What's New in SquaredUp DS for SCOM

What's New in v6.3

SquaredUp DS for SCOM v6.3 includes the following new features:

• New Markdown tile
• Alert tile new Scalar visualization
• Scheduled maintenance mode
• EA management pack descriptions
• Tear-off tiles

New Markdown tile

A new Markdown tile has been added which allows you to add richer content to your dashboards such as links, lists, images and more! You can add Markdown tiles to any dashboard or perspective.

The tile supports "basic" Markdown syntax, see the Markdown guide for reference.

Select the Markdown icon to start configuring the tile.

For examples see Markdown tile.

Alert tile scalar visualization

A new Scalar tile type has been added to the Alert tile, allowing you to display the number of alerts as text.

Likewise, the scalar settings can also be configured, including setting the color for the visualization.

After saving the tile, you can click the scalar number visualization to display a list of the alert objects.

For more information see: Alerts tile

Scheduled Maintenance Mode

SCOM Maintenance mode allows you to set a SCOM object to a suppressed state, allowing you to complete work on the object without additional alerts and errors being generated.

Previously, while SCOM supported both active and scheduled maintenance modes, SquaredUp only supported active maintenance mode.

Now, this feature has been expanded with the introduction of scheduled maintenance mode in SquaredUp - giving you the ability to set a start time and duration to place objects in maintenance mode and bringing the functionality in line with SCOM.

Scheduled maintenance is managed through several new maintenance windows accessed via various object drilldowns in the product.

New features include:

• Creating new windows
• Editing existing windows
• Ending existing windows
• Creating new schedules
• Editing existing schedules
• Enabling / disabling existing schedules
• Deleting existing schedules

When you click the Maintenance mode button on an object drilldown, the following window displays:

Active maintenance

The Active section of the Maintenance Mode window displays your active maintenance instances for the object.

Click the New button in this section to display the New Maintenance Mode window, where you can create a non-scheduled maintenance instance.

The Schedules section of the Maintenance Mode window displays your scheduled maintenance instances for the object.

Click the New button in this section to display the New Schedule window, where you can create a scheduled maintenance instance. When defining a maintenance schedule, you can set options such as the start date, start time and frequency for when maintenance mode is active.

Additionally, a Scheduled Maintenance tab has been added to the System page, which displays all of your created maintenance schedules and allows you to Edit or Disable them as required.

EA management pack descriptions

You can now add a description to a management pack during Enterprise Application creation, bringing them in line with SCOM functionality. These descriptions can be viewed on the EAM tab of the System page.

Tear-off tiles

You can now click the new Copy an Open Access URL button for an individual tile (that has open access enabled) and then render that tile in the browser when the URL is visited. The URL can also be pasted into the URL field of the Edit embed tile window to render that tile elsewhere in the application.

Additionally, this feature allows URLs for individual tiles to be copied and pasted into iframe tiles or similar in SquaredUp Cloud or some other custom intranet application.

For more information see: How to share an individual tile (Tear off tiles)

Download now & more information

To get started see How to install SquaredUp DS for SCOM.

Get the latest version of SquaredUp DS for SCOM

Read the Release Notes for SquaredUp DS for SCOM for details on other improvements in this release.

If you have an earlier version of DS for SCOM already installed, then the installer will upgrade your installation, see How to upgrade SquaredUp DS for SCOM

What's New in v6.2

SquaredUp DS for SCOM v6.2 includes the following new features:

• Matrix tile improvements:
  • Matrix tile persisting column sorting
  • Matrix cell tile type for scalar performance
• Alerts tile improvements:
  • Alerts tile new Task buttons
  • Alert donut custom grouping
  • Alerts donut sort panel
  • Bulk update alert ticket IDs without drilling down
  • Automatically assign hyperlink to alert Alert tile ticket ID
  • Alerts tile diagnostic row visualisation
• Donut drilldown improvements
• Tile fullscreen mode
• Ability to rename providers

Matrix Tile Improvements

Matrix tile persistent column sorting

You can sort the data in Matrix tiles by column by clicking the corresponding column heading. However, previously this sorting order was reset whenever you reloaded the tile or page, meaning you had to re-sort the tile each time you navigated away.

Now, the column sort order of Matrix tiles is persistent, so that the sorting order is retained whenever you reload the page or tile.

