Use Service Manager to Understand the Business Impact of Change Requests

In essence, System Center 2012 Service Manager is a framework that allows companies to manage reported incidents and problems within the organization. Much like a HelpDesk application where user issues are recorded and maintained throughout the support process, but also a lot more than that. As part of the full System Center 2012 suite, Service Manager can take advantage of automation supplied by the other products in the suite. As a framework, customers can also extend functionality pretty easily through the use of Management Packs, scripts, and custom solutions.  Some 3^rdparty vendors also offer solutions to plug directly into Service Manager to extend functionality without the organization having to waste time and resources to develop it. Cireson is by far the most popular and offers some of the most unique 3^rdparty solutions for Service Manager. You can check them out here: http://www.cireson.com/

From time to time, someone will release an awesome, community-sourced extension for Service Manager. There are various places to locate these, with myITforum.com being the most popular and comprehensive for the System Center products. One specific Service Manager console extension just released and available for download from the TechNet Gallery, is the Impacted Business Services console extension.

The idea behind the released console extension is that Service Manager can filter through the submitted change request and create a report showing which business services would be impacted by the change. For anyone that works in a System Center managed environment, or just in an environment that takes value in understanding the business impact of technology, this type of information is huge.

You can download the new console extension here: SCSM Console Extensions - Impacted Business Services

Christian Booth offers a good write-up about the console extension on the Service Manager Engineering blog here: SCSM Console Extensions - Impacted Business Services