One major new feature in Royal TS V2.1 is the so called “Templates”-feature. In short, templates are “special” connections which can be created or connected to based on other connections (even from a different connection type). You can “inject” values from the selected connection(s) into the resulting connection, basically pretty much the same as you already do with command tasks.

How can I create a Template?

First of all, templates are stored within your Royal TS document the same way as all the other connections and objects. You can organize your templates the way you want. You can even place templates in other documents to share them with your team, again, very similar to tasks: As soon as the document is loaded, the containing templates are available to you.

To create a new template, use the Edit tab and click on the Add New Template button:

Alternatively, you can use an existing connection and create a new template based on the selected connection using the Create Template command:

What can I do with Templates?

Templates can be used for many things and elevates the flexibility of Royal TS to a new level. Here’s what you can do with templates:

Add from Template

When you use the standard Add button to create a new connection Royal TS is using the Default Setting for the connection type as a starting point. Using the Add from Template button populates the Add Connection dialog with the values from the selected template:

This can be very useful if you constantly need different settings, maybe depending on the customer or environment. You can now create a template for each customer or environment and use the template to quickly create a connection with the preconfigured values.

Connect using Template

You can create an ad hoc connection based on the template settings with tokens injected from the selected connection(s). Here’s an example to illustrate how this can be help:

Example: Create a Web Page connection based on a Remote Desktop connection

Imagine you have a couple of hundreds RDP connections in your Royal TS document:

Each of the above connection represents a physical machine which can be managed using a web based iLO interface. You could create a web page connection for each machine, like this:

I think you get the idea. This scenario is hard to manage and a template solves this problem very elegantly.

Let’s assume your remote desktop connections connect to the primary NIC using WEB01, WEB02, etc. as a host name and further, let’s assume that your iLO interface is reachable under https://WEB01.management.c4w.local:17900/login.htm and https://WEB02.management.c4w.local:17900/login.htm and so on.

As mentioned above, the Edit tab has a new drop down button which allows you to create a new connection template:

The template settings dialog looks pretty much the same as the usual connection settings dialog but in addition it allows you to insert “replacement tokens” (similar to those in the task configuration). The Tokens button on the top, right corner helps you to browse all available tokens from all different connection types. In our example we configure the template to “inject” the URI (which is the host name in our remote desktop connection) in our URL field:
https://$URI$.management.c4w.local:17900/login.htm

Configure the rest of the connection settings as it was a dedicated web page connection and save the template to a document/folder of your choice. After selecting a connection you can now either use the Connect using Template drop down button in the ribbon or the menu in the context menu:

The drop down/submenu shows all available templates from all currently loaded documents. As shown in the picture above, we’ve selected WEB03 and when we click on “iLO Interface” (the name of our previously created template), an ad hoc connection to https://WEB03.management.c4w.local:17900/login.htm using the settings from the template will be opened.

More ways like this to make use of templates:

The above approach can also be used to create ad hoc connections of the same connection type using slightly different settings. One possible use case would be to have a remote desktop connection template with a different port configuration or with a value injected from one of the custom fields to connect to an alternate host in case you are connecting from a different environment.

Connect Ad Hoc using the Template Dashboard

Selecting a template shows the Dashboard (similar to the default settings) which allows you to create an ad hoc connection using the template settings:

The text entered in the Ad Hoc Connect text box is used to replace the $URI$ token in the template or – if not specified – will be set as the URI of the connection.

Connect Ad Hoc from the Ribbon

Very similar to the dashboard, you can create ad hoc connections directly from the ribbon:

Can I use Templates now?

Yes! Royal TS V2.1 is currently available as beta and allows you to test drive the templates feature. You can find the download link and installation instructions here: http://www.code4ward.net/main/Forums/tabid/61/forumid/9/threadid/891/scope/posts/Default.aspx

If you find issues or want to provide feedback, please use our beta forums: http://www.code4ward.net/main/Forums/tabid/61/forumid/9/scope/threads/Default.aspx

cheers,
The code4ward.net Team

Royal TS V 2.1 is right on track and we are making huge progress. You will find lots of new features in 2.1. The most popular and long awaited Terminal connection type (see: http://www.code4ward.net/main/Blog/tabid/70/EntryId/142/Early-Royal-TS-V2-1-Beta-Version-with-SSH-connection-type-released.aspx) and many, many more.

