Blog & Resources

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3 Tips for Implementing Hardware Asset Management on a Short Timeframe

3 Tips for Implementing Hardware Asset Management As business shifts all or part of the global workforce to working from home, we are all faced with new challenges. Employees are adapting to new working conditions and IT is addressing struggles on a grander scale in shorter timeframes. One of the biggest IT challenges right now is the tracking of hardware

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The Benefits of Providing Admin Troubleshooting Tools to the Service Desk

Budgets have been steadily decreasing in IT for years. This has forced a single service desk analyst to complete a level of work that multiple headcount would have been asked to do in the past. What’s more, service desk teams are adapting to working almost exclusively from home and are being asked to support an increasing number of remote workers

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The Latest on OAuth 2.0 and the SCSM Exchange Connector

[Article Updated on 4/15/20] If you haven’t heard, on October 13th, 2020, Microsoft is ending support for Basic Authentication in Office 365. This is done as part of a shift to the more-secure OAuth 2.0 authentication method and will help reduce the chances that credentials can end up in the wrong hands. More information can be found in Microsoft’s post

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SCSM Management Pack Naming Best Practice

If you have ever used or maintained System Center Service Manager (SCSM) or Operations Manager you will be aware of Management Packs that are used to store configuration of the System Center products.  It can be quite tricky to understand the best ways of using these and it can have quite a larger impact on the support ability of the product over time.  In this article,

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Troubleshooting Remote Support

On-premise software has more than it’s a fair share of issues, due to all the varied types of hardware and software it is mixed with depending on the customer, this in comparison to cloud software that is always running in the same environment and on a small set of web browsers. With this in mind, you are bound to run

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Log Resolution Actions With Remote Support Trackback Sessions for SCSM

When working with Service Manager, and specifically with the Cireson Service Manager Portal, it’s essential that you can access as much information as possible. When you are troubleshooting a customer ticket, there should always be a sense of urgency with remote support, because an employee or customer typically will not take the time to enter a ticket if it’s not

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Dashboards 300: Building a high-density chart

Introduction: The dashboard challenge I love leveraging dashboards to track and monitor activities and measures. The Cireson Portal dashboard provides flexibility in layout, content, and datasources to show information in real-time within the Portal application. On my dashboard I have been working with two charts; Tickets Closed and Tickets Created. These charts share the same axis type but I’d really

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SCSM and Cireson User Accounts and Groups Checklist Worksheet

User Accounts and Groups Checklist Worksheet When installing Microsoft System Center Service Manager, there are a lot of things to consider to make sure the install goes well and will be easy to modify in the weeks, months and years to come.  In order to maintain a secure, stable and maintainable SCSM environment, it’s important that all required user accounts

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Global Search Will Help You Find Your Way

Search is a very important aspect of any Service Portal, and as such is one of the most used functions. With this in mind, we wanted to improve the search, all without losing the things that made it valuable in the first place. This is where we came up with the idea for a global search, and it’s largely been

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SCSM 2019 Install or Upgrade Checklist and Project Plan

Do you currently run System Center Service Manager (SCSM) and are you looking to upgrade your existing SCSM environment to the latest 2019 version? Or, are you looking at using SCSM 2019 as your ITSM platform because your organization is already paying for it as part of your Microsoft Enterprise Agreement (EA)?  It can be a daunting task, as SCSM is a very

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SCSM Service Requests, 3 Success Factors

As a consultant with Cireson, I am often engaged with customers regarding SCSM Service Requests. The first things we discuss during these engagements are the most important factors to be successful. In this article we will talk in depth about the following factors: Not knowing where to start Trying to do too much Service Catalog navigation Not Knowing Where to Start  Where do we start when it comes

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