about_ScsmPx.help.txt
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about_ScsmPx SHORT DESCRIPTION Provides an overview of the ScsmPx module and explains how you can use the ScsmPx commands in Microsoft Windows PowerShell. LONG DESCRIPTION This topic provides an overview of the ScsmPx module and explains how it adds value to your Microsoft System Center Service Manager environment. This topic also explains how you can use the ScsmPx commands in Microsoft Windows PowerShell. ScsmPx, the native SCSM cmdlets, and SMLets The ScsmPx module was designed to address some of the challenges presented by other Microsoft Windows PowerShell modules that were intended to facilitate automation tasks with Microsoft System Center Service Manager. Starting with the 2012 release, Microsoft System Center Service Manager has included two Microsoft Windows PowerShell modules in its installation package. These modules are installed automatically on every management server and every management console. There are 116 cmdlets included in these two modules to provide automation support to Microsoft System Center Service Manager 2012 and later. Unfortunately, these modules are not installed according to Microsoft Windows PowerShell best practices, and as a result they are not easily loaded or used outside of the Microsoft Windows PowerShell session that is opened through the management console. This makes automation of the Microsoft System Center Service Manager platform much more difficult than it should be. Discovery and loading issues aside, there are also some design issues that make working with the commands in the native modules more difficult than it should be. Add to that some gaps in the coverage provided by the native modules and you end up with a lackluster user experience. Prior to the Microsoft System Center Service Manager 2012 release, several Microsoft employees and some members of the community collaborated on an open-source project called SMLets. SMLets is a Microsoft Windows PowerShell module hosted on CodePlex that defines 97 cmdlets to provide automation support to Microsoft System Center Service Manager 2010 and later. While the SMLets module has been a very useful resource for Microsoft System Center Service Manager 2010, with the 2012 release its usefulness has diminished rapidly for a number of reasons. First, and most importantly, the SMLets module is not compatible with the native modules that ship with Microsoft System Center Service Manager 2012. It may appear compatible, but only if you load it after the native modules have been loaded. In this scenario, it is swallowing an error and hiding the incompatibility from the end user. If you load SMLets first, the native System.Center.Service.Manager module will not load at all due to the incompatibility. Second, since Microsoft now includes native modules out of the box, it is likely that any future investment in automation capabilities for Microsoft System Center Service Manager will be made there. The SMLets module has not been updated since March 2012 (almost 2 years at the time of this writing). Finally, there are many commands that are duplicated between the SMLets and the native cmdlets that ship with Microsoft System Center Service Manager. These duplications are unnecessary, and between duplicated cmdlets with different parameters, incompatibility issues, error masking, and a lack of an update it seems that SMLets are best left to automation tasks with the downlevel Microsoft System Center Service Manager 2010 release. ScsmPx is a module that tries to bring together the best of both of these solutions while addressing the biggest issues that each one has created. For the native Microsoft System Center Service Manager modules, ScsmPx makes the cmdlets they contain discoverable which enables auto-loading support for those modules so that they can be used from any Microsoft Windows PowerShell host more easily. For the SMLets incompatibility and overlap issues, the ScsmPx module provides 119 additional commands (open-source functions that are written in Microsoft Windows PowerShell script) to attempt to close the functionality gap so that SMLets are not required anymore. By offering a complementary solution instead of a conflicting one, ScsmPx gives you a single module to start from when working out automation solutions for Microsoft System Center Service Manager 2012 and later releases. Note that while ScsmPx adds many valuable commands today, it does not yet cover all of the capabilities provided by the SMLets module. Over time more commands will be added to provide this additional coverage. How to load the module To load the ScsmPx module into PowerShell, invoke the following command: Import-Module -Name ScsmPx This command is not necessary if you are running Microsoft Windows PowerShell 3.0 or later and if module auto-loading is enabled (default). The presence of this module also enables auto-loading of the native modules that ship with Microsoft System Center Service Manager 2012 and later. ScsmPx Commands There are 148 commands available in the ScsmPx module today, and 116 cmdlets in the native modules, offering a total of 264 commands to make Microsoft System Center Service Manager automation easier. To see a list of all of the commands that are available in the ScsmPx and native modules, invoke the following commands: Get-SCSMCommand Get-ScsmPxCommand The first command will return a list of commands that are included in the native modules that ship with Microsoft System Center Service Manager. The second command will return a list of commands that are included in the ScsmPx module. Note that all ScsmPx module commands start with the ScsmPx noun prefix. Managing Microsoft System Center Service Manager with ScsmPx To see a list of all incidents that you have in your environment, invoke the following command: Get-ScsmPxIncident This data represents individual instances of the System.WorkItem.Incident class, and it does not identify any of the objects that are related to those instances. Commands invoked like this allow for very efficient management of Microsoft System Center Service Manager object data. If you want to work with more complex data that includes multiple related instances combined into a single view, you can request a specific view of that data instead by using the -View parameter. For example, to see a more user friendly view of the incidents in your environment you could invoke the following command instead: Get-ScsmPxIncident -View All This data provides the same information that you see when you access the corresponding "All Incidents" view in the management console. Note that you cannot apply filters when you are looking up data using a view. In those cases, the filters that are defined as part of the view are used. To see what you can do with that data once you have it, have a look at the other ScsmPxIncident commands by invoking the following command: Get-Command -Noun ScsmPxIncident This identifies that there are other commands that work with incidents. To use these commands to modify incidents, you can leverage the pipeline. For example, to automatically resolve any incidents that have been closed for more than 7 days, you could use the Set-ScsmPxIncident command in the following script: # Look up the Resolved incident status enumeration $resolved = Get-ScsmPxListItem -ListName IncidentStatusEnum -Name Resolved # Look up the Closed incident status enumeration $closed = Get-ScsmPxListItem -ListName IncidentStatusEnum -Name Closed # Identify our search filters (closed incidents at least 7 days old) $filters = @( "(Status -eq '$($closed.Id)')" "(LastModified -lt '$((Get-Date).AddDays(-7))')" ) # Now get any matching incidents and change their status to resolved Get-ScsmPxIncident -Filter ($filters -join ' -and ') | Set-ScsmPxIncident -Property @{Status = $resolved} That demonstrates one simple example to a common problem that these commands can help resolve with little effort. Between PowerShell scripts, PowerShell workflows, Microsoft System Center Service