Install: Action Log Notify

Important Notice:

As of September 2017, the Action Log Notify app has been rolled into the free version of Notify Analyst. You no longer need to have both apps installed to have both functioning. As such, you will need to remove Action Log Notify before upgrading or installing Notify Analyst version 7.7.2016.16 or 7.7.2012.8 or above. 

Please click here to see the updated instructions for installing and configuring Action Log Notify included with the free edition of Notify Analyst (Full version instructions here)

Overview

SCSM Action Log Notify is a solution for the common requirement of notifying the assigned to user when an end user comment is added to the action log and notifying the affected user when an analyst comment (private comment = false) is added.  This workflow will run each time an action log comment is added to an incident or a service request and notifies the appropriate user depending on what type of action log comment was added.  The solution is easy to deploy by copying a few DLLs to the Service Manager management server and importing a management pack.

Prerequisites

• Microsoft.ServiceManager.WorkflowAuthoring.ActivityLibrary.dll
• Microsoft.ServiceManager.WorkflowAuthoring.Common.dll

Installation

To install the Action Log Notification solution, please follow the steps below. 

1. Copy all of the DLL files contained in the .zip file to C:\Program Files\Microsoft System Center 2012 R2\Service Manager (or wherever you installed to) on the SCSM management server where the workflows are running.  It is advisable to deploy the DLLs to all SCSM management servers (excluding the DW management server) in case a different SCSM management server is ever promoted in the future to be the workflow server.

Note: if you already have the Microsoft.ServiceManager.WorkflowAuthoring.ActivityLibrary.dll in the Service Manager folder, check the version number of the one included in the .zip file as compared to the one in the Service Manager folder.  Use whichever .dll has the higher version number.

2. Import the ActionLogNotificationsWorkflows.mp into SCSM.

3. Open the Registry Editor (regedit). Once opened, you will need to create a registry key at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Cireson\NotificationWorkflows. Afterward, create new string values as outlined:

• LogFilePath – specify a path to a .txt file for storing the log information.  Example: C:\Temp\SCSMNotificationWorkflowLog.txt.  Important Note: the logging is very verbose so do not leave this created except for troubleshooting purposes!
• PortalURL – if you want to direct users to the portal in the body of the email you can include a URL here.  Example: http://contososervicedesk
• Format – if you want to send emails in HTML format set the value to ‘HTML’.  If this string value does not exist or it is something other than ‘HTML’ the notifications will be sent in plain text.

Please note this workflow is enabled by default. Starting with the TMS 2014 Q2 release of Action Log Notify you can define your own custom templates.  To configure your own custom templates create a new .txt file in any location you want on the SCSM management server.  The .txt file can contain either HTML code or not depending on what type of format you want for your notification.  You can insert these special tokens to insert property values in the body of the notification template at runtime.

• {0} - Work item type (e.g. Incident, Service Request)
• {1} - Recipient user type (e.g. Analyst, User)
• {2} - Recipient user's display name
• {3} - Message
• {4} - Work item ID
• {5} - Work item title
• {6} - Work item description
• {7} - Work item category
• {8} - Work item created by user display name
• {9} - Work item status
• {10} - Portal URL

For example, your notification template might have a section like this:

{0} ID: {4}

That would result in something like this being generated at runtime:

Incident ID: IR12345

IMPORTANT NOTE:  If you choose to create a notification template you must use ALL of the 11 tokens above in your template.  Applying the template will fail if you do not.  There are two sample templates provided in the Action Log Notify download package - one for plain text and one for HTML.  Once you have created your notification template, you need to create a registry key which points the workflow to the location of the template .txt file. The registry key is the same for other Action Log Notify settings:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Cireson\NotificationWorkflows

For an HTML template create a String Value in that key called HTMLTemplateLocation and set it to the full path to the template .txt file.  For a plain text template create a String Value in that key called PlainTextTemplateLocation and set it to the full path to the template .txt file.