How to Create an SMS Report
Microsoft's System Management Server (SMS) is a tool that manages information technology infrastructure at an enterprise. It maintains records of each entity on the company's intranet, the state it is in, what role it plays and other similar data. The strong value-adding feature of SMS is reports. An SMS report is an essential and helpful tool for a system administrator. Only an administrator has the privilege to create, copy, modify and delete reports. Reports are based on Structured Query Language (SQL), so it follows that the administrator must know SQL. Other users may run existing reports.
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Instructions
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Enable at least one of your SMS site systems as a reporting point. This is the site from where all reporting will be done. It hosts the code for Report Viewer and other reports. More than one reporting point (i.e., site system) may be required to cater to heavy or frequent reporting.
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Point a user group to a specific URL for each reporting point.
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Look through the predefined reports that come with Microsoft System Management Server. One of them may serve your purpose.
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Bring up the SMS Administrator's Console.
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Bring up the Report Viewer from within the Administrator's console to run reports.
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Select the specific reporting point that you want to use (because your current site may not necessarily be a reporting point).
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Create a report by writing an SQL statement and executing it. An SMS report runs against the SMS database for the site, collects data and hands it over to whoever or whatever is running the SQL. In fact, it runs against a set of Microsoft SQL Server views and not directly against tables in the site database. A view is a virtual result set of a combination of selected fields (columns) from one or more database tables that may or may not satisfy a condition. The view acts as a virtual table for the end users to report on.
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Use the Report Viewer from your browser to run reports if you are any user other than one with administrator privileges. You must have the rights to view the objects being reported. Report Viewer is based on a browser. It runs with Microsoft Internet Explorer.
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Use the "Export Object" and "Import Object" wizards to export and import reports, respectively. To export a report, export the report object definitions to Managed Object Format (MOF) files. To import, import the MOF file that contains the report object definitions into the site's SMS database.
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Use the Report Viewer to create a set of reports, which is called a dashboard. It will allow you to view all the reports (i.e., the entire dashboard) in a grid in one window. Note that the reports being added to the dashboard are already created. You can use a dashboard to monitor objects or a subsystem of objects held by the SMS.
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Tips & Warnings
Reports are local to the SMS site. However, a primary site holds system inventory information for child sites. So, a report run on a primary site may include data extracted from child sites.
Predefined reports include the following types: hardware, software, software distribution, metering, updates, network, operating system, SMS site and status messages.
Supplemental reports are created outside of the SMS. They are placed in an assigned folder and are Active Server Pages (ASP). Like all other SMS objects, reports are secured. However, supplemental reports are not secured SMS objects. They can be any file displayable by Internet Explorer (version 5.0 or later) and viewed by anyone.
References
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