Reposted from here.

Question

When making a ServiceDesk advanced incident, there are fields for the User’s Location, Department, Inventory, and Services. These may be empty or are not populated correctly. You want to know how to populate these fields in order to use them.

Answer

ServiceDesk does not manage data for the User’s Location, Department, Inventory, or Services fields*. These fields come from the CMDB Solution product in the Symantec Management Console and must be populated there first to be later used in ServiceDesk. Then, when a primary contact is selected for an advanced ticket in ServiceDesk, these fields are automatically populated with their CMDB data. Also, ServiceDesk does not sync this data from CMDB into ServiceDesk’s database, but copies CMDB data to tickets when a user is selected.

* The Location field is also an actual field in ServiceDesk for its users. This is not imported from Active Directory in the ServiceDesk AD sync as there is no out of the box Location field in AD. If this field is manually populated, and no Location field has been assigned to the user in CMDB, this field can then be entered automatically when selecting a primary contact in an advanced ticket. However, it is recommended that the Location be populated in CMDB for the users instead of doing this in ServiceDesk.

CMDB can populate data into its fields by one of the following:

1.The Symantec Management Platform’s Active Directory (AD) sync. This is found at Settings > All Settings > Notification Server > Microsoft Active Directory Import.
2.A Data Connector Solution product Import Rule. This is found at Settings > All Settings > Notification Server > Connector > Import/Explort Rules. A Data Connector rule can connect to an external non-Symantec database or use files, such as an Excel .xls file, to import data into CMDB.
3.Data imported in from Altiris Basic and Inventory Solution Agents.
4.Manual entry into CMDB. (The areas for manual CMDB entry are described below.)
Locations and Departments

Locations and Departments can be accessed by ServiceDesk by adding data to CMDB’s Location and Department areas.

1.In the Symantec Management Console, go to Home > Service and Asset Management > Manage Configuration Items.
2.Click on Organizational Types > Location, or > Department.
Inventory (i.e., resources, assets, computers, monitors, etc.)

Inventory can be accessed by ServiceDesk by adding an associated user to a resource in CMDB.

1.In the Symantec Management Console, go to Home > Service and Asset Management > Manage Configuration Items.
2.Click on Computers and Peripherals > Computer.
3.Select a computer and right click and choose Edit.
4.Add a user to the Asset Owners field.
5.Click on the Save changes button.
6.Click on the Done button.
Services

Services can be accessed by ServiceDesk by adding data to CMDB’s Service area.

1.In the Symantec Management Console, go to Home > Service and Asset Management > Manage Configuration Items.
2.Click on Datacenter Types > Service.
Related Field: Office Name

ServiceDesk users have a field called Office Name. This can be populated by ServiceDesk’s AD sync, or manually. However, this field is not available on an advanced ticket.

Troubleshooting

•If recent changes to CMDB fields are not appearing in ServiceDesk, reset server extensions and then reset IIS on the ServiceDesk server. Otherwise, after IIS next refreshes automatically, these fields will be updated with their current data. For example, if a Location is removed, it may still appear in ServiceDesk until the next IIS refresh occurs. Also, if IIS has been modified to increase the amount of time that it peforms an automatic check, it may be necessary to perform this procedure to force the CMDB fields to be seen by ServiceDesk, even if the values have been present in CMDB for some time. Likewise, if there is an issue with IIS updating correctly, or, its cache timeout has been extended, this may impact CMDB data being able to be seen by ServiceDesk. Verify that the default cache timers are set correctly, which can be found by reviewing the following article:

How to increase the page cache times for ServiceDesk and Workflow
http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=HOWTO9818
 
•Verify that the user that is picked for the primary contact is the same user that has populated data in CMDB. Compare the NT ID (domain\username) and email address in both locations to establish if a different user was selected by accident in ServiceDesk.
•If no CMDB data is being found, verify that “Use CMDB7” was selected during the ServiceDesk install and that IsUsingAMS is enabled. If not, this will result in CMDB data not being used in ServiceDesk.

 
1.In ServiceDesk, go to Admin > Data > Application Properties.
2.Click on the action button and then click on Display Definition Values, for the ServiceDeskSettings entry. Note: If no ServiceDesk settings are present, this indicates a failed installation. Try performing an Upgrade install to reinstall ServiceDesk. If this fails, a new install will likely be needed. For more information on how to perform a new install, refer to the following article:

How to Install and run ServiceDesk 7.0 MR2 with a domain account instead of
local system account
http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=HOWTO31346
 
3.Click on the action button and then on Edit Values.
4.Verify that IsUsingAMS is enabled. This is located under the Services category. If it is not enabled, click to enable it.
5.If changes were made, click on the Save button.
•Run the ServiceDeskDataServices.asmx file directly on the ServiceDesk server to find what CMDB data is able to be accessed.
1.Open a web browser on the ServiceDesk server.
2.Enter the following URL:

http://localhost/SD.DataServices/ServiceDeskDataServices.asmx
 
3.Select the data type to test. For example, click on SearchLocations.
4.Click on the Invoke button.
5.A new page will open with HTML code. In this, the data, for example Locations, should appear. If not, then CMDB data is not able to be accessed by the ServiceDesk server.
 
•Verify that the Notification Server that is being used by ServiceDesk for licensing is where the CMDB data is stored at.
1.In Windows, click on the Start button > Altiris > Workflow Designer > Workflow Designer.
2.Click on the Plugins menu > Notifcation Servers Credentials.
3.Verify that the NS Server Name value is the Notification Server where CMDB data is stored at. If not, either the data must be added at the other Notification Server listed, or, the ServiceDesk license must be transferred to the Notification Server that does have the data.
4.Remove and add in the correct server that has CMDB data and the ServiceDesk license as necessary.
5.If the listed server does have the CMDB data, however, remove the entry anyway, and then re-add it.
6.Close the window after making any changes. Note: It may take a minute or two for the window to close. This is normal.
7.Right click on the Task Tray Application and then click on Restart Server Extensions.
8.In Windows, click on the Start button > Run.
9.Type iisreset and then click on the OK button.
 
•Customizations to the SD.DataServices project may also result in issues even if these were working successfully earlier. If the SD.DataServices project has been customized, temporarily revert back to the out of box version to verify if the customizations are the issue. The following article describes how to backup and restore projects: