Last year we were surprised when Service Pack 1 of System Center 2012 was revealed and we found out that it will bring a lot of new features. We were used to get new features on R2 and R3 release of a product. But seems Microsoft is entering a new redefined cycle for supporting their products (examples: SP1 for SC 2012, the CU updates in Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012). Now we are surprised again because System Center team announces kind of new feature in Update Rollup 2 for SC 2012 SP1 which is scheduled for early April. This new feature is called Exchange Connector for SCSM. Let me state out that the Exchange connector existed before this announcement but it was separate download without Microsoft support. Exchange Connector 3.0 Release Candidate with compatibility for SC 2012 was announced somewhere in April 2012 but RTM version was never released. With the release of SP1 many have doubt that RTM version will be released soon. So after a lot of queries against SCSM team for the Exchange Connector Travis Wright responded with official response on SCSM Team blog. The final version of Exchange Connector for SCSM will be included in Update Rollup 2 for SC 2012 SP1 and will be fully supported.
Tag: SCSM
System Center 2012 – Service Manager Component Add-ons and Extensions
After the general availability of SC 2012 SP1 there are some additional downloads that needs to be updated. This time IT Governance Risk and Compliance (GRC) Process Management Pack for SCSM is updated to work with SP1. Along with this management pack usually System Center Cloud Services Process Pack is also released but this time this is not the case. On the download page it is marked as coming soon. Let’s hope we will have it in one or two weeks maximum. IT Governance Risk and Compliance (GRC) Process Management Pack can be downloaded from here.
Listing Review Activities which need your vote in Service Manager
The title says all. Check out how to achieve this view in SCSM in article by Rob Davies.
Example Upgrade of SCSM 2012 to SP1 by Microsoft
Upgrades can be tough if they are not planned well. Event in very good planned upgrades there are some issues but the idea is to be prepared to squash them on the moment and finish the upgrade process to the end. This is what one of the Microsoft teams did when they upgraded their SCSM 2012 environment to SP1. read about their experience here.
Two Advanced Articles for SCSM
On Service Manager Engineering I’ve spotted two articles which provide some in-depth information for System Center Service Manager. Take a deep dive here:
Cloud Administrator in Azure World 