This blog post is dedicated to a smaller but still very useful feature:

Prompt for Credential

Ok, you may now think, that’s quite underwhelming… but read on, I’m not finished yet

As you might expect, checking the Prompt for Credentials will, well, prompt for credentials:

This is what you can do with the credential picker:

• Selection of an existing credential using the cursor keys. As you can see, the credential name, the configured user name and the path where you’ve placed the credential in your document structure is shown in the grid. After you’ve selected the credential you want to use,  hit Enter to continue. Hit Cancel (or ESC) to cancel the connection process.
• Find as you type: When the credential list is focused (default) you can just start typing the credential name to jump to the credential you are looking for.
• Use CTRL + F to show the Find/Filter panel which allows you to enter a name or fragment of the name. The grid will filter/highlight the search results.
• The checkbox below allows you to enter a username and password in case the credential you want to use doesn’t exist.

The dialog is easy to use, even navigation by keyboard is smooth.

But wait, there’s more:

Prompt for Credential for Ad Hoc Connections

In V2.0 you could enter a hostname/IP address in the Ad Hoc connection text box to quickly connect to a machine. Now, with a simple syntax you can invoke the credential picker as well:

Use “?@” (without the quote) to indicate that you are looking for a credential and want to use it for your connection. You can specify a filter string before the ?@ characters which allows you to filter the list of available credentials (as shown above).

Note that the filter string is also pre-populated in the Username field in case you want to use Username/Password.

If you just put ?@ in front of the hostname/IP – without a filter string, you will get the unfiltered credential picker dialog.

If you put a filter string in front of the ?@ which doesn’t match a a credential, you will get the credential picker prepared for username and password entry:

Here are some examples how you can use the Ad Hoc connection functionality in 2.1:

• HostOrIP
  just the hostname/IP works like in 2.0 and will connect to the host
• ?@HostOrIP
  the credential picker dialog appears
• SomeCredName?@HostOrIP
  the credential picker dialog appears with pre-filtered credential list and pre-populated username text box

There’s still one more little thing:

Specify Port in Ad Hoc Connections

In Royal TS V 2.1 you will also be able to specify the port in the URI string (where applicable: currently Terminal and Remote Desktop connections). The port will override any configuration in the port property of the connection if specified with the hostname/IP.

As I mentioned before, it’s the little things. It might not seem to be a “big” feature but I think with the above improvements, Royal TS got a new powerful feature helping you to be even more efficient in your daily business.

Download and Test the Current Beta

You find the current beta version and installation instructions here:

http://code4ward.net/main/Forums/tabid/61/forumid/9/postid/891/scope/posts/Default.aspx#891

As always, I’m happy to hear your feedback: http://code4ward.net/main/Forums/tabid/61/forumid/9/scope/threads/Default.aspx

cheers,
Stefan

 

We’ve just uploaded a new Royal TS release 2.0.4 (build #60505). This latest release includes a number of bug fixes as well as a couple of new, minor features. Read the Release Notes for more details. This is the second 2.0.4 release after just two days, this time a small glitch was fixed and the help file is included again. 

New Mouse Events Setting

The option “External Window: Select Dashboard” lets you control the behavior of Royal TS when you select active connections in the Navigation tree. By default (if unchecked) Royal TS will always switch the the connection tab as soon as you select an active connection. Since external connections show a tab containing some helpers allowing you to re-embed or disconnect the session, you may want to jump to the Dashboard tab instead. When the above setting is checked, Royal TS will show the Dashboard tab (only if available in the tab bar!) when the connection is hosted in an external window.

New External Window System Menu

When you work with external windows, you may find the new system menu “Embed Connection” helpful. This allows you to put back your external window connection into the tab quickly and easily.

Download

To download this release, visit our Download page.

