Stop SCOM alerts from being ignored

Having trouble getting traction with alerts raised by System Center Operation Manager? You can increase the benefit from SCOM Alerts by combining them with ITIL and your companies' processes. We've got a couple of ideas below, one of which we've already made and is ready to use!

Depending on how support, ticketing and ownership are driven in your organisation, the amount of action taken when a SCOM alert is raised can vary. Our recommendation is to tie these alerts closer to the ITIL processes; creating some clear advantages:

• Teams can get their 'To-Do' work items from a single source

• KPI tracking can include SCOM Alerts

• Inter-Team and Intra-Team visibility reduces missed items

• Alerts with no value get disabled!

There is two options for a SCOM Alert; Take action or Disable it! Ignorance isn't an option.

SCOM Admins Everywhere

Alerts with no value get disabled? I hear you ask quietly...let me explain. Once management has the ability to track; how many tickets are opened, how long they stay open and when they get closed, SCOM Alerts emerge from the dark. Once there is visibility on these alerts, the teams responsible need to either fix them or disable the alert. Ignoring the tickets and letting them sit in the queue just won't do!

Let's get started with ITSM and ITIL

If your company uses ServiceNow I'm excited to say that we at Cookdown have been working hard and are pleased to share our ServiceNow Alert Connector.

Hey, I don't have ServiceNow, what about me? Never fear, we don't have a feature-rich and tested product for you, but we've got a blog post on getting your alerts to JSON and posting them to a REST endpoint. Check it out here.