Matrix new celltile type of scalar

Matrix tiles allow you to display rows of data with different visualizations in each celltile. These columns can be customized by modifying the predefined row perspective in a JSON editor.

Now, a new scalar celltile type has been added to matrix tiles, which allows you to visualize data as text.

{
        "title": "% Memory Used",
        "_type": "celltile/scalar",
        "config": {
            "source": {
                "objectname": "Memory",
                "countername": "PercentMemoryUsed"
            }
        }
    }

Alerts Tile Improvements

Alerts tile new Task buttons

Previously, to run a task on an alert in SquaredUp you had to select first select an alert from an alerts list, then select the alert, then select the object on the alert before clicking the Task button.

Now, setting a task for an alert object in SquaredUp has been streamlined with the addition of two new Task buttons, added in the following locations:

• The alerts tile, adjacent the alert Description when selecting an object from the list. Click this button to select the execution of a task on a monitored object for the Alert. (SQ-4764)

  

• To the SCOM Alert perspective. Click this button to select the execution of a task on a monitored object for the alert row and inline output / error. (SQ-3198)

  

Alerts donut custom grouping

Previously, only the severity, priority and resolution state properties were exposed on the grouping tab of the alerts donut tile.

Now, the full list of alert grouping properties are available, including the custom alert fields that are provided by System Center Operations Manager.

Alerts donut sort panel

A sort panel has now been added to the alert donut tile, bringing it in line with the rest of the donut tiles in SquaredUp.

Bulk update alert ticket IDs without drilling down

Previously, updating ticket IDs for alerts required you to navigate to an alert's drilldown page, which also meant that ticket IDs could only be updated for one alert at a time.

Now, it is possible to update update ticket IDs for multiple alerts at a time directly from the alerts tile.

To update ticket IDs from the alerts tile, simply select the check box next to the alerts you want to update, then select the update ticket id option and enter the ticket ID below.

Automatically assign hyperlink to alert Alert tile ticket ID

Now, when an external ticket hyperlink is configuredthe corresponding alert's ticket ID is automatically hyperlinked in the Alert list tile TicketId column and the alert donut / heatmap drilldown pages.

Alerts tile diagnostic row visualisation

A new diagnostics row visualization has been added to the alerts tile donut and heatmap, which displays in the Monitored Object section when expanding the alert detail.

Donut drilldown improvements

Clicking the centre (total) value on SCOM Alert, SCOM Status and ServiceNow Donut tiles now takes you to a drilldown page of all objects or alerts (for SCOM Status and Alerts donut tiles), or to a list of all incidents / change requests in the ServiceNow portal for ServiceNow donut tiles.

Tile fullscreen mode

You can now view tiles in fullscreen mode by clicking the new Full-screen view button, which is displayed when hovering on a tile.

Clicking this button opens a copy of the tile in a larger window, providing you with a clearer sized view of an otherwise small tile area.

To exit fullscreen mode, do one of the following:

• Click the Close button in the top-right of the window.
• Press the ESC key
• Press the TAB + ENTER keys.

Export tile data

Additionally, a new Export to Excel button has been added to the top-right of the fullscreen mode window for supported tiles. Click this button to export the data for the expanded tile to a Microsoft Excel document.

Rename providers

Providers contain the connection details to external platforms and are maintained in ☰ > system > Integrations.

Previously, if you wanted to rename a provider it had to be deleted and then a new one had to be created with a new name.

Now, you can rename a provider by simply selecting it on the Integrations page and editing the name field.

What's New in v6.1

SquaredUp DS for SCOM v6.1 includes the following new features:

• 24-hour time format option
• Trend lines in time-series graphs
• EAM-X alert description improvements
• Undo/redo for draft dashboard editing
• Performance drill-down page improvements
• Many more improvements

24 hour time format option

Previously, times were only displayed using a 12 hour clock format (for example, 9AM, 12PM, 1PM etc.). Now, you can choose to display times across the application in a 24 hour format (for example, 9:00, 21:00, 13:00 etc.), giving you greater flexibility in how you present your data.

Trend lines in time-series graphs

You now have the ability to display trend lines in time-series graphs across the application, enhancing your ability to analyze changes across your data. This feature can be toggled at tile-level on the display panel in the tile's configuration settings.

