client2008_cm2012)
6. Deploying the Client Certificate for Distribution Points (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg682023.aspx#BKMK_clientdistributionpoint2008_cm2012)
Note: The above steps are appropriate to establish internet-based clients within the same forest as ConfigMgr.
7. Create a GPO for Certificate Authorities Trust if different Certificate Authorities exist in each forest (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc738131(v=ws.10).aspx)
a. The public key of the root certificate is normally located here, C:\Windows\System32\certsrv\CertEnroll, in the Certificate Authority Server and also has a file extension of CRT.
b. Create a GPO in each forest that ConfigMgr is not located in and include the root certificate from the Certificate Authority in the forest that ConfigMgr is located in. Attach this GPO to the devices that will be internet-based clients. This will create a certificate chain of trust.
c. Create a GPO in the forest that ConfigMgr is located in and include the root certificate from the Certificate Authorities in the forest that ConfigMgr is not located in. Attach this GPO to the intranet facing and internet facing role servers to create a chain of trust with the other forest’s Certificate Authorities. It is important for the GPO to be connected with the intranet facing role server in order to establish the initial validity of the certificate when the client is first installed. The internet facing role server needs the GPO to continue the chain of trust when the client is taken off the domain and joined to the internet to still communicate with ConfigMgr.
8. Root certificates from the Certificate Authorities in the other forests (not the one ConfigMgr is located in) have to be put into the ConfigMgr Site server’s properties under the Client Computer Communication tab’s Trusted Root Certificate Authorities. This will help with publishing to the AD in the other forests the Certificate Issuers that the client is allowed to use while attempting to validate the PKI certificate. The certificate issuer can be verified in this registry key,
9. The command properties used for the client installation are as follows:
ccmsetup.exe /usePKICert /NOCRLCheck /mp: SMSSITECODE=<3DigitSiteCode> CCMHOSTNAME=
These might not all be necessary, but I found it to be in this environment.

Please utilize the below links when setting up Internet Based Client Management:
• http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc772393(WS.10).aspx
• http://blogs.technet.com/b/configmgrteam/archive/2012/05/25/system-center-2012-configuration-manager-r-i-p-native-mode.aspx
• http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg712701.aspx#Support_Internet_Clients
• http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg712284.aspx
• http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg682023.aspx

Keep in mind that every environment is different. Setting up Internet Based Client Management in any environment can be an intricate and convoluted process; do not be discouraged and most of all, be patient. Along with the links above, there are a lot of good blogs out there that explain things and go over certain experiences.

If you have any questions in regards to this then send me a message on my Twitter (https://twitter.com/JNewtonC). Hope this helps everyone out there and makes life a little easier for you.

This is tougher to notice in an environment that already has Configuration Manager 2012 setup and clients installed (unless you are using OSD on a daily basis), but an environment that is getting a fresh install of Configuration Manager 2012 would notice this quickly since they are pushing out hundreds, if not thousands of clients. As of January 10^th you may have noticed that your Configuration Manager client is not installing; unfortunately, that would be the cause of an authentication code error with the MicrosoftPolicyPlatformSetup.msi that you will see in your ccmsetup.log.

“Couldn’t verify ‘C:\Windows\ccmsetup\MicrosoftPolicyPlatformSetup.msi’ authenticode signature. Return code 0x800b0101”

This issue has swept across the TechNet boards and blogs everywhere, but not to fear, there is a fix for this. All that needs to be done is to install the KB 2801987 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2801987) on all Primary Site Servers OR use Windows Updates to install the KB 2749655 for Windows XP/7/2003/2008/2008 R2 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2749655) and KB 2756872 for Windows 8/2012 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2756872) on all the devices before installing the agent. The second option is extra work but it is there just in case the 1^st option is not successful.

If you have any questions in regards to this then send me a message on my Twitter (https://twitter.com/JNewtonC). Hope this helps everyone out there and makes life a little easier for you.

Join the System Center experts from myITforum and Cireson for 45 minutes with special guest – Cubic Corporation to learn more on the much talked about release of Service Manager 2012.

