A: One of the great features of System Center 2012 is the integration between its components. One of the strongest is between System Center Orchestrator and System Center Service Manager, which enables any runbook in Orchestrator to be offered as a service offering through System Center Service Manager 2012. The process to offer is actually quite simple and at a high level consists of the following main actions:
- Enable the System Center Service Manager to System Center Orchestrator connector.
- In System Center Orchestrator, install the System Center Service Manager 2012 Integration Pack and configure the connection to your Service Manager 2012 installation.
- Create runbooks in System Center Orchestrator. The runbook should have an initialization activity that accepts parameters that will be passed by Service Manager. The runbook can also update the Service Manager calling request. The screen shot below shows an example.
- Synchronize the connector to System Center Orchestrator from System Center Service Manager 2012.
- Check that the runbooks from System Center Orchestrator are visible in System Center Service Manager 2012 in the Library workspace in the Runbooks area (see screen shot below).
- Select the runbook from the Runbooks list in Service Manager that you want to use as part of a service offering. Select the Create Runbook Automation Activity, which will open a wizard to enable a custom automation activity to be created that uses the runbook. In the new Runbook Activity Template, ensure a Title, Description, Area, Stage, and Designer are set in addition to checking the Is Ready For Automation box at the top.
- Select the Runbook tab and perform mappings of each parameter in the runbook initialization, then click OK.
- The new automation activity will be visible in the Templates area of the Library. Next, create a new Template of class Service Request that has several activities defined. These will include the calling of the custom runbook activity that was created (see screen shot below).
- Now a service request template is available; you can use this template in a Request Offering. It will prompt the user for the various data entry fields required (see screen shot below) then add the Request Offering to a Service Offering for visibility in the Service Manager Service Catalog.
At my website, I've created a video to demonstrate the whole process, step by step. The sample email template I used in the video is at this link. Don't think this process is only for user provisioning--this was just an example. The point is to learn the process to offer a runbook through Service Manager. Although I used the example of a simple situation, you could call other IPs to add Exchange mailbox, add to groups, and more. The Integration Packs I used in the example are available below:
Active Directory IP
System Center 2012 IP
