SCOM 2007: Dashboards in a couple of clicks

I guess I am a dashboard kind of girl. Not quite sure if it is out of necessity or out of pure insanity, but I kind of like creating dashboards, but then more and more of our customers are demanding them. I wrote some custom dashboards from scratch for both MOM and SCOM, but with the release of Visio 2010, and the handy plug-in from Visio Toolbox, anyone can now create dashboards with a couple of clicks and I can hopefully reclaim some of my spare time.

You will need:

• Visio 2010 (beta available here for download)
• The plug-in, obviously
• The SCOM console

All installed on the same machine.

So, fire up Visio and head on over to the Operations Manager tab. Click the configure button to connect with your RMS server. Great, now you’re ready to start building.

First, create yourself a couple of shapes. I would suggest starting off with a couple of basic shapes, until you get the hang of it. You can also insert shapes from the OpsMgr tab.

If you have created a blank shape, select this shape, and then select Link Shape from the OpsMgr tab.

You can choose from several options:

So, for this example, I exported a diagram view of our home environment from SCOM, like this:

In the Authoring section of the console, select groups. The find the All Windows Computers group, right click, select View Diagram. Arrange and expand the diagram, and then click the To Visio button.

Open the diagram in Visio, and now link each of the objects in the diagram using the Link Shape button. You can apply themes and backgrounds as usual, and then click File, Save As.

Choose your web site location, then select Web Page from the file type drop down and click Publish.

You will have several publishing options to choose from. If you are creating the dashboard for display in your office on a large display, you may want to note the additional display options under the advanced tab. Here you will also have the ability to choose a page to host the output and a theme to apply.

One you click OK, you should now be able to view the page in your browser.