Customizing The Winuser Console (SP5)

WooHoo! Looks like Helpdesk pro David Falcon spent his holiday break customizing his company's helpdesk. If you've ever wanted to "tune" the forms in your helpdesk or just add your company logo to its pages, read on to follow David's lead.

Much of the documentation currently published on Helpdesk customizations refers to previous versions of Helpdesk. This documentation will discuss the steps necessary to perform customizations to Altiris Helpdesk SP5.

If you have installed SP5, you will notice that there are some changes to the interface. In this document I will discuss some of the common customizations that can be performed.

The first difference you will probably notice is in the winuser console. On the left hand side, you will find a "common requests" section that was not in previous versions of Helpdesk.

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Changing the Page Title

We will start out by changing the My Helpdesk Console title at the top of the page. To do this, we will overwrite the "sidMyHD" string's default value.

If you have not created a custom.config file yet, do this before proceeding. Utilizing a custom.config is considered best practice and will protect customizations from being overwritten by product updates. For the purposes of this example, will be creating a custom.config file and place it in the root of the AeXHD folder.

Begin by going to your AeXHD folder.

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Next, create a file named custom.config

In it, follow this format and paste this text into it. (Modify the Bay Dynamics Service Desk Console with your desired text.)

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<custom.configuration>

 <strings>
 <string id="sidMyHD">Bay Dynamics Service Desk Console</string>
 </strings>

</custom.configuration>

Save the file and restart IIS. You will now see the customized title.

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Adding a Custom Logo

Now, we will add a customized logo into the title section of the console.

This portion is defined in the Banner.ascx file. We will want to make changes the Banner.ascx; however, we DO NOT want to modify the original file. Following Altiris' best practice, create a folder named custom within the AeXHD folder.

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Now go into the ..AeXHD\Presentations folder and copy the Banner.ascx file.

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Take that file, paste it into your custom folder, rename the file to CustomBanner.ascx, and remove the read-only attribute from the file.

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Now within your custom folder, create a folder named "images."

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Within the images folder place the graphic of the icon you want to use. I have had best experience with .png files. For the purposes of this document, I will use a gif file.

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Now, return to your custom folder and open the CustomBanner.ascx file. Search for Label id="lblTitle" as you see below. Add the image above this line, but using an <img src> tag as seen below.

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Save the new CustomBanner.ascx file and exit.

We must now tell Altiris Helpdesk to use this file instead of the original. We will do this in the custom.config.

Now, use the text below as your custom.config. Notice we are adding to the custom.config we created earlier. Save the file and restart IIS.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<custom.configuration>

 <strings>
 <string id="sidMyHD">Bay Dynamics Service Desk Console</string>
 </strings>
 
 <presentations path="~/custom/">
 <presentation name="Banner" file="CustomBanner.ascx"/>
 </presentations>
 
</custom.configuration>

You will now see the graphic in the title section.

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Understanding Requests

Even though this is not considered a console customization, we will look at the common requests and the Employee Requests and explain how they work. Basically, the common requests are tasks. Unlike previous versions of Helpdesk, when you create a task, you have the ability to place the task in the incident so that it can be invoked or you can place it in the service catalog.

First, we will look at the employee requests section. This portion of the service catalog is visible because it contains active tasks. We will add a task to the manager section so that it appears.

To gain an understanding of the out-of-the-box service categories, go to Admin > Service Categories > Manage Service Categories.

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You will notice many out of the box categories. I am only referring to this section so that you can gain an understanding of the structure. You can create additional categories if you desire; however, you cannot delete them - you will need to set them to Inactive.

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Now, go to Admin > Tasks > List Tasks

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Begin by creating a New Task. Below are the values I am specifying in my task.

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The name of the task will be displayed as a hyperlink and the comment will be a descriptive listing under the hyperlink. The Service Category dropdown specifies under which category this will appear. We will use Manager Requests for this demo.

