System Center Configuration Manager 2007 : Customizing Configuration Manager Reports (part 3) - Reporting on Custom Data

3. Reporting on Custom Data

With their default settings, ConfigMgr discovery and inventory methods gather a wide variety of data that you can use to report on your environment. If you need additional information about your client systems or discovered AD objects, there is a good chance ConfigMgr can get the data you need. The following sections present examples of customizing AD discovery and hardware inventory to extend your reporting capability.

Reporting on Custom Discovery Data

The Configuration Manager AD discovery methods import information about computers, users, and security groups from the AD database. Each method has a default set of attributes that it retrieves from the directory. You can specify additional attributes you want to include in the AD system discovery and AD user discovery methods. As an example, add the department, telephone number, and title to the AD user discovery method, and then display these attributes in a customized report. Perform the following steps to add attributes to the AD user discovery method:

When the discovery method runs, it generates data discovery record (DDR) files for each object it discovers. When the ConfigMgr Discovery Data Manager (DDM) component processes a DDR containing a new property, the DDM updates the WMI resource class and the site database with the new property. ConfigMgr automatically adds the new property to the appropriate resource view, which makes it available for reporting. The resource view for user data is v_R_User. Having specified the attributes you want in the user resource view, let’s see how to add them to a report.

The Asset Intelligence report category includes a number of reports on user activity, such as the systems, software, and licenses the user has used. Including additional user details might make these reports more useful in understanding who the user is and how to contact them. Figure 6 shows the Hardware 05A – Console users on a specific computer report, which displays all users who have logged on to the machine’s console.

Figure 6. Console users for the computer DABNEY

An abridged version of the SQL statement for this report is as follows:

Select  v_GS_SYSTEM_CONSOLE_USER.SystemConsoleUser0 as [User Name],
...
FROM v_GS_SYSTEM_CONSOLE_USER
INNER JOIN v_R_System_Valid on
v_R_System_Valid.ResourceID =
v_GS_SYSTEM_CONSOLE_USER.ResourceID
...
 WHERE v_R_System_Valid.Netbios_Name0 = @Name
...

To create a report showing details about the users that have logged on to a particular computer, you can clone the Hardware 05A – Console users on a specific computer report and modify the SQL statement as follows:

• In the FROM clause, add the following join to the user resource view.

  INNER JOIN v_R_User U on v_GS_SYSTEM_CONSOLE_USER.SystemConsoleUser0 =
  U.Unique_User_Name0

• In the select list, remove columns you are not interested in and add details from the user resource view. The list of columns added from the user resource view include the telephoneNumber, Department and Title AD attributes added to the AD User Discovery method in Figure 18.33, as follows:

  U.Full_User_Name0 AS [Full Name], U.telephoneNumber0 AS [Telephone],
  U.Department0 AS Department, U.Title0 As Title

Figure 7 displays the modified console users report.

Figure 7. Console users for the computer DABNEY with additional user details

Reporting on Custom Inventory Data

This section demonstrates how to use these additional classes in ConfigMgr reports. The hardware inventory process gathers basic data about each network adapter’s IP configuration by default. Figure 8 displays the IP – Information for a specific computer report for the computer Bluebonnet, which shows the basic network adapter inventory data.

Figure 8. The IP – Information for a specific computer report for Bluebonnet

The next example adds the DNS server and DNS suffix search order to this report. Perform the following steps:

[SMS_Report (FALSE)     ]
    string     DNSDomainSuffixSearchOrder[];
[SMS_Report (FALSE)     ]
    string     DNSServerSearchOrder[];

[SMS_Report (TRUE)     ]
    string     DNSDomainSuffixSearchOrder[];
[SMS_Report (TRUE)     ]
    string     DNSServerSearchOrder[];

This change causes the hardware inventory agent on computers in the site to collect and report the DNS server and DNS domain suffix search order values for each configured network adapter. When the site server processes inventory files containing this information, it appends two new rows to the Network_DATA table in the site database:

• DNSDomainSuffixSearchOrde0

• DNSServerSearchOrder00

Remember that Microsoft bases Configuration Manager reports on SQL views rather than the underlying tables. Here is the SQL statement for the IP – Information for a specific computer report:

Select Sys.Netbios_Name0, NETW.IPAddress0, NETW.DefaultIPGateway0,
NETW.DHCPServer0, NETW.IPSubnet0, NETW.MACAddress0
FROM v_R_System Sys JOIN v_Network_DATA_Serialized NETW ON NETW.ResourceID=Sys.
ResourceID WHERE Sys.Netbios_Name0 like @variable

					  

The FROM statement in the third line above reveals the report uses network information from the view v_Network_DATA_Serialized. Unlike the resource views used to report on discovery data, the inventory views are not updated automatically when you add new attributes to ConfigMgr inventory.

