Configuring Workflows in Service Manager

Applies To: System Center Service Manager 2010 SP1

A workflow is a sequence of activities that automate a business process. Workflows can, for example, update incidents when various changes occur or automatically generate incidents when computers fall out of compliance from desired configuration management. You create a workflow that defines when and under what circumstances it will run. For example, a workflow can automatically change the support tier from a setting of 1 to 2 whenever a low-priority incident pertaining to printing problems is changed to a higher priority. Workflows activities function by applying templates. For this example, an incident template to change the support tier to a setting of 2 must have been previously created.

You can create multiple workflows for each workflow configuration. You can enable or disable the workflow conditions. If a particular rule is disabled, the remaining rules still cause the workflow to run. If you want to completely disable a workflow, you must disable all of the rules that call the workflow.

The success or failure of a workflow is retained by Service Manager and is available for you to view. Two views are available. All Results consists of a view of all success and failure instances, and the Errors view displays only those instances when a workflow failed. In the All Results view, you can, for each instance, view the log and view the related object. Viewing the log lets you examine the events that occurred when the workflow ran. Viewing the related object presents the form that this workflow acted upon. The Errors view is limited to the most recent 250 instances. When you are viewing a failed instance, you have the same options in the Success view to view the log and view related object. In addition, in the Errors view, you have the option to select Retry or Ignore. Selecting Retry causes the workflow to run again with the same parameters and removes this instance from the view. Selecting Ignore removes the instance from the view.

In This Section

  • How to Configure Incident Workflows
    Describes how to create an incident event workflow rule that changes the support tier level from 1 to 2 because of a change in incident priority.

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