Manager workflows, Microsoft System Center Orchestrator workflows, and now the new Service Management Automation (SMA) feature of Microsoft System Center Orchestrator, there are plenty of opportunities to use PowerShell commands to automate Microsoft System Center Service Manager. Experiment with the other commands in the ScsmPx module and see what solutions you can come up with. SEE ALSO Get-ScsmPxAdGroup Get-ScsmPxAdPrinter Get-ScsmPxAdUser Get-ScsmPxBuild Get-ScsmPxBusinessService Get-ScsmPxChangeRequest Get-ScsmPxCommand Get-ScsmPxConfigItem Get-ScsmPxConnectedUser Get-ScsmPxDependentActivity Get-ScsmPxDwCube Get-ScsmPxDwDataSource Get-ScsmPxDwName Get-ScsmPxEnterpriseManagementGroup Get-ScsmPxEnvironment Get-ScsmPxIncident Get-ScsmPxList Get-ScsmPxListItem Get-ScsmPxKnowledgeArticle Get-ScsmPxManagementServer Get-ScsmPxManualActivity Get-ScsmPxObject Get-ScsmPxParallelActivity Get-ScsmPxPrimaryManagementServer Get-ScsmPxProblem Get-ScsmPxRelatedObject Get-ScsmPxReleaseRecord Get-ScsmPxRequestOffering Get-ScsmPxReviewActivity Get-ScsmPxRunbook Get-ScsmPxRunbookActivity Get-ScsmPxSequentialActivity Get-ScsmPxServiceOffering Get-ScsmPxServiceRequest Get-ScsmPxSoftwareItem Get-ScsmPxSoftwareUpdate Get-ScsmPxUserOrGroup Get-ScsmPxViewData Get-ScsmPxWindowsComputer New-ScsmPxObject New-ScsmPxObjectSearchCriteria New-ScsmPxProxyFunctionDefinition Remove-ScsmPxAdGroup Remove-ScsmPxAdPrinter Remove-ScsmPxAdUser Remove-ScsmPxBuild Remove-ScsmPxBusinessService Remove-ScsmPxChangeRequest Remove-ScsmPxConfigItem Remove-ScsmPxDependentActivity Remove-ScsmPxDwCube Remove-ScsmPxDwDataSource Remove-ScsmPxEnvironment Remove-ScsmPxIncident Remove-ScsmPxKnowledgeArticle Remove-ScsmPxManagementServer Remove-ScsmPxManualActivity Remove-ScsmPxObject Remove-ScsmPxParallelActivity Remove-ScsmPxProblem Remove-ScsmPxReleaseRecord Remove-ScsmPxRequestOffering Remove-ScsmPxReviewActivity Remove-ScsmPxRunbook Remove-ScsmPxRunbookActivity Remove-ScsmPxSequentialActivity Remove-ScsmPxServiceOffering Remove-ScsmPxServiceRequest Remove-ScsmPxSoftwareItem Remove-ScsmPxSoftwareUpdate Remove-ScsmPxUserOrGroup Remove-ScsmPxWindowsComputer Rename-ScsmPxAdGroup Rename-ScsmPxAdPrinter Rename-ScsmPxAdUser Rename-ScsmPxBuild Rename-ScsmPxBusinessService Rename-ScsmPxChangeRequest Rename-ScsmPxConfigItem Rename-ScsmPxDependentActivity Rename-ScsmPxDwCube Rename-ScsmPxDwDataSource Rename-ScsmPxEnvironment Rename-ScsmPxIncident Rename-ScsmPxKnowledgeArticle Rename-ScsmPxManagementServer Rename-ScsmPxManualActivity Rename-ScsmPxObject Rename-ScsmPxParallelActivity Rename-ScsmPxProblem Rename-ScsmPxReleaseRecord Rename-ScsmPxRequestOffering Rename-ScsmPxReviewActivity Rename-ScsmPxRunbook Rename-ScsmPxRunbookActivity Rename-ScsmPxSequentialActivity Rename-ScsmPxServiceOffering Rename-ScsmPxServiceRequest Rename-ScsmPxSoftwareItem Rename-ScsmPxSoftwareUpdate Rename-ScsmPxUserOrGroup Rename-ScsmPxWindowsComputer Reset-ScsmPxCommandCache Restore-ScsmPxAdGroup Restore-ScsmPxAdPrinter Restore-ScsmPxAdUser Restore-ScsmPxBuild Restore-ScsmPxBusinessService Restore-ScsmPxConfigItem Restore-ScsmPxEnvironment Restore-ScsmPxKnowledgeArticle Restore-ScsmPxManagementServer Restore-ScsmPxObject Restore-ScsmPxServiceRequest Restore-ScsmPxSoftwareItem Restore-ScsmPxSoftwareUpdate Restore-ScsmPxUserOrGroup Restore-ScsmPxWindowsComputer Set-ScsmPxAdGroup Set-ScsmPxAdPrinter Set-ScsmPxAdUser Set-ScsmPxBuild Set-ScsmPxBusinessService Set-ScsmPxChangeRequest Set-ScsmPxConfigItem Set-ScsmPxDependentActivity Set-ScsmPxDwCube Set-ScsmPxDwDataSource Set-ScsmPxEnvironment Set-ScsmPxIncident Set-ScsmPxKnowledgeArticle Set-ScsmPxManagementServer Set-ScsmPxManualActivity Set-ScsmPxObject Set-ScsmPxParallelActivity Set-ScsmPxProblem Set-ScsmPxReleaseRecord Set-ScsmPxRequestOffering Set-ScsmPxReviewActivity Set-ScsmPxRunbook Set-ScsmPxRunbookActivity Set-ScsmPxSequentialActivity Set-ScsmPxServiceOffering Set-ScsmPxServiceRequest Set-ScsmPxSoftwareItem Set-ScsmPxSoftwareUpdate Set-ScsmPxUserOrGroup Set-ScsmPxWindowsComputer KEYWORDS SCSM SMLets |