The checkbox "Include this task in the Common Service Category" provides the option for this task to appear under the common requests section. We will not check this box for this demonstration.

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The "visible to guests" checkbox provides the option for the task to be available to end-users. The rest of the options are the same as the previous way of creating tasks.

Click OK to save the task.

The Manager Requests section is now visible.

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Now click on the Manager Requests Link; you will see the task we just created:

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Clicking on the task will populate an incident with the data we specified when we created the task.

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Before we proceed, we will add a common request so that we can see how it will look. Below I have created a task to order new toner. Notice the checkbox, "Include this task in the Common Service Request Category."

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By checking the "Include this task in the Common Service Request Category" checkbox, the task now appears under common requests. Notice the Order New Toner Link below.

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Clicking on the link gives you:

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Now that we have briefly touched on the service categories, let's dive into the new incident screen.

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Modifying the Incident Screen

Below is the out-of-the-box new incident screen. As a brief demo, I will show you how to hide unwanted fields, add a dropdown list, and a scalar field.

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Those who have customized previous versions of Helpdesk will see a few major changes at this time. Mainly, instead of using the ConsoleMyHD template for creating a new incident, the new incident portion is now located in ConsoleMyHDEditItem.ascx file.

Begin by making a copy of the ConsoleMyHDEditItem.ascx file and place it in your custom folder. Again, rename it to CustomConsoleMyHDEditItem.ascx and remove the read-only attribute.

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Now, go into your custom.config and add the new file mapping. I have included my custom.config below. Notice I have added to the previously created field and have not created a new file.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<custom.configuration>
 
 <files path="~/custom/">
 <file id="ConsoleMyHDEditItem" file="CustomConsoleMyHDEditItem.ascx"/>
 </files>

 <strings>
 <string id="sidMyHD">Bay Dynamics Service Desk Console</string>
 </strings>
 
 <presentations path="~/custom/">
 <presentation name="Banner" file="CustomBanner.ascx"/>
 </presentations>
 
</custom.configuration>

Once you have modified the custom.config, save it and restart IIS.

Hiding the Priority Field

In our first example, we will hide the priority field. Go into your CustomConsoleMyHDEditItem.ascx file. One thing to keep in mind: there are multiple page views within this template. For example, one page is to edit and incident while another is to view it. Make sure you modify each page view or the page will not be consistent. For this example, search for every instance of priority in the controls and add a visible = "false" tag to it. I always place a comment line above the line I am modifying so that I can easily see what I have modified. Each instance is displayed below:

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Save your template file. Your changes should now be visible. (Note: You only need to restart IIS if you are making a change to one of your .config files.)

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Adding a Scalar Field

We will now add a scalar field to this winuser console. A scalar field is simply a text box.

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In the below example, I am only showing screenshots of the SQL used to create the scalar field. Because of formatting issues with word and pdf files, it is better to type in the queries instead of using copy and paste so you do not run into problems with formatting.

Each query example is taken from the product guide. For the scalar field in this example, we will add "Application."

Step 1

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Step 2

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Step 3

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Step 4

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Step 5

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Step 6

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We are now done with the SQL portion of the scalar field. Before we go to on to the modifying the CustomConsoleMyHDEditItem.ascx, we will specify the application label value in out custom.config file as a string. This will ensure consistency.

Begin by going to out custom.config and adding an entry. I have included the custom.config below - notice the string entry for application.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<custom.configuration>
 
 <files path="~/custom/">
 <file id="ConsoleMyHDEditItem" file="CustomConsoleMyHDEditItem.ascx"/>
 </files>

 <strings>
 <string id="sidMyHD">Bay Dynamics Service Desk Console</string>
 <string id="sidLblApplication">Application Name: </string>
 </strings>
 
 <presentations path="~/custom/">
 <presentation name="Banner" file="CustomBanner.ascx"/>
 </presentations>
 
</custom.configuration>

Make your modifications and save the custom.config. Since we modified the custom.config, restart IIS.

