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How To: Get to Know the Provance ITSM Automation Capabilities: Setting up Incidents from OMS to Provance ITSM

This is the second blog post in the Get to Know the Provance ITSM Automation Capabilities blog series. In the first post, System Center Operations Manager Originating Change Management Process, I outlined the steps to go through after an event comes through the SCOM connector that requires a change. In this post, I will walk you through the steps on how to set up the incident or event within Operations Management Suite (OMS) (now known as Azure security & operations management) so important events can generate records and run automations in Provance ITSM.

So for this scenario, I’m actually going to use the very same issue that I used in my first blog post, that my Azure database threshold is approaching risk, but instead I’m going to set this up as an incident in OMS. So, I’m going to tell OMS and Provance ITSM that when my database reaches a certain threshold I want to perform an action in ITSM.

To begin I open OMS and go to Log Analytics. I open a single query and then I select Alerts, and I get the view as per the screenshot below.

The reason why I’m filling out the alerts is I want to take an action on here to kick off the automation prior to it being raised in ITSM. Within the Name field is where I’ll define the alert rule, which in this scenario I’ve defined as Database Thresholds. I can also define a description, or I can use a query. In the screenshot below I choose Low Disc Space, which automatically puts the query in that I want to query against.

I can also choose the alert frequency, which is how many times do I want to check this alert (in this scenario, I chose every 15 minutes, see screen shot below). Then once it reaches a certain threshold, which I have decided and entered greater than 2, I can decide whether I want to be emailed or not. However, for this scenario, I’ve decided I want to put in a permanent resolution so the database automatically resizes once it reaches the threshold I’ve just added. Therefore, I select no.

I then select ITSM actions (see screenshot below). Now I want to select a demo environment (which in this scenario is called ITSM365). I can then choose two different types of work item (Event or Incident). Since I want to track the occurrence of this issue, I’m going to create an incident.

And then, I’m going to automatically fix the issue by using the Provance ITSM ticket template feature. So, right after clicking incident, I’m given the option of generating a work item based on a template, and then I’m given a drop down menu of all my ticket template options. In the screenshot below, I chose Increase Disk Space, which includes an automation to increase disc space.

Once I save the record, this will be the permanent resolution. Once this threshold is reached, an incident will be created in Provance ITSM, which will kick off the ticket template to increase the disk space. This will generate the automation call into automation.

So how does all this happen in the ticket template?

Here’s how to configure one of these ticket templates. First, I’ll go to Provance settings and I’ll select ticket templates. From there, I’ll select the increase database by 10% ticket template, which I just used. Within this ticket template, I add in all the information that I want the change record to be populated with (see screenshot below), including the title, the description and how I want to categorize it.

But the questions that are asked are within the question template, which as you can see in the screenshot above is currently the Disk Space – Computer Name question template. So, if I were to open the ticket template – as in the screenshot below –  you can see it just asks to define the computer name so it passes the information into the automated template once responded.

Now, going back to my main Increase DB by 10% ticket template view, I can also change the automation settings (see screenshot below). Now these are the triggers that I set for user response, so once I pass that information the automation is triggered.

Now you can default that information by going into the Automation Template: Increase Disk Space. And here we can set a parameter. Since this database is sitting on an Azure VM that we host, we can default that value for this customer.

Tune in to our next blog post: Change Management Process with TFS/VSTS Integration to discover how you can bring Devops into a normal change process.

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