Another project released. TechMagic is designed to provide engineers with a license free way of viewing incidents, work orders, purchase requests, problems and change requests assigned to themselves or a member of a group they belong to held in the BMC Service Desk Express database.
As with all my projects they are completely free. Any feedback would, as always, be greatly appreciated.
JOATIT 
I have tried installing your TechMagic looks like it could help us greatly.
I keep gettting error on Development box.
Failed to execute request because the App-Domain could not be created. Error: 0x80131522
I am not a programmer. I have reinstalled .net 2.0.50727.0
Hi Mary,
I am guessing that you are running Service Desk Express v9.0 – 9.2 and you’ve installed TechMagic on the same box. There is NO issue with doing this but you may need to create an additional Application Pool and link TechMagic with it. Try this, followed by an IISRESET and let me know how you get on.
Regards,
Alan
I just installed your Tech Magic app and it is great! My only question is can you make it auto-login? Or if its supposed to already, how do you make it work? Keep coding these great tools.
Hi drummachine24,
First off – many thanks for the praise – always greatfully received 🙂
With regards Auto-Login I am assuming that you are refering to Windows Integrated Authentication and in which case this is fully supported:
1) Check the website in IIS configured to use Windows Authentication only.
2) Check the authentication mode in the web.config = “Windows”.
3) Check you have specified your SYSADMINPWD in the web.config file.
4) Check that in Service Desk Express the WinUserID field (not on the Support Staff form by default) set to DomainUsername for each member of staff.
Hope this helps.
Regards,
Alan
Thanks for replying back Alan! Everything looks in order except the WinUserID on the Support Staff form – Will I need to add the field to the form via Customization wizard before I can populate the field? I would assume yes. I know I hadn’t imported anything to that field via the integration engine.
I’m going to look at it right now.
Thanks again,
Josh
Hey Alan, I just remembered something I wanted to ask – Might there be a way of adding the ability to view all tickets, not just ones assinged to the staff member or the group the member is in? Since it doesn’t use a license AND doesn’t follow the same session time-out as SDE, I’d like to use it as the Help Desk’s dashboard, so they can see all the tickets. What would be cool to is a way to view by status. I know I may be asking too much, but it never hurts to ask 🙂
Thanks!
Josh
Forget what I said about status – Tis already there – 🙂
Hi Josh,
You don’t necessarily have to add the field to the form as you could populate the field via a SQL script or something. However, personally I would add it. As I said, it needs to be in the format DomainUserName.
Re the HelpDesk’s dashboard a simple workaround would be to create a helpdesk user and assign that user to all groups. Then you can log in as that user (by specifying the domain account in the WINUSERID field) and you will see all calls.
Regards,
Alan
Alan,
Good call, I didn’t think about just adding a user added to all groups.
Again, I appreciate it, and keep up the fantastic work!
Hey Alan,
Hey dude, quick question. I brought your Tech Magic to my management and staff and they love it, but they asked to have me come to you and see if there is a way we can add that feature I asked earlier of being able to see all tickets assigned to all groups without using a generica account. Might you be willing to write in a part that gives like a checkbox, that if a staff member checks it, it queries for all groups, instead of only the groups assinged to the loggeed in user? Its cool if not, as I realize this is a free tool, but any assistance would be awesome.
Thanks again!
josh
Hi Josh,
Sure – this wouldn’t be difficult to do but I will add it in as a feature that can be allowed (i.e. through the configuration of the web.config file) as a significant portion of users would NOT want this as they have their database’s segregated etc. I’ll let you know when I have a version you can test.
Regards,
Alan
Awesome, thank you so very much! I really appreciate it.
Hi Alan,
First off, thanks for TechMagic!
I’m hoping it will become a part of our current SDE 9.7 environment. Unfortunately I’m having difficulties getting it to work. For everyone besides myself (as administrator) no data is displayed. In other words, every other user of the system sees no calls listed. We’re using WIA and I selected the “Default” app pool on installation. I’m sure it’s something I’ve done wrong. Can you point me in the right direction?