I’ve now heard from multiple customers that they want to better control when their Service Manager connectors are running. For whatever reason, Microsoft didn’t really include a UI to control the schedule of most connectors, except for the SCCM and SCOM connectors. What if you want to control the schedule for the Active Directory connector, for example?

You have the following options:

Method 1: Initiate the synchronization using PowerShell

SCSM has a rich PowerShell API. The cmd-let Start-SCSMConnector allows you to initiate the synchronization.

On my test machine, I have a connector called “AD, all users”. When I start the Service Manager Shell and execute the command
Get-SCSMConnector
I get a list like this:

The command
Get-SCSMConnector | fl
will show some more information, including the schedule (sync time, type and interval):

As you can see from the screenshot above, the AD connector will synchronize automatically every day at 2:00 AM

Now to start connectors using PowerShell immediately, you just need to get one or more connectors into a variable and pipe it to the Start-SCSMConnector cmd-let. In my case I just want to start this single connector but you could modify the line to include more connectors in the WHERE-OBJECT:

You could write this in one line, of course but for better readability I used a variable.

After you’ve executed the command, you will see the connector will start synchronizing after a minute or so.

Conclusion:
This is an easy way to start the connectors on your own schedule (using the task scheduler) or initiate synchronization at the end of an Orchestrator runbook. For example: consider an Orchestrator runbook which creates a user in the domain, executes a sync on the domain controllers and immediately start the connector for Service Manager afterwards.

Method 2: Change the synchronization schedule using PowerShell

Update: After fixing the last line in the script, the code works as expected. To be clear, MS may not support this, so I recommend you test this in a lab environment before you go ahead and use it.

Loading SDK Assemblies

To change the schedule on the connector itself, a little SDK magic is necessary. To access the SDK from PowerShell we need to load the SDK assembly. Type the following commands (assuming your service manager install directory is the default directory):

[Reflection.Assembly]::LoadFile("C:\Program Files\Microsoft System Center 2012\Service Manager\SDK Binaries\Microsoft.EnterpriseManagement.Core.dll")

[Reflection.Assembly]::LoadFile("C:\Program Files\Microsoft System Center 2012\Service Manager\SDK Binaries\Microsoft.EnterpriseManagement.ServiceManager.dll")

Connecting to the Management Group

$MG = New-Object Microsoft.EnterpriseManagement.ServiceManagementGroup “localhost”

Since I’m executing the PowerShell on the machine hosting the SDK service, I can connect to “localhost”. The above command has no output.

Get the AD Connector using the SDK

As we did in the example above, let’s store the AD connector we want to change in the variable $ad:

$ad = $MG.ConnectorFramework.GetConnectors() | where {$_.DisplayName -eq 'AD, all users'}

Note that the connector object from the SDK looks quite different compared to the one we used in the above PowerShell example.

Get the Enum from the SDK

Now let’s get the Enum with the Name “SyncTypeEnum”:

$EnumSyncType = $MG.EntityTypes.GetEnumerations() | where {$_.Name -eq 'SyncTypeEnum'}

The next command will get all child elements for the SyncType enumeration we gathered above:

$SyncTypes = $MG.EntityTypes.GetChildEnumerations($EnumSyncType.Id, [Microsoft.EnterpriseManagement.Common.TraversalDepth]::OneLevel)

If you select all the names from the $SyncTypes array, you’ll see the possible values. By default, the AD connector syncs Daily, we want to change that to every 2 hours.

Change the Sync Type and Interval

To change the SyncType and SyncInterval values using the SDK, type:

$ad.ConnectorObject.Item($null, "SyncType").Value = $SyncTypes | where {$_.Name -eq 'SyncTypeEnum.Hours'}
$ad.ConnectorObject.Item($null, "SyncInterval").Value = 2
$ad.ConnectorObject.Commit()
$MG.LinkingFramework.UpdateDataSource($ad.ConnectorObject.Id)

 

The last two lines are used to commit and save the changes to the management group.

As you can see, we’ve changed the connector schedule to every two hours.