Cubic’s leadership will discuss their real experience on selecting, designing, and rolling Service Manager out

• Watch the essentials of Incident, Change, and Service Request in action
• Learn about the key features of the System Center platform
• Upgrade tips and tricks
• Must see for every Service Manager customer is the Cireson’s Essentials Plus Pack (including Analyst Web Console). These apps enhance the SCSM experience. Learn more now http://www.cireson.com/app-store/

Registration link: https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/548843718

ING IT leadership will discuss their real experience on selecting, designing, and rolling Service Manager out

• Watch the essentials of Incident, Change, and Service Request in action
• Learn about the key features of the System Center platform
• Upgrade tips and tricks
• Must see for every Service Manager customer is the Cireson’s Essentials Plus Pack (including Analyst Web Console). These apps enhance the SCSM experience. Learn more now http://www.cireson.com/app-store/

Registration link: https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/818349062

One of the more simple ways of going about it is simply attempting to manually uninstall and reinstall the client. This sometimes needs to be done in such a way that you have to clear out everything within the C:\Windows\ccmsetup folder to where it is just the EXE present. You might need to run it with switches such as /mp:<yourmpserver> or smssitecode=<XXX> so as to make sure the client knows where to go to figure out which servers to check in with during installation. Here is a complete list of switches that can help with more specific installation. As you will come to learn that this will fix around 50% of your environment (everyone differs by 10-20%), but there are some more in depth tricks that you can utilize to dig much deeper into client health.

If the previous solution did not work then you will need to download Roger Zander’s Client Center Tool; with his free tool you will find a few quick automated tricks you can use on the client in question. First, you will need to look under Client Actions when looking at a client and select Reset Policy. If that does not work than take it one step further and do Reset Policy (Hard-Reset).

If this does not work then you have one other area within Client Center that you can utilize. Within Agent Actions under the Install/Repair tab, you will find WMI Repair. Within this box are the last three critical steps in fixing your clients. The first is “WMI Repair” which will do as the name suggest. The second is the “Delete root\ccm” which will delete the ccm namespace and rebuild it with the client install. The last and final way of resolving your client issue is the “Recreate Repository.” This last step should only be done as the last step because if the previous steps are not followed than this might just end up being a band-aid on the problem or could cause more harm than good.

All of the above steps should help with resolution of 99% of your Client Health issues. I hope it resolved everyone one of them for you. Thank you for reading.

MOF changes

No more sms_def.mof to extend hardware inventory. It is as simple as just checking a box now for what hardware inventory you are looking for, but testing is very necessary still to make sure you are getting specifically what you want. Ability to export and import inventory setting is now possible.

Management Point (MP) Enhancement

More than 1 MP per site to extend the number of clients each site can handle and help with redundancy. Clients will choose which one they want based off of capability and proximity.

Distribution Point (DP) Improvements

• There is only 1 kind of DP now and can be installed on workstation or server, eliminating branch DPs
• DP Groups makes it easy to deploy software by taking away the need to target multiple DPs per package
• Tools built-in to manage pre-staged content to help with not saturating the WAN Link
• Same throttling as with what Secondary Site servers which almost completely removes the need for Secondary Site servers and scheduling is now available.
• PXE Role integrated with DP since they go hand in hand anyway
• Content validation can be scheduled to let you know when the hash fails and the content goes out of sync; helping warn you before you begin getting content mismatch errors

Addition of Software Center

This new tool improves end user experience by giving them limited ability to manage settings for interacting with SCCM, empowering them with self-service. With the end user having the ability to setup “business hours”, this will help with reducing the downtime associated with updates, software distribution, and OSD since the end user decides when they want it done. This replaced the run advertised programs in SCCM 2007.

The big picture changes are going to make a very big impact Site/Hierarchy wide. The granular changes being made on a client and feature level will surely make life easier on admins. Here are some of the more critical changes made with SCCM 2012.

Role Based Administration

Permissions can now go across sites and be made granular with security scopes. This is a much needed improvement since it was really difficult with previous versions to separate permissions properly.

Centrally managed client settings

Once a change is made to client settings than they are made hierarchy wide with the default settings or you can be granular and mix in some custom client settings for specific collections. Remember, the custom client settings take precedence over the default settings.

Application Distribution vs. Package Distribution

Packages contain source files that are run off of command line through programs. Applications now have a dependency intelligence that is built into the agent which will

• Remove processing burden from the site server
• Speed up deployment because there is no evaluation required by query to determine if a computer goes in or out of a collection
• Writing requirements into the installer package is removed because of logic provided through criteria
• Manage superseded apps and app uninstalls

Software Updates Improvements

• Auto cleanup of expired content
• Helps with auto-approval of certain updates
• Allows deployment of Superseded updates
• Better criteria and exclusions are now possible (criteria can be saved and reused)
• Automatic deployment rules allowing complete automation of the update process
• Software center allows the user to set business hours so that productivity is not affected and grouping of deadlines together for pending updates so there are fewer reboots, improving end user experience