Blog & Resources
A New Way to Look at System Center Configuration Manager
If you are like me and have spent many years (even decades) looking at the System Center Configuration Manager console you probably can’t think that there could possibly be any other way to do you work on a day-to-day basis. Navigating the Configuration Manager console becomes second nature after a while and we don’t really think about it. However, what
Why Should You Update to Configuration Manager Current Branch 1610?
In my most recent blog post, I mentioned that you should probably be keeping up to date with the current branch releases. The latest version of Configuration Manager current branch is 1610. It was released in November of 2016. If you have not updated to it yet, here is a quick recap of just a handful of the cool new
Calendar Colors in the Cireson Portal
Let me start by warning you that this blog gets nerdy quick and has the potential to put you to sleep. If you don’t want to read through it and just want the solution, scroll to the bottom and I’ve got instructions on how to quickly implement this demo. In the end, you can just drop these files in a
Making Orchestrator, PowerShell, and Configuration Manager Work Together
Orchestrator, PowerShell, and Configuration Manager are powerful tools, but I often see them used independently, or perhaps two-at-a-time. Want to launch a PowerShell session from the Configuration Manager Console and run a script? Want to create an Orchestrator runbook that uses the Configuration Manager Orchestrator Integration Packs (OIP) to make some changes? That is fairly common practice, but let’s say we
Behind the Scenes of Password Reset
Password Reset is one of our more unique offerings, at least from a development perspective, due to the many (and somewhat obscure) technologies that work together to perform a relatively simple task. When initially given this assignment, I figured “how hard could it be? You can reset a password with a couple of lines of PowerShell…”. Remember that, and check
An ITIL Change Management Checklist (Best Practices to Avoid Common Pitfalls)
To kick off, I think it is important that we have a clear idea of what a change is and why change management is important. “A change is defined by ITIL as the Addition, Modification or Removal of anything that could have an effect on IT services.” (ITIL v3 Foundation Handbook. TSO, 2009, pp. 92-93) Now I would make one
New Configuration Manager Apps from Cireson
In the past few months, Cireson has released an update to the very popular Remote Manage app, released the Configuration Manager Ticker app, as well as the User Device Affinity app. I’ve blogged about the Remote Manage and the Ticker apps previously, so will spend some time in this article on the User Device Affinity app, as well as a
Cireson #13 of #150 in SDBJ Fastest Growing Companies
My wife and I recently had the opportunity to represent Cireson at the San Diego Business Journal (“SDBJ”) Fastest 150 event this past Thursday 7/14/2016, which highlighted the fastest 150 private growing companies in San Diego, CA, over the past few years. As this is the first time Cireson has entered into the annual evaluation, I don’t think anyone at Cireson
Advanced Request Offering – Styling the Breadcrumb Pages
Now we have Advanced Request Offering in Portal v5 and beyond, did you know that you can configure the color of the breadcrumbs ribbon when you have multiple pages? Currently, there isn’t any reference in the custom.css examples, however, we will update this in future releases. The default blue looks great with the OOB theme but it is not ideal
Announcing Cireson Portal v5.0 Now Generally Available
February 2016 was (and is currently at the time of this writing) a very exciting month with the Cireson with the announcement of the Cireson Portal v5.0 release. As always, our very own Cireson Support Portal uses our vNext applications, and v5.0 was no different. Over the past several months we have been developing the features, functionality and ensuring the overall stability
Automation Series 1, Part 1: Service Manager Dashboards in Power BI through Azure Automation
[original] Automation Series 1 Summary This blog is the first in a series that I’ll be writing, starting today and continuing through the next few weeks, that will focus on how IT shops can easily automate the process of dashboard creation within Power BI and then present this information to their users in a very mobile friendly fashion through the
Automation Series 1, Part 2: Powershell and Power BI
[original] Automation Series Summary In the second part of our series we will be focusing on Power BI and how to access the API through Powershell, as well as the benefits of using the API. We will also discuss a few of the limitations that exist within the API currently that could limit what you want to do with the
