"Blog," he said. Not being a big fan of PDAs (Public Displays of Acumen) I proffer the handiest excuse and fix my resolve back to the work at hand.

"Blog!" he then exhorted. That Scott. So funny. What profundities do I have to offer that the world so breathlessly awaits for me to reveal?

"Blog!!!" he now demands. "OK! OK!” I mutter with not-so-quiet resign. The world, it would seem, can wait no longer.

A brief introduction: I’m Kent. I work for Scott and along with Will I have spent great deal of time both prior to joining the newly formed tools team and as a part of it architecting, maintaining, and supporting Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) in the Microsoft.com Operations group. I was one of the “lucky” few to evaluate the product for use in our group shortly after it was released to market and to have been working with it ever since. To put it succinctly and professionally, MOM 2000 has proven quite the challenge and I am happy to see it retired from our group in favor of MOM 2005.

Now on to the topic at hand…

The Tasks Pane. Of the many improvements in MOM 2005, my initial impression was that yet one more user interface (“UI”) being added to the mix in the form of the Operator Console (“the console”) was unnecessary and inefficient, to say the least. Though much of that impression remains intact today, one particularly helpful and effective tool I have discovered being introduced with this new UI is the Tasks Pane. It sits off to the right of the console by default; out of the center of focus and perhaps to remain unnoticed by many. It eluded my attention up to the RTM release, due in part to its location within this additional UI and that it was within this UI in the first place. I spent the better part of the beta focused on server and agent deployment and agent retention issues, which is still addressed primarily through the Administrator Console.

The Tasks Pane functions as a one stop shop for common operations tasks that you would otherwise have to perform individually on your own, or perhaps as part of a batch process into which you feed a list of computers. Its best features in my experience are its integration with the UI in which you review server and agent issues and its extensibility.

Tasks Pane Integration. The integration of the Tasks Pane allows you to select a server listed in the center pane(s) scoped to by the selection of a number of the navigable items in the Navigation Pane and process one or more of the tasks listed in the Tasks Pane. The default tasks are:

·         Computer Management: Open the Computer Management MMC snap-in with the scope set to the selected computer

·         Event Viewer: Open the Event Viewer with the scope set to the selected computer

·         IP Configuration:  Run IPCONFIG.EXE against the selected computer with the results displayed in a Operator Console pop-up window

·         Ping: Run PING.EXE against the selected computer with the results displayed in an Operator Console pop-up window.

·         Remote Desktop: Start a Remote Desktop session with the selected computer

·         Microsoft Operations Manager:

§         Start MOM 2005 Service: Start the MOM service on the selected computer

§         Stop MOM 2005 Service: Stop the MOM service on the selected computer

§         Test End to End Monitoring: Generate a MOM alert that you can track back to the Operator Console for testing end-to-end functionality of MOM monitoring of the selected computer

You can review and edit the settings for these tasks, delete them, and add new tasks via the Tasks branch of the Administrator Console navigation tree. Extending and adding tasks is where things get interesting.

Tasks Pane Extensibility. For starters, I extended the list of tasks by adding:

·         A Ping –T task, so that I can monitor a selected computer as it is being restarted

·         A Remote Desktop Console task (“mstsc /console”) so that I can log into the console of a remote computer to review installation pop-up errors, etc.

·         To the MOM branch I added a Query MOM 2005 Service tasks, so that I could verify the current state of the MOM service

You can use, as I did, the existing related tasks as a guide for creating the new tasks. For clarity, I added “(MSCOM)” to the end of their name so that anyone in the future can easily identify the default tasks from those that have been added after-the-fact.

You can also add a new branch to the tree (or folder to the view, if you wish) for grouping similar tasks. I did this with a series of tasks I created to change the DAS identity and MOM service account (“action account” in MOM terms) and/or password, since we enforce a password aging policy throughout the company, including our data centers. This task set alone reduced our password change process from up to a few hours with recovery (as in many cases the management servers had to be restarted for everything to synch up correctly) to a matter of minutes without the need to restart management servers.

I am nearing the completion of a one-stop, one executable application for DAS identity and MOM action account changes that I hope to incorporate into the Tasks Pane instead of the current set of tasks currently being used for this, which should reduce our password change maintenance window further still. Unfortunately, this process involves the use of some internal-only code, so I cannot release it here at this time. In time, however, this internal-only code will likely be made publicly available, at which time I will be happy to share my solution…likely through another blog entry…likely to keep my manager pacified.

World, you can breathe calmly once again.

Kent