EAM-X alert description improvements

Alert descriptions have been improved to give the customer more context on what has gone wrong, without always needing to drill into SquaredUp DS for SCOM cloud to see more (for example, alerts can now pass through the actual error messages and information on breached thresholds).

Undo / redo option when editing dashboard drafts

Undo / Redo buttons have been added to the dashboard edit view. Whenever you make a change, you can now use these buttons to step back and forward through the changes you make.

Performance drill-down page improvements

The Performance tile drill down view also benefits from the enhancements brought by the addition of Trend lines in time-series graphs. If enabled at the tile-level, trend lines are shown on the drill down. Trend lines can now also be toggled locally from within the drill down via the new Trends option in the Settings panel, however this option is not persisted when leaving the drill down view.

Similarly, you can now also select to display horizontal lines across your graphs to now the maximum, minimum, and average values for that data. These lines can be toggled via the new max, min and avg options.

New Data Rangeoptions have also been added to the Settings panel of the drill down, which let you refine the y axis of the graph for each drill down session. As with the newTrends option, this setting is local to the drill down view and is not persistent.

Additionally, where previously selecting the CUSTOM time-series option would display the custom time field under the ribbon and push the graph down, this field now appears adjacent to the CUSTOMoption when selected so that the graph is not disturbed.

Auditing improvements

The auditing feature has been enhanced with the following features that improve the user experience:

• You now have the ability to filter folders.
• You can now filter on multiple types of event at the same time (for example, Dashboard moved + Team Folders modified).
• Previously, you had to scope via the filter pane before any results displayed. Now, auditing events from the last 24 hours now loaded by default.

Scalar tile text alignment

An Alignment option has been added to the Scalar tile settings, allowing you to select whether you want the scalar text to be left-aligned, centered or right-aligned.

Number formatting options

Previously, only the "Si units" number format was supported. Now, decimal number format support has been added for small units and separator format support has been added for large units.

This enhancement allows you to present metrics very common to infrastructure monitoring in a familiar format. For example, without the separation feature for large numbers a disk space value of 74200mb was displayed as 7.42k - which made little sense to an infrastructure engineer.

Many more enhancements

• VADA: performance improvements in Analyze mode
• Initial page size / speed load improvements

See Release Notes for SquaredUp DS for SCOM

What's New in v6.0

SquaredUp DS for SCOM v6.0 includes the following new features:

• Auditing user actions
• SolarWinds Orion integration
• Prometheus integration
• Many more enhancements

Auditing user actions

Up until now, there have been no auditing capabilities within SquaredUp DS itself meaning it isn’t possible to see how users are interacting with SquaredUp DS. From this release a SquaredUp DS administrator will be able to setup a SQL Server (2016 or higher) database to audit events relating to:

• License
• Provider
• Connections
• PowerShell Profile
• PowerShell RunAs
• Authentication
• Named user
• Dashboard
• Perspective
• Folder
• Team Folder
• Nav bar changes
• Enterprise Application
• Recycle bin
• Audit itself

These new capabilities allow for a greater level of security, help companies meet compliance goals and allow a SquaredUp DS administrator to better understand which dashboards are stale and no longer in use. See our Auditing documentation for full details of what is possible.

SolarWinds Orion Integration

SolarWinds is one of the most widely used monitoring tools alongside SCOM, our customers have wanted to visualize data from it for some time along side their data from SCOM. We have built a native integration that utilizes SolarWinds Query Language (SWQL) to query the data to be displayed using any of these visualizations:

• Scalar
• Grid
• Line graph
• Column graph
• Sparklines
• Bar graph
• Donut
• Status icons
• Status block
• Date heatmap

See How to use the SolarWinds tile

Prometheus Integration

Prometheus is a timeseries observability tool and is commonly used to monitor Prometheus. Our native integration takes your PromQL query to present the data returned using any of these visualizations:

• Scalar
• Grid
• Line graph
• Column graph
• Sparklines
• Bar graph
• Donut
• Date heatmap

See How to use the Prometheus tile

Many more enhancements

• Date Heatmap: add aggregation options for Web API, SQL, SolarWinds and PowerShell tiles
• SquaredUp Cloud aligned color pallet and styling
• New Column Graph visualization: Time series data as bar graphs

See Release Notes for SquaredUp DS for SCOM

Older Versions

• What's New in DS for SCOM v5
• What's New in DS for SCOM v4

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