One of the new features in FIM 2010 R2 is built-in Reporting support. During the installation, we discussed the need for System Center Service Manager 2010 in order for Reporting to work.
Once you have managed to install and configure the SCSM environment, using the built-in Reporting feature is quite easy.
In this chapter, we will discuss the following:
Verifying the SCSM setup
Default reports
The SCSM ETL process
Looking at reports
Modifying the reports
I usually start by looking at the SCSM Management Console and verify that the FIM settings are there. In Chapter 3, Installation, I showed you how to install the SCSM infrastructure. If you have an existing SCSM 2010 deployment that you are using, don't forget the post-installation step to run the FIM Post Install scripts for data warehouse.
On the FIM Service server, where you have installed the FIM Reporting feature, start the System Center Service Manager console. It will ask you to connect to your SCSM Management Server:
What usually happens (but not all the time) is that you will find that the Reporting node is missing in the navigation pane, as shown in the following screenshot:
Don't worry! It just takes some time. On occasion, you might also need to restart the SCSM Management console for it to appear. I have not yet figured out what causes this issue. A few forums on the Internet are debating the cause, but so far no clear answer can be found.
But finally...
The FIM Reporting service automatically installs management packs to create a number of reports. At http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj133843, the default reports are described, but I have the information copied here for your convenience:
Group Membership Change report: This report provides key information about group membership modifications in FIM, including the user account that approved the group change, the type of change, and any related requests or policy rules related to this change.
Set Membership Change report: This report provides key information about set membership modifications in FIM, including account information about the user who joined or left a set, approvers (if any), and any related requests or policy rules related to this change.
Group History report: This report provides information about changes to key attributes on group resources in FIM, including group filter, owner, type, domain, and membership.
The Extract, Transform and Load (ETL) process refreshes the data in the warehouse. This is logically a sequential flow of data:
The Extract job acquires data from registered management servers
The Transform job optimizes the data for reporting needs and shapes the data according to the defined business rules
The Load job populates the data mart for long-term retention and access
Our problem is that there will be no data in our reports until the ETL process has done its job. If you would like to speed up that process, you can save and run the following PowerShell script on your FIM Service server:
if (@(get-pssnapin | where-object {$_.Name -eq "SMCmdletSnapIn"} ).count -eq 0)
{
Add-PSSnapin SMCmdletSnapIn
}
$dwMachine = "SCSM-DW"
Function WaitForId($id)
{
Write-Host ("Waiting on the job " + $id)
do
{
$job = Get-SCDWJob -ComputerName $dwMachine -JobBatchId $id
...There are several ways of looking at the FIM reports . You can use the SCSM Management console, but you can also use the web interface of SQL Reporting Services.
Using the SCSM Management console (from the FIM Service server, for example) is a means for you, as an administrator, to verify if everything looks okay.
It is not uncommon for the reports to be empty, with the message, There is no data available for this report.. This is due to the fact that, by default, the reports show data of the last three days.
What you need to do is expand the Parameter section at the top of the console, and modify it to match your needs. Once you have done that, you can click Run Report in the Tasks pane to regenerate the report:
The aforementioned example shows a report filtered to show all events regarding the Owner attribute of the group, with the display name IT.
Another way to do this is to use the web interface of Reporting Services. This would typically be the way normal users would...
While FIM 2010 R2 provides reports based on the default FIM schema, you can also extend FIM Reporting to accommodate custom resources and attributes that you have created in the FIM schema, or customize the way the reports are displayed.
For detailed guidance on extending FIM Reporting, see http://aka.ms/FIMReporting.
As mentioned earlier, the FIM Reporting service automatically installs several SCSM management packs to define the default FIM schema and reports. Once you have modified the FIM schema with new resources or attributes, you will need to create another management pack, so that SCSM is aware of the new resources.
The following is a summary of this process from the TechNet article at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj133861. It outlines the general process of extending FIM Reporting:
Create a new Schema management pack for SCSM, which contains definitions for the new schema elements.
Create a new FIM Reporting Binding file. A FIM Reporting Binding...
The FIM Reporting feature is a great way of tracking historical events relating to your FIM objects. But the setup dependency using the SCSM functionality for Data Warehousing and Reporting makes it hard to troubleshoot and get set up correctly the first time.
The use of standard SQL Server Reporting Services does, however, make it very easy to make your own custom reports and also to granularly define permissions around your reports.
We mentioned that we need to give John a way of finding his reports easily. One way would be to give him a link to the FIM Portal page. This and other FIM Portal modifications, I will show you in the next chapter.
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