Adding Controls

We will now add the necessary controls into our ConsoleMyHDEditItem.ascx template file.

Begin by deciding where you want to place the control. I am placing it where the priority field used to be:

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Actual text:

<aw:TextBox id="tbApplication" runat="server" ItemDataField="workitem_application" ColSpan="1" Label="sidLblApplication"></aw:TextBox>

The sidLblApplication is the string we defined earlier in our custom.config.

Do not forget to add this field to each page view where you want it to be visible. Since the remaining page views are for existing incidents, I will not make them editable. We will use a label instead of a TextBox to make this happen.

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Actual Text:

<aw:Label id="lblApplication" runat="server" ItemDataField="workitem_application" label="sidLblApplication"></aw:Label>

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Actual Text:

<aw:Label id="lblApplication2" runat="server" ItemDataField="workitem_application" label="sidLblApplication"></aw:Label>

Screenshots of our customizations have been included:

(Blank new incident screen)

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(Populated for submission)

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View Incident Screen

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Edit existing incident screen.

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Adding a Lookup Field to the Winuser Console

We will now add a lookup field to the winuser console. For this example, I will add regions. We will begin with the SQL portion, and again, I am not pasting text because of difficulty I have had with pasting into SQL. Screenshots have been posted below. Refer to the product guide for the logic behind the steps taken.

Step 1

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Step 2

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Step 3

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Step 4

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Step 5

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Step 6

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Step 7

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The SQL portion is now complete. Instead of listing a long list of lookup values, I only did two. For an easy way to maintain the lookup list without touching SQL, please see another article I wrote on how to do this here:
http://www.symantec.com/community/node/2285

Once again, go into the custom.config and define the region label. I have included my custom.config below:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<custom.configuration>
 
 <files path="~/custom/">
 <file id="ConsoleMyHDEditItem" file="CustomConsoleMyHDEditItem.ascx"/>
 </files>

 <strings>
 <string id="sidMyHD">Bay Dynamics Service Desk Console</string>
 <string id="sidLblApplication">Application Name: </string>
 <string id="sidLblRegion">Region: </string>
 </strings>
 
 <presentations path="~/custom/">
 <presentation name="Banner" file="CustomBanner.ascx"/>
 </presentations>
 
</custom.configuration>

Once you make this change, save the custom.config and restart IIS.

We are now ready to make the changes to our CustomConsoleMyHDEditItem.ascx file - go ahead and open the file. Since this is a lookup list, we must define a datastore before the lookup list will function properly.

Begin by adding the "Regions" datastore as listed below.

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The ListDataSet must match the query we specified in the final SQL step we performed above.

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Now that the datastore has been created, we can now add the controls.

I decided to add the region directly before the application.

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Actual text:

<aw:DropDownList id="ddlRegion" runat="server" ItemDataField="workitem_region_lookup_id" colspan="1" Label="sidLblRegion" DataTextField="value" DataValueField="id" DataSourceName="Regions" currentValue="False"></aw:DropDownList>

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Actual Text:

<aw:Label id="lblRegion" runat="server" ItemDataField="workitem_region_lookup_value" label="sidLblRegion"></aw:Label>

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Actual Text:

<aw:DropDownList id="ddlRegion2" runat="server" ItemDataField="workitem_region_lookup_id" colspan="1" Label="sidLblRegion" DataTextField="value" DataValueField="id" DataSourceName="Regions" currentValue="False"></aw:DropDownList>

For the final dropdown list, I had the option of defining it as it a label which would have made the field read-only, or in this case, I left it as a dropdown list type control so that it can be modified.

Below are the various screenshots.

New Incidents

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View Incidents

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Edit existing incidents (Notice how you can still modify the region)

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Conclusion

This concludes this document for customizing the latest winuser console. In my next article, I will try to explore the service catalog in depth and demonstrate some practical examples.