All posts by Frank Contreras

ServiceDesk Postinstallation Configuration Wizard Timed Out

After you finish installing the ServiceDesk application, you should immediately complete the postinstallation configuration wizard.  If you wait too long, the process times out and you have to manually relaunch the postinstallation configuration wizard by opening up a Web browser window and browsing to:

http://localhsot/SD.Installation.PostInstallWizard.default.aspx

If you are unable to relaunch the postinstallation configuration wizard using this method, you must rerun the ServiceDesk application installation from the beginning. The wizard is only available for completion on time (it is deleted upon its first completion).

Automatically Close an Incident when Resolved and Bypass Customer Verification

Open the SD.IncidentManagement workflow.

On the Main Incident Work model, create a SkipCustConfirm variable in the Input Data section and set it to True.  Between the Close Cose=QuickClose component and the Customer Confirmation component, add a Matches Rule and configure SkipCustConfirm = False and no match output to the Customer Confirmation component.  Copy the Set Process State/Status, Expose Workflow Tracking ID, SatisfyOverallSLA, and Save External Data components.  Paste those so that the Matches Rule True output goes into that chain.  Take the output of the chain and link it to the End component.  The Customer is no longer notified that their incident is Resolved.

In the Initial Diagnosis sub-model, create a SkipCustConfirm variable in the Input Data section and set it to True.  In the two instances where where the ProcessStatusComponent is set for Resolved at 90%, inset a Matches Rule bypass and set the ProcessStatusComponent to Closed at 100%.  When a technician resolves an incident, it will now set it to Closed.  The Customer needs to Reopen an incident if it is not really Resolved.

Bypass Mandatory KB Search on New Incidents in ServiceDesk

Modify the SD.Feeder.GeneralIncidentSubmitForm project and go to the Input Data of the Primay model.  Add a variable called SkipKBSearch with a Default Value of True.

Insert a Matches or True/False rule between SetReturnPath and KB Search components.  Link the True output to the Check ReturnPath component and the other two to the KB Search component.

E-mail Monitoring in ServiceDesk

Admin>Data>Application Properties

 

Reply-to address in the Outbound Mail Settings contains email address from which ServiceDesk sends notifications email.  This should match the email address used in the Inbound Mail Settings to ensure email responded to goes to the inbox being monitored.

If an incoming email subject contains “New Incident” or “New Ticket”, an incident will automatically be created for that email.  From will be used for the Primary Contact and the body will be used for the description.  File attachments are saved with the ticket and added to document management.

Replies are handled by this process.  System generated email footers contain a reply code to identify associated tickets.

If email cannot be identified, a task will be created for Service Manager to classify email.

SD.Email.InboundManagement: This workflow looks at incoming e-mail to ServiceDesk that have an improper subject line and create tasks for Service Managers to determine if they should become incidents.  It is called by SD.EmailMonitor when an email with the incorrect subjet is received.

SD.Email.Monitor: This Monitoring project monitors the inbox(es) configured to receive ServiceDesk incidents via email. It reads and evaluates email, checking for valid email address format, and whether the email is a response.  It creates tickets for Incidents deemed valid or updates a ticket if it is a response.

SD.EmailServices: This project contains the email templates that define the content of email in ServiceDesk.

Sending E-mail in ServiceDesk

Instead of using the Send E-mail component, invoke the using the SD.EmailSerives project.  This way, you have a central location for managing email in ServiceDesk, consistency in format and behavior.  An example of how to invoke this can be found in Change Management.

Primay model creates, submodels deliver (email templates).  ReportID is required to get the process history, so it cannot be null.

Disabling/Enabling Incident notifications for SendNotificationIncidentCreation and SendNotificationInicdentResolution:
Admin>Data>Application Properties

Installing LAMP on CentOS

Install Apache HTTP Server (httpd) and PHP 5.3.8

Reposted from Here.
1. Change root user
su –
2. Install Remi repository
## Remi Dependency on CentOS 6 and Red Hat (RHEL) 6 ##
rpm -Uvh http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/epel/6/i386/epel-release-6-5.noarch.rpm
## CentOS 6 and Red Hat (RHEL) 6 ##
rpm -Uvh http://rpms.famillecollet.com/enterprise/remi-release-6.rpm
3. Install Apache (httpd) Web server and PHP 5.3.8
yum –enablerepo=remi install httpd php php-common
4. Install PHP 5.3.8 modules
yum –enablerepo=remi install php-pear php-pdo php-mysql php-pgsql php-pecl-memcache php-gd php-mbstring php-mcrypt php-xml
5. Start Apache HTTP server (httpd) and autostart Apache HTTP server (httpd) on boot
service httpd start ## use restart after update
chkconfig –levels 235 httpd on
6. Create test PHP page to check that Apache, PHP and PHP modules are working
Add following content to /var/www/html/test.php file.
<?php
    phpinfo();
?>
7. Check created page with browser
Access following address, with your browser. http://localhost/test.php

 Enable Remote Connection to Apache HTTP Server (httpd) –> Open Web server Port (80) on Iptables Firewall (as root user again)
1. Edit /etc/sysconfig/iptables file:
nano -w /etc/sysconfig/iptables
2. Add following line before COMMIT:
-A INPUT -m state –state NEW -m tcp -p tcp –dport 80 -j ACCEPT
3. Restart Iptables Firewall:
service iptables restart
## OR ##
/etc/init.d/iptables restart
4. Test remote connection
Access following address, with your browser. http://your.domain/test.php

Manually Installing the Symantec Management Agent

While logged on to the machine you want to install the agent, locate the installation file.  One place to get the file is to drill down into the Symantec Management Platform (SMP) server NSCap share that is created when the server is installed.  In the example below, <SMP Server> is the hostname or FQDN of your SMP server.

\\<SMP Server>\NSCap\bin\Win32\X86\NS Client Package\AeXNSC.exe

Copy the file to your machine and then open a command prompt to execute AeXNSC.exe.  Run the command prompt as administrator on Windows 2008 and Windows 7.  In my example here, I placed it in C:\Temp because I will not actually need the file after the installation is done.

Determine where you want the installation path to be.  If this is going to be a package server, make sure that the location is somewhere you’ll have plenty of disk space for packages.  In my example, I’m using the default.  You can substitute anything else you want, like “E:\ServerApps\Altiris” or whatever… You’ll also need to inform the installer what the FQDN of the SMP server is.  The sytax is like this:

AeXNSC.exe /install /path=<My installation path> /ns=<SMP FQDN>

The installer then decompresses to start installing.  It went by too fast for me to catch a screenshot of it.  It looks very similar to other installers that count to 100.  Once the installer finishes running you’ll get a success prompt that will look similar to this one.  If you’re maticulous, you can delete AeXNSC.exe that you used to start the installation.

You can monitor the installation by drilling down to the installation path. 

Optionally, you can also launch AeXAgentActivate.exe to monitor a little closer.

Click on the settings link  to look at the Agent Settings.

You’ll see that the SMP server is shown with what we told it with the /ns switch.   Within 15 minutes, it will update with the SMP server, get applicable policies and proceed to be managed.  If you’re kind of impatient, you can click the Update button to try and force it to update with the SMP server and keep things moving along.  This works kind of like when a pedestrian would press the walk button at an intersection.  After the first update, the button is more responsive to policy updates.  As new plug-ins are installed, the agent will restart and close these windows.  That’s a good sign that things are progressing along as intended.