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:
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.
Notify Analyst App Highlights
General Settings
The notify analyst 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):
Ready to transform your SCSM experience? View all of the exciting apps Cireson has to offer.