Thanks,
Dave
Hi Dave,
Most of the issues are associated with WIA and I think my documentation could do with revisting as soon as I have some time. Can you confirm the following:
1) Check the website in IIS configured to use Windows Authentication only.
2) Check the authentication mode in the web.config = “Windows”.
3) Check you have specified your SYSADMINPWD in the web.config file.
4) Check that in Service Desk Express the WinUserID field (not on the Support Staff form by default) set to DomainUsername for each member of staff.
These are the usual issues so let’s get those out the way first and then we’ll go from there.
Regards,
Alan
Hi Alan,
All 4 things check. They all get in ok, they just don’t see any incidents listed when they have quite a few. I see mine no problem. Unfortunately, no one else does.
Thanks Again,
Dave
Hi Dave,
If there is an error retrieving the data the application would show no records. Are you using DB Segregation as if, for example, a field is removed from the view that is being returned then that user wouldn’t see any records. It might be worth running SQL Profiler against the database with a couple of users and just see if query checks out.
Regards,
Alan
Alan,
Hey man, long time no talk. Its Josh agani (from previous posts). Hey, I have another little tweak that I’d like to see if there is a way to do.
As you know, in Techmagic, if your looking at the incidents and you click on the Work Orders bar, it folds Incidents up so you can no longer see the incidents, only the work orders, and so down the list if you click on Purchase, it folds up everything but Purchase Requests. My question is, how can I change the code to allow all the areas be expanded at the same time?
Any help you can give me would be awesome!
Josh
Hey Josh,
Good to hear from you again. TechMagic is written using the ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit Accordion Control. The accordion control only allows one panel to be expanded at once. You would need to use a series of collapsable panels which would be a significant rework.
I will look into perhaps reworking for this but my guess is it won’t be this month as I have a fair bit on at the moment. Feel free to change yourself as you know all code is open source anyway…
I’ll let you know. Sorry I couldn’t be of more immediate help.
Regards,
Alan
Not a problem Alan, as always, I thank you for replying. I hope things are going well for you. I’ll take a look into the source and see what I can do, but I don’t know much about AJAX.
Anythnig you can come up with in the future would be fantastic!
Talk to ya soon!
Hi,
I installed Techmagic, made all the required changes in the config file as specified. When i enter the username and password, i keep getting the error “Your login attempt was not successful. Please try again.”
Have i missed out on something?..I made all the neccessary changes for the connection string as per my database and server name.
Please help.
thanks.
Hi A.Robinson,
Apologies for the late response as I have been travelling a lot this week. Are you using WIA or normal SQL Autbentication. If you are using WIA take a look at some of the comments above as they are the usual errors. If you are using SQL Authentication, don’t forget to include your DB instance name in the connection string if applicable and also try connecting using the connection string using, for example, the Integration Console, and that will confirm if your connection string is correct.
Let me know how you get along and we will go from there.
Regards,
Alan
Hi Alan,
Great app i must say!!
I just set it up in our Test environment and it’s working as expected so thank you!!
One Question though. Is it possible to add a Whiteboard section to TechMagic? Would it be difficult? Your thoughts and ideas are much appreciated.
Thanks again Alan,
Ryan
Hi Ryan,
Really pleased that you like the app. Adding a Whiteboard section is an excellent idea and essentially very easy to do. With a bit of luck I should be able to do it this weekend and release a new version.
Thanks again for the positive feedback.
Regards,
Alan
Hi Alan,
Great App, works a treat on our 9.8 system. Just a few questions though, is it possible to expand more than one module at a time and also is it possible to change the number of rows displayed when the module is expanded?
Thanks in advance
Regards
Simon
Hi Simon,
Thanks very much for the positive feedback. It is not possible to expand more than one module at a time as I used the AJAX Accordion control which prohibits this. The number of rows is a simply a setting in each of the gridview controls. Below is a URL that might help re this:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa479347.aspx
Hope this helps.
Regards,
Alan