Increased training costs to teach develop a comprehensive view of IT staff to use the system and PCLI’s system health. interpret data, Increased time required to Jeffrey Grimes had heard about a resolve helpdesk tickets as Tier 1 Visio 2010 add-in that could connect staff would have difficulty PCLI’s existing Visio diagrams to isolating issues, coupled with an SCOM and provide much of the increase in Tier 2 helpdesk traffic, desired functionality. The Visio 2010 Increased labor costs to the IT Add-in for System Center Operations department, as more senior Manager 2007 R2 combines the resources were required to strengths of two applications widely monitor system health and used in enterprise IT to simplify the translate SCOM reports, and creation of customized graphical Increased maintenance costs for dashboards showing the applications, hardware, and management and monitoring of IT network infrastructure. infrastructure. The Visio 2010 Add-in As with many IT departments, PCLI for SCOM would provide PCLI with a had developed a series of Microsoft number of important features: Easily create new Visio diagrams Visio diagrams to document their and link shapes to any managed technology infrastructure. These object (computer, database, web diagrams were used primarily as a site, perspective etc.) to show the reference point and did not provide current health state, any dynamic information regarding Automatically link entire existing the systems and assets depicted. Visio diagrams to the computer PCLI wanted to investigate a and network devices managed potential solution that could by SCOM by matching computer combine their existing Visio names or IP addresses, Publish and Refresh diagrams infrastructure diagrams with the from the browser using the detailed system data provided by SCOM data adapter for Visio SCOM. Services in SharePoint 2010, making SCOM a data source for Solution the client and the server. Export diagrams from the PCLI turned to Visio 2010 for a way System Center Operations to visually combine their SCOM data Manager 2007 R2 Console as with their Visio-based infrastructure Visio diagrams, automatically diagrams. PCLI wanted to use Visio showing live health state 2010 as a front-end dashboard for information on the exported their SCOM data and use it to objects when opened in Visio provide a graphical view of system and asset health, such that it would be very easy for someone to quickly
Increased training costs to teach IT staff to use the system and interpret data, Increased time required to resolve helpdesk tickets as Tier 1 staff would have difficulty isolating issues, coupled with an increase in Tier 2 helpdesk traffic, Increased labor costs to the IT department, as more senior resources were required to monitor system health and translate SCOM reports, and Increased maintenance costs for applications, hardware, and network infrastructure. As with many IT departments, PCLI had developed a series of Microsoft Visio diagrams to document their technology infrastructure. These diagrams were used primarily as a reference point and did not provide any dynamic information regarding the systems and assets depicted. PCLI wanted to investigate a potential solution that could combine their existing Visio infrastructure diagrams with the detailed system data provided by SCOM. Solution PCLI turned to Visio 2010 for a way to visually combine their SCOM data with their Visio-based infrastructure diagrams. PCLI wanted to use Visio 2010 as a front-end dashboard for their SCOM data and use it to provide a graphical view of system and asset health, such that it would be very easy for someone to quickly develop a comprehensive view of PCLI’s system health. Jeffrey Grimes had heard about a Visio 2010 add-in that could connect PCLI’s existing Visio diagrams to SCOM and provide much of the desired functionality. The Visio 2010 Add-in for System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 combines the strengths of two applications widely used in enterprise IT to simplify the creation of customized graphical dashboards showing the management and monitoring of IT infrastructure. The Visio 2010 Add-in for SCOM would provide PCLI with a number of important features: Easily create new Visio diagrams and link shapes to any managed object (computer, database, web site, perspective etc.) to show the current health state, Automatically link entire existing Visio diagrams to the computer and network devices managed by SCOM by matching computer names or IP addresses, Publish and Refresh diagrams from the browser using the SCOM data adapter for Visio Services in SharePoint 2010, making SCOM a data source for the client and the server. Export diagrams from the System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 Console as Visio diagrams, automatically showing live health state information on the exported objects when opened in Visio
PCLI_Visio2010_CS.docx