Had an interesting discussion with a client that other day. They were looking to improve the efficiency of the first interaction on a request for a technician in diagnosing potential user issues. One method they perform is a basic connectivity check to the users workstation to eliminate the obvious fault and they wondered if it might be possible to provide this an a button in the GUI for technicians to select.
 
Given ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus has recently introduced custom menu options I thought this might well be feasible. 
To configure a custom menu option on the Actions menu of a request we need to navigate to Admin > Request Custom Menu:
 
 
 
 
 
 
For simplicity I decided to stick with an Action Type of a simple batch file for now but you can also run class script if necessary:
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
You’ll notice that I was able to pass the details of the asset associated with the request using the $ASSET parameter. You could of course pass pretty much any of the parameters of the request in this fashion e.g. $SUBJECT, $PRIORITY. The full instruction I used is as follows:
 
cmd /c connection_test.bat $ASSET
 
The other aspect when configuring a Request Custom Menu item is that you can also choose when to display the action based on Role and template. When you view a request the menu item appears in the Action menu:
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Next it was a case of creating and saving a batch file to perform a basic ping connectivity test on the ServiceDesk Plus server in the
integrationcustom_scripts folder.
 
This is the batch file code I used:
@echo off
if “%1″==”” goto NoAsset

 

%SystemRoot%system32ping.exe -n 3 %1 >nul

 

if errorlevel 1 goto ConnectionFail

 

echo ** TEST OK ** – %1 is available and responding.

 

goto :EOF

 

:ConnectionFail

 

echo xx TEST FAIL xx – %1 is not responding to connection test.
goto :EOF

 

:NoAsset

 

echo No asset assigned to request.

 

goto :EOF

 

 
 
So when you choose the Connection Test menu option from the Actions menu of a request you see the connection test result of the test as a pop-up message:
 
In this case the request had an an associated asset and a successful connection test. However, you notice from the batch file code I also check for a connection fail and also if an asset has not been associated to the request.
 
Please note that if a user has only a single asset associated to them in ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus, such as a workstation, this asset is automatically logged against any request raised against their name:
 
 
This is a work in progress so please use with caution. Going forward I might look to see if I could perhaps automatically update the request automatically with a note when the action is run with the details of the result using an API call.
 
Enjoy!





This article is relevant to:
Service Desk

You may be interested in these other recent articles

Improve Endpoint Security with Endpoint Central: Key Features and Benefits

28 November 2024

Endpoint Central (formerly Desktop Central) has undergone a name change and introduced Endpoint Security to help organisations better safeguard their endpoints. According to a study…

Read more

Latest Updates for ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus Cloud

Discover the latest ServiceDesk Plus Cloud updates, including new features, fixes, and enhancements.

Read more

Latest Updates for ManageEngine Endpoint Central

27 November 2024

Discover the latest Endpoint Central updates, including new features, fixes, and enhancements.

Read more