Alternatives and detailed information of ScsmPx

ScsmPx

Overview

The ScsmPx module facilitates automation with Microsoft System Center Service Manager by auto-loading the native modules that are included as part of that product and enabling automatic discovery of the commands that are contained within the native modules. It also includes dozens of complementary commands that are not available out of the box to allow you to do much more with your PowerShell automation efforts using the platform.

Minimum requirements

PowerShell 3.0
SnippetPx module

License and Copyright

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at

http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.

Installing the ScsmPx module

ScsmPx is dependent on the SnippetPx module. You can download and install the latest versions of ScsmPx and SnippetPx using any of the following methods:

PowerShellGet

If you don't know what PowerShellGet is, it's the way of the future for PowerShell package management. If you're curious to find out more, you should read this: Package Management for PowerShell Modules with PowerShellGet

Note that these commands require that you have the PowerShellGet module installed on the system where they are invoked.

# If you don’t have ScsmPx installed already and you want to install it for all
# all users (recommended, requires elevation)
Install-Module ScsmPx,SnippetPx

# If you don't have ScsmPx installed already and you want to install it for the
# current user only
Install-Module ScsmPx,SnippetPx -Scope CurrentUser

# If you have ScsmPx installed and you want to update it
Update-Module

PowerShell 3.0 or Later

To install from PowerShell 3.0 or later, open a native PowerShell console (not ISE, unless you want it to take longer), and invoke one of the following commands:

# If you want to install ScsmPx for all users or update a version already installed
# (recommended, requires elevation for new install for all users)
& ([scriptblock]::Create((iwr -uri http://tinyurl.com/Install-GitHubHostedModule).Content)) -ModuleName ScsmPx,SnippetPx

# If you want to install ScsmPx for the current user
& ([scriptblock]::Create((iwr -uri http://tinyurl.com/Install-GitHubHostedModule).Content)) -ModuleName ScsmPx,SnippetPx -Scope CurrentUser

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.

Command List

The ScsmPx module currently includes the following commands:

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

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