 You can use SQL Server Management Studio to examine and edit the v_Network_DATA_Serialized view. Perform the following steps:

SELECT nd.MachineID As 'ResourceID', nd.InstanceKey As 'GroupID',
nd.RevisionID, nd.AgentID,
  nd.TimeKey As 'TimeStamp', nd.DefaultIPGateway0, nd.DHCPEnabled0,
  nd.DHCPServer00 As 'DHCPServer0', nd.DNSDomain00 As 'DNSDomain0',
  nd.DNSHostName00 As 'DNSHostName0', nd.Index0, ip.SubStr1 As 
  'IPAddress0',
  nd.IPEnabled00 As 'IPEnabled0',ip.SubStr2 as 'IPSubnet0',
  nd.MACAddress0,
  nd.ServiceName0
  FROM Network_DATA as nd
  CROSS APPLY fnSplitStringsAndMerge(nd.IPAddress0, nd.IPSubnet0, ',') as ip

					  

nd.DNSDomainSuffixSearchOrde0, nd.DNSServerSearchOrder00

The v_Network_DATA_Serialized view now includes the DNS domain suffix search order and DNS server configuration information.

To display this information in the IP – Information for a specific computer report, edit the SQL statement for the report and add the DNSDomainSuffixSearchOrde0 and DNSServerSearchOrder00 columns to the SELECT list. You also need to remove NETW.DHCPServer0 from the list. Figure 9 displays the resulting report for the computer Bluebonnet.

Figure 9. The modified IP – Information for a specific computer report for Bluebonnet, including the DNS domain suffix search order and DNS server information

Including External Data Sources in Reports

You undoubtedly have other applications and data stores in your environment that contain information related to your ConfigMgr client systems and other objects in the site database. Although reports linking to external data sources are not strictly ConfigMgr reports in that they are not based exclusively on the ConfigMgr views, linking in external data can be useful for a variety of purposes. This section presents an example of a report that uses data from the v_R_System view and from an external spreadsheet. The example imports the spreadsheet data into the ConfigMgr database. You can also use data in a separate database on a local server or on another SQL Server.

Figure 10 shows a portion of a spreadsheet in which the SCCMUnleashed IT department keeps information about systems in the company data centers.

Figure 10. Sample system data from an IT department spreadsheet

To add the sample data to the Computer information for a specific computer report, perform the following steps:

1.	Open the spreadsheet in Microsoft Excel, then choose File -> Save As from the Excel menu, and save as a file of type text (tab delimited). Save this file as systeminfo.txt.
2.	Open SQL Server Management Studio and connect to the site database server. Expand the Databases node in the Object Explorer (the tree on the left side), right-click the site database, and choose Tasks -> Import Data. This launches the SQL Server Import and Export Wizard.
3.	Click Next on the wizard’s startup page. On the Choose a Data Source page, choose Flat File Source from the data source list box and browse to the location of the saved text file. Click the Column names in the first text row checkbox, and then click Next. Figure 11 shows the Choose a Data Source page with the appropriate options selected. Figure 11. Specifying the data source in the SQL Server Import and Export Wizard
4.	On the next page of the wizard, verify that the row delimiter is {CR}{LF} and Tab {t} is the column delimiter; then click Next.
5.	On the Choose a Destination page, the default options should show the destination as SQL Native Client and the servername and database name for your site database. Verify that the options are correct and click Next.
6.	The Select Source Tables and Views page shows your file mapped to a database table with the same name. Click Next to accept this mapping.
7.	The wizard’s Save and Execute Package page offers options to execute the import immediately to save the data import package. If you plan to update the data in the future, you can use a saved package to import your updated data on demand or on a scheduled basis. After selecting the appropriate options, click Next and then Finish, which completes the wizard.
8.	Expand the Tables node under the site database in the Object Explorer tree. Right-click the newly created table and choose Properties, and then select the Permissions page. Click the Add button and add webreport_approle to the list of users and roles. Check Select in the Grant column of the list of explicit permissions for webreport_approle and click OK. Figure 12 shows the Permissions page for the systeminfo table. Figure 12. The Permissions page for the systeminfo table grants select permission to the webreport_approle role.
9.	Open the Configuration Manager console and navigate to the Reports node. Right-click on the Computer information for a specific computer report, choose Clone, and enter the name for the new report. Name the new report Computer information for a specific computer – extended.
10.	Right-click the new report, choose Properties, and then edit the report’s SQL statement. Locate the following portion of the statement: FROM v_R_System SYS LEFT JOIN v_RA_System_IPAddresses IPAddr on SYS.ResourceID = IPAddr.ResourceID Insert an additional join condition for the systeminfo table. The edited section will be FROM v_R_System SYS LEFT JOIN systeminfo INFO on SYS.Name0 = INFO.[Name] LEFT JOIN v_RA_System_IPAddresses IPAddr on SYS.ResourceID = IPAddr.ResourceID Edit the selection list at the beginning of the SQL statement and replace the following column names: SYS.User_Name0, SYS.User_Domain0, SYS.Resource_Domain_OR_Workgr0, Processor.Manufacturer0, CSYS.Model0 with: INFO.City, INFO.Row, INFO.Rack, INFO.[Business Contact], INFO.[Regulatory Requirements]

Figure 13 shows the Computer information for a specific computer – extended report for the computer DABNEY.

Figure 13. The Computer information for a specific computer – extended report for the computer DABNEY