Conclusion:
Compared to method 1, this is much more complicated, geeky and is prone to error. In the spirit of KISS (keep it simple and stupid) I recommend method 1. Much easier to setup and change.

cheers,
Stefan
http://www.code4ward.net

Royal TS 2.0.3 brings a couple of new things and of course bug fixes.

 

Remote Desktop Dashboard Changes

I should mention one bigger change in 2.0.3 upfront: Royal TS deals with credentials in the dashboard now differently!
Read the following blog post for more information:
http://www.code4ward.net/main/Blog/tabid/70/EntryId/141/Important-Change-in-upcoming-Royal-TS-Version-2-0-3.aspx

 

Disable Reveal Password

In 2.0.3 you can now also set a registry value to disable the “reveal password” functionality in object dialogs (like credential or connection). We’re also including an ADMX/ADML file to help you deploy this using GPO:

You can set this policy on both, the user level or the machine level (which also overrules the user level setting). The ADMX/ADML files can be found in the Royal TS install directory under Policies.

Alternatively, you can also set the registry value manually (using regedit or using a login script, for example). Value 1 will enable the setting, value 0 or if the value doesn’t exist will turn off the setting:

Contents of the .reg file for the HKLM path:

--- .reg file starts here ---
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\code4ward\RoyalTS\Security]
"DoNotAllowRevealPasswords"=dword:00000001
--- .reg file ends here ---

Contents of the .reg file for the HKCU path:

--- .reg file starts here ---
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\code4ward\RoyalTS\Security]
"DoNotAllowRevealPasswords"=dword:00000001
--- .reg file ends here ---

More Enhancements

In addition of the above, we’ve implemented two smaller enhancements in 2.0.3:

1. Hold the SHIFT key while you perform a Connect action to open the tab(s) in the background

2. External connection windows now also show the description field (if available) in the window title (pretty much like the main window does)

 

Bug Fixes

Read the release notes for a list of fixed issues and bugs:
http://www.code4ward.net/main/RoyalTS/ReleaseNotes.aspx

 

Download

To download Royal TS 2.0.3 go to: http://www.code4ward.net/main/RoyalTS/Download.aspx

We’ve just published a brand new beta release of Royal TS which will now also support SSH terminal connections:

While you are connected, you can switch between two different selection modes: Standard or Block selection.

You can also enable/disable the right-click mouse paste feature.

The SSH connection type supports many features and is highly customizable:

Optional private key (incl. putty private keys) and passphrase support.

Credentials, connect and disconnect tasks as well the other standard features (key sequence and window mode) are working the same way as with other connection types.

Advanced Settings:

Specify which Encoding to use, choose from 3 terminal types (Ansi, Wyse 60 and Pick), configure wrap settings, etc.

In the Proxy Settings you can choose between direct connect, Socks4, Socks4a, Socks5 and HTTP connect.

Font:

Configure your favorite font and size.

Input

Customize the input behavior of your terminal session and provide default settings for the mouse paste and selection mode.

Download link and instruction can be found here:
http://code4ward.net/main/Forums/tabid/61/forumid/9/postid/891/scope/posts/Default.aspx#891

For feedback and bug reports, please use the Beta forums:
http://www.code4ward.net/main/Forums/tabid/61/forumid/9/scope/threads/Default.aspx

cheers,
Stefan

Due to some security considerations, we will change the default behavior of Royal TS’ Hyper-V and Sessions dashboard.

In Version 2.0.2 and earlier Royal TS has a bug which may cause account lockups. This may happen when you are using credentials without setting a password or if you’ve changed your password due to applied security policies.

The default behavior of the Hyper-V and the Sessions dashboard is to first try to gather the information with the currently logged on user (the user who is running Royal TS). If this fails, Royal TS would automatically try to gather the information using the configured credentials. In most cases this isn’t a problem but if the password has changed or if no password is set, an account can be locked out very easily by just clicking on a couple of inactive connections.

What will change in 2.0.3?

First of all, Royal TS will not try to use the configured credential if no password is set. This was clearly a bug and is fixed in 2.0.3.

Secondly we will introduce a new setting in the Dashboard configuration which allows you to control whether or not to use the configured credentials to retrieve the dashboard information.

