Blog & Resources
4 Tips for Optimizing Service Manager 2012 SQL Performance in Azure
If you have not already heard, here at Cireson we recently moved our production System Center 2012 R2 Service Manager (SCSM) + Cireson environment up to Azure. Our motivation was not only technical, but financial. As the saying goes “If it doesn’t make dollars, it doesn’t make sense”. In any case, I know performance of System Center SQL databases is a
Automated Installation of Cireson Portal or: ALMs for the poor
Brief history & ALMs When I first started with Cireson some months back, we were just wrapping up development on V3 of the self service portal (SSP), and I was tasked with creating the setup program that would make it easy for anybody to install the portal, get version updates, and generally have a good experience in doing so. Obviously,
3 Tips from Cireson’s Service Manager 2012 R2 Move to Azure
Moving workloads to Azure to achieve cost savings and performance advances is something you may have heard Microsoft evangelizing in the last few months. Well, here at Cireson, we actually made the jump with our production System Center 2012 R2 Service Manager (SCSM) + Cireson environment. Yes, this is same one we use for all our internal and customer-facing support
Monitoring an SCSM connector for completion or: How I learned to stop worrying and use the SDK
Monitoring an SCSM Connector for Completion Ah automation. One of my favorite things in the world! If I had a dating profile, it would probably say that I enjoy long walks on the beach, smelling flowers in the springtime, and automating tasks using PowerShell. Then again, maybe I’d have more luck if I left out that last part… Anyway, I’ve
Disappearing Outlook
I woke up this morning looking forward to getting some work done while everyone else was away to play and ran into an unexpected problem. Apparently while I was sleeping my outlook window decided to play a game of hide and go seek. It was invisible this morning and I was unable to find it or get it to appear
CSS, what CAN’T it do for you?
Powerful CSS I’ve been working with a good bit of CSS recently, customizing the Cireson Portal to look quite a bit different than the OOB experience. Some CSS properties are fairly standard, but others are not well-known, or known at all. I’ve picked a few interesting ones to demonstrate just how useful they can be. :before and :after These two
Outlook Console: The Underrated Beauty!
Hey, hello, howdy, hi. It’s been a while since the Outlook Console has been released by Cireson, however, I feel like it does not get the recognition it quite deserves – thus, this blog post. Let’s take a second to talk about this sucker, shall we? First, who spends most (if not all) of their work life in Outlook Console? Yes,
Hash Collisions
Understanding Hash Collisions A GUID (globally unique identifier) is a 128 bit value that can represent 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456 unique values = that’s 340 undecillion. You can see why programmers use GUIDs as unique identifiers. It would take billions upon billions of years to generate two GUIDs that are the same. A hash is a value that is calculated by running some data (like a GUID) through an algorithm, which
Authorizing Computers for Software Applications using Cireson Asset Management
One of our customers recently inquired about a workflow involving Service Manager and Cireson Asset Management. The request got kicked over to our consulting team, and, since I was feeling fresh, decided to tackle the request and post it for everyone to enjoy! One of the awesome features of Cireson Asset Management is that you can track software licenses and,
Asset Management: What You Didn’t Consider
Asset Management, the word itself, means something different to every person in the IT department. To the help desk analyst, it’s another clunky system to enter data into. For the IT Director, a knock on their attempt to show IT as an asset to the business. So, what does Asset Management really do? The question is, what does it prevent?
Self Service Portal Unleashed!
Wednesday, February 26th at 10am US PST/ 1pm EST Technology should be simple & clever. Discover the Self Service Portal. Find out how Cireson’s Self-Service Portal and SMA Connector will combine for unprecedented IT automation and enhancement. Join Travis Wright as he discusses the following: Learn how Cireson’s device & OS agnostic Self-Service Portal will be a complete replacement for Microsoft’s Silverlight
Enhancing Activity Management with some Orchestrator and Powershell Magic
Activity Management in a Nutshell with some Orchestrator and Powershell Magic ITIL defines a process as a structured set of activities designed to accomplish a specific set of objectives. System Center Service Manager 2012 takes this definition to heart and puts a significant emphasis on Activities. Although the topic of managing activities is not officially covered by ITIL or MOF,
