Authoring Type Projections in VSAE

It seems that VSAE is not that widely used. That may be a lack of information on the hows and the whats of things. So today I will just show something basic; authoring a type projection.

The VSAE can be downloaded from here. You will need Visual Studio 2012/13 Ultimate or Professional.

Now in Visual Studio create a new project. Select Templates->Management Pack->Service Manager and select the template that matches your environment version. I will pick the R2 one. I will name mine Codebeaver.IR.TypeProjection.Tutorial.

I will do a type projection on the incident class, hence we will need to reference the MP where this is defined. If you don't know this there are a few ways to find out. I prefer using powershell. Open a Service Manager Shell which will load the native service manager powershell module. Enter

Get-SCSMClass -Name "*incident" -ComputerName SM01

This tells it to look for classes that matches *incident (anything followed by incident) and the computername is the name of your management server.

This will give you three results. We are looking for the System.WorkItem.Incident class. Repeat the command with this more specific name. To get the management pack we can write

(Get-SCSMClass -Name "System.WorkItem.Incident" -ComputerName SM01).getmanagementpack()

Which tells us that the incident class is found in the System.WorkItem.Incident.Library management pack.

I find the easiest approach is to go to C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft System Center 2012\Service Manager Authoring (or where ever you have installed the authoring console), and then simply search for the managegement pack. When found right click and "open file location". Copy the path.

Now back in visual studio right click the references and "Add reference..."

Click the browse tab and paste in the path. Scroll and look for the System.WorkItem.Incident.Library.mp file. Now that it is added we can reference it using an auto genereated alias.

Now right click the project and select Add-> New item... Pick the "empty management pack fragment". I will name mine IncidentTypeProjection.mpx.

You will be presented with some xml. Type < and a number of possible XML-tags are suggested.

It will narrow down the list as you type. We want TypeDefinitions, and inside that EntityTypes, and finally inside that TypeProjections. VSAE will mostly present you with valid XML. 

Inside the TypeProjections tag we enter TypeProjection and then a space and you get to pick amongst a number of possible attributes for that tag. Sometimes it can even autocomplete the value for a given attribute, ex. Accesibility (as there are only two possible values). You can put anything into the ID. For type we want something that looks like: Alias!Class. To get the alias select the management pack reference that we just added and hit F4. Here you can see that the alias is SWIL. Hence we enter SWIL!System.WorkItem.Incident, and we can finish the type projection with a >. This is a good time to build (ctrl+shift+b). Resolve any errors (there should be none).

Now we must add a component to the type projection. You must provide the component with an alias (type in anything). the Path is a bit more tricky, and VSAE will not help you one bit. I suggest you read my bit on type projections before you continue reading. To get the relationship part we use the same trick as we did for getting the class. Here is a little help:

Get-SCSMRelationshipClass -Name "created" -ComputerName SM01 | fl Name

My component ends up looking

<Component Alias="IsCreatedBy" Path="$Target/Path[Relationship='SWL!System.WorkItemCreatedByUser']$"/>

And no errors when building! Be really carefull with $ and ' and [] at the right places.

We also need to add a section of display strings to finish up. After the closing TypeDefinitions add a LanguagePacks tag. It will end up looking like this

  <LanguagePacks>
    <LanguagePack ID="ENU" IsDefault="true">
      <DisplayStrings>
        <DisplayString ElementID="ThisCanBeAnythingAsLongAsItIsUnique.TypeProjection">
          <Name>
            Incident (Is created by)
          </Name>
        </DisplayString>
      </DisplayStrings>
    </LanguagePack>
  </LanguagePacks>

Note that the LanguagePack ID must a valid ID. I haven't found a table with all possible IDs (post in the comments below if you do).

We are almost there. Go to properties of the project and in the build tab check "generate sealed and signed management pack". Browse for a key file and select your snk-file (if you don't know this part read this to get up to speed - you just need to read the part on Create your SNK).

In the Management group tab click Add and enter your Service Manager Management Server (you only need add it once), if already added select it and click "Set as Default". Finally in the Deployment tab under "start action" select "Deploy projects to default management group only".

Build again and make sure there are not errors. Now we can deploy the type projection directly to the server by hitting F5. That is pretty sweet and can really speed up your development even for basic stuff such as type projections.

The entirety of the fragment looks as below

<ManagementPackFragment SchemaVersion="SM2.0" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
  <TypeDefinitions>
    <EntityTypes>
      <TypeProjections>
        <TypeProjection ID="ThisCanBeAnythingAsLongAsItIsUnique.TypeProjection" 
                        Accessibility="Public" 
                        Type="SWIL!System.WorkItem.Incident">
          <Component Alias="IsCreatedBy" 
                     Path="$Target/Path[Relationship='SWL!System.WorkItemCreatedByUser']$"
                     />
        </TypeProjection>
      </TypeProjections>
    </EntityTypes>
  </TypeDefinitions>
  <LanguagePacks>
    <LanguagePack ID="ENU" IsDefault="true">
      <DisplayStrings>
        <DisplayString ElementID="