Note: Because of the above implications, the default setting for this configuration item is OFF! You may want to re-enable the setting if needed.

If your connection(s) are configured to “Use the application default setting” (which is set by default), you just need to open the Royal TS Options on the View tab and check the “Use Credentials” check box:

If you’ve configured your connection(s) to use individual settings, you can also set this option for those connections:

Is there a workaround?

If you are experiencing account lockouts, please disable the automatic Hyper-V and Session information retrieval in the Dashboard settings.

Best regards,
Stefan
code4ward.net

 

Thanks to Arsimael, who  blogged about that in German here, I’m happy to translate and re-blog his content on our blog in English. If you want to make Royal TS V2 portable and start it from a USB memory stick, external drive or even from a Dropbox folder, continue to read…

What does portable mean?

Portable means, that you do not have to install Royal TS to use it. You just put in your memory stick and start Royal TS from the memory stick – without installing it.

To make a portable version of Royal TS V2 you need to download and install it once. After you’ve installed it on your computer it’s a very simple procedure to make it portable:

1. Copy Royal TS V2 to the new location (memory stick, external drive, etc.)

Copy the contents from the Royal TS V2 installation directory to the new location.

By default Royal TS V2 is installed in “%ProgramFiles(x86)%\code4ward.net\Royal TS V2\”.

Note: Do not move the files to the new location. After you’ve copied the files to the new location, you may uninstall Royal TS again, since you will the start it from the new location.

2. Create a configuration folder

Royal TS needs a couple of configuration files. By default they are stored in the users profile directory. Since we also want to have our settings wherever we go, we need to create a new configuration folder in the new location where we copied the Royal TS files.

In the folder where RTS2App.exe was relocated, create a subfolder called with the name config

3. Change configuration path

In the new location, open the file RTS2App.exe.config in notepad and search for the following text:

%APPDATA%\code4ward

change the line above to:

.\config

4. Copy the configuration file to the new configuration folder

Go to: %APPDATA%\code4ward and copy the file code4ward.RoyalTS.UserPreferences.config to the folder you created in step 2.

Royal TS is now portable!

Things you should know

While the above works well in general, there might be the one or the other issue:

• Royal TS V2 needs the .NET Framework 4 (Full Profile) and the setup installer makes sure that it’s installed before it proceeds. The portal version doesn’t have a check like this, so you have to take care and make sure that .NET Framework 4 is installed otherwise Royal TS will not work. Take a look at our System Requirements page for more information.
• File associations are created by the installer. Since you do not install Royal TS when you use the portal version, double-clicking a .rtsx file may ask you to specify the application you want to open for the file. The Windows Explorer allows you to remember the setting and the next time you double-click a file it will open the application from your portable location.
• Uninstall Royal TS using the Control Panel after you made your portable version. This avoids that the “original”/”non-portal” version is opened when you double-click a .rtsx file.
• When you want to upgrade to a newer version of Royal TS, install it on a computer, execute step 1 from above without overwriting/deleting the config folder in the portable location.
• When you start Royal TS the first time from the portable location you may have to re-enter your license information.

Have fun and thanks again to Arsimael for the blog post!

cheers,
Stefan

My last two blog posts:

http://www.code4ward.net/main/Blog/tabid/70/EntryId/137/System-Center-2012-Service-Manager-RC-Installation-Experience.aspx

and

http://www.code4ward.net/main/Blog/tabid/70/EntryId/138/System-Center-2012-Service-Manager-RC-Self-Service-Portal-Installation.aspx

showed how I installed SCSM 2012 RC in my lab with a minimum set of hardware/software.

The last bit of the self-service-portal didn’t really work. The setup finished successfully but the portal didn’t work. The links were there but the content is missing. As it turns out the setup wasn’t correct and I’m experiencing SSL certificate issues (btw. the setup didn’t really complain).

After reading that Technet piece, I began to understand the issue. And here’s how I ‘ve resolved it:

1. Create a correct certificate

The first issue is, that the self-signed certificate I used in my lab installation wasn’t matching the computer name. I used the default certificate which came with the OS installation during the setup but it turns out that is a show stopper.

The certificate needs to be issued to the exact same name (FQDN) of the web server(s), which are running SharePoint and and the Web Content Server. Since I’m running both on the same server, I just need one correct certificate.

Unfortunately I have no CA at hand and I don’t want to install one. So let’s create a “correct” self-signed certificate using IIS manager.

Open the “Server Certificates” feature in the IIS manager:

Once opened, click on “Create Self-Signed Certificate” and enter the FQDN of the server:

2. Change Portal Application Setting

Go to the “Service Manager Portal” web site and double-click on “Application Settings”:

Edit the SMPortal_WebContentServer_URL setting and ensure you also have the FQDN of the content host (which must match the SSL issued to value):

3. Assign the new certificate to the web sites

Go to the “Service Manager Portal” web site, click on “Bindings…”, edit the https binding and select the newly created certificate:

Go to the “SCSMWebContentServer”web site, click on “Bindings…", edit the https binding and select the newly created certificate:

4. Verify/Change the Content Server web.config file

Ensure that the “ContentHostAbsoluteUri” setting in web.config file also uses the FQDN:

After those changes and an iisreset, the portal worked for me:

cheers,
Stefan
http://www.code4ward.net

This blog post is basically the continuation of my previous blog post which describes my installation experience of System Center Service Manager (aka SCSM) 2012 (Release Candidate). In SCSM 2012 the self-service-portal, which can be used by users to log an incident or submit a service request, is now SharePoint based.

Again, since this is a LAB environment, I install SharePoint and the Self-Service-Portal on my Service Manager management server. In a production environment you should carefully plan your deployment and place the SharePoint server somewhere near your users.

Part 1: Installing SharePoint Foundation 2010 (which is Free!)

You can download SharePoint 2010 Foundation from here: http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=5970

SP1 for SharePoint 2010 can be found here: http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=26640

On my Service Manager management server, I start the SharePoint installation and select “Install software prerequisites”:

The nice thing about the installer is that it takes care of all requirements (like IIS, SQL components, etc.):

Accept the license agreement:

And let the installer do its magic:

After that you might need to restart the machine before you can go ahead and install SharePoint Foundation:

Again, a license agreement:

Next screen asks us for the installation type we want:

We select “Standalone” which immediately starts the installation process:

After the installation is complete, keep the checkbox ticked to start the configuration wizard:

The wizard will start in a new window and after clicking Next, you may be asked to restart the services in order to continue:

Didn’t do much but after a while you get:

After you click on Finish, the SharePoint site should open up in your browser.

Before we go ahead and install the Service Manager components, let us apply SP1 for SharePoint Foundation. Start sp1 .exe, accept the license agreement to apply the service pack:

Part 2: Installing the Service Manager Web Portal

Once again, start the Service Manager 2012 setup.exe and select Service Manager web portal:

The first thing we get asked by the wizard is which Portal Parts we want to install:

The web content server is the “middle-tier” between your service manager installation and the SharePoint front-end server. I guess calling it Web Portal Application server would have been a better name (at least for my understanding).

The SharePoint Web Parts are the “front-end” parts you need to install on top of SharePoint. Since we are installing a very compact lab environment, we choose to install both and click on Next:

And another license agreement. We leave the installation location with the default values:

The Prerequisites checker looks fine:

The next screen allows us to configure the portal web site:

Note: I enabled SSL and used the default self-signed certificate of my windows server.

Enter the database server name and select the Service Manager database in the next screen:

Once again we get warned that we use an unsupported collation:

Configure the self-service portal user account:

The next screen will create a SharePoint portal site for the Service Manager self-service portal:

On the next screen we need to setup the user account used for the application pool:

The next two screens are about the Customer Experience Program and the summary page. After that the installation starts and once finished you should see something like this:

Ok, so everything is installed but if you’ve installed it the same way I have, you will soon find out that the Service Manager portal is blank and not working. I will publish another blog post, showing you how to resolve the issue.

cheers,
Stefan

http://www.code4ward.net