Installing SmartCloud Control Desk 7.5.1 Demo Content on ICD 7.6

You can't do it

Use the maxdemo data that comes with the product. Install it initially using these steps:

https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/community/wikis/home?lang=en#!/wiki/Anything%20about%20Tivoli/page/How%20to%20install%20the%20sample%20data%20during%20IBM%20Control%20Desk%207.6%20installation


These steps are supposed to get it installed after the initial install, but I tried twice and failed both times:

http://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/SSLKT6_7.6.0/com.ibm.mam.inswas.doc/mam_install/t_mam_create_maxdemo_postinstall.html

So if you want demo data, which you do in some number of test/dev environments, simply install it at initial install time. It goes very smoothly.

But you can, mainly, with a little work

UPDATE 8/17/2016 

NOTE:THIS WILL ACTUALLY MAKE YOUR SELF SERVICE CENTER UNUSABLE!!!! I don't know why, but it does. Something in the content makes it so that you cannot do anything from the Self Service Center. So ONLY install this data if you have a complete backup of your system (VM snapshots are a wonderful thing).

Additionally, you will have other problems, such as the following error when you try to create a new WORKORDER:
BMXAA4169E - No record found in maxvars table for maxvar WOENABLEREPFAC. Make sure to insert the MAXVAR in the MAXVARS table.

And there's no easy fix. So the demo data will let you play around with a lot of functionality, but the system is pretty unusable for anything else after you install it.

Add an attribute to the TICKET table

You need to add an attribute named RBA_RC to the TICKET table. Its type needs to be ALN and its length set to 50. This attribute no longer exists, but the demo content requires it. You may want to take a different route to solve this problem, but this was the easiest one I could think of.

Remember, after adding this attribute, you need to set Admin Mode to ON, Apply Configuration Changes, then set Admin Mode to OFF.

Download the package

First, you need to download the content pack ZIP file itself from here:

https://www-304.ibm.com/software/brandcatalog/ismlibrary/details?catalog.label=1TW10CO0A

Edit the package

You've got the entire package downloaded, but if you just try to install it, you will fail. So you need to edit the file named Package/ImportPackage.xml within the zip file. You can edit it in vi, Notepad, gedit, etc. - any text editor you want. What you need to do is delete lines 408 through 717 (leaving the last line that reads "</package>"). The reason for this is that the first error when importing was on line 408. I tried de-selecting different options through the GUI, but was not successful. My choice to simply delete these lines was made only after 40-50 other attempts.

After editing the file, add it pack to the zip file.

Define your local content and Install

1. Create an XML file called ContentSource.xml in the C:\temp directory on your Smartcloud Control Desk server system that contains the following text:
   <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
   <catalog infourl="" lastModified="" owner=""
     xmlns:tns="http://www.ibm.com/tivoli/tpae/ContentCatalog"
     xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="ContentCatalog.xsd">
     <catalogItem>
       <version>7.5.1</version>
       <type>mriu</type>
       <name>Enter the name of package</name>
       <description>Enter a description of the package here</description>
       <homepage/>
       <licenseurl/>
       <category>Describe the category of the content</category>
       <url>file:////C:\temp\TestPackage.zip</url>
     </catalogItem>
   </catalog>
2. Edit the name and description and the category according to the content that you are installing. Change the file name in the URL to the name of the content pack zip file.
3. Save the file.
4. Copy the content pack zip file to the C:\temp directory on the server.
5. Go to the ISM Content Installer application: System Configuration>IBM Content Installer.
6. Click the New icon.
7. Enter the location of the ContentSource.xml that you created in step 1 and a description. The file name in our example is:  file:////c:\temp\ContentSource.xml
8. Click Save.
9. Click the newly created content source.
10. Click the download link to install the content.

You've now got a good amount of demo content

You don't have everything from the original content pack, but you've got a lot more than you started with. Good luck.

IBM Control Desk for Service Providers

One of the many features of IBM Control Desk that separates it from the competition is its ability to support Service Providers. It does this by allowing you to secure information on a per-customer basis. For this blog post, I wanted to show a couple of multi-customer scenarios in the product. Specifically, I wanted to show a customer-specific user logging in and only seeing that customer's assets. Additionally, I wanted to show a software license being assigned to that customer-owned asset and how it appears. The screenshots associated with those are shown here:

Create a customer named ACME CORP

Now create a Person who is associated with ACME CORP.

The Cust/Vendor field is farther down on the page.

Now create a user that is associated with that Person.

Now create a Security Group (SP) with any permissions you want, but specify "Authorize Group for Customer on User's Person record". I only granted Read access to the Assets application. And add your user to this group.

Here I'm logged in as the user, and can only see the one asset associated with ACME CORP.

Here I'm viewing the Licenses (SP) application for Adobe Acrobat and see that a license has been allocated to ITAM1010, which is the asset associated with ACME CORP.

Loading the SCCD 7.5.1 Demo Content Package into SCCD (ICD) 7.5.3

This tip is specifically for SCCD 7.5.3.

Problem

When trying to install the SCCD 7.5.1 Content Pack into SCCD 7.5.3, you'll get an error about the column named GMAPSDISTANCEMATRIX. Specifically, the error will state that there is no default value and no values for that column in the data. The first round of errors come from the Data/SCCD_SI_MAPMANAGER.xml file in the content pack. If you manually download the content pack, you can view the file to see that the data it's complaining about really isn't there. And once you fix the errors found in that file, there are other errors.

Workaround

Since this is just demo data on a demo system, I figured it was OK to modify the offending Maximo objects, and the modifications worked to eliminate the error and allow me to go through all of the scenarios. You should be on a demo system, so you should be OK with that stipulation.

To workaround the problem, you need to make two different types of database modifications within Maximo.

First, turn on Admin mode following these instructions:

https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/community/blogs/a9ba1efe-b731-4317-9724-a181d6155e3a/entry/how_to_turn_on_and_turn_off_maximo_admin_mode31?lang=en


Next, you need to mark that the following attributes are NOT required:

BMAPSDISTANCEMATRIX

BMAPSROUTE

BMAPSGEOCODE

GMAPSDISTANCEMATRIX

SPATIALDISTANCEMATRIX

Go To Applications->System Configuration->Platform Configuration->Database Configuration and search for the MAPMANAGER object:

Select the object found and look for the each one of the listed attributes Attribute. You'll need to go to the second page of attributes to find SPATIALDISTANCEMATRIX.

You can then de-select "Required?" flag which will make it a non-required attribute (which corresponds to a column in the database). Once you've done this for the four attributes, click the Save button.

Now open the ASSET object and you need to add an attribute named AMCREW. Go into the ASSET object and add a new row named AMCREW. All of the default values work fine. This attribute won't hold any data - it just needs to be there.

Then go back to "List View" and select "Apply Configuration Changes on the left under "More Actions":

Once the process completes, you should see dialogs similar to the following:

At this point you can successfully install the content pack.

Video - Integrating data with SmartCloud Control Desk (SCCD) using TDI

It's a little old, but still absolutely valid. TSRM is one component of IBM's SCCD offering, and it still has the same architecture that it had in 2008. TDI has some new features, but it still has the same architecture and the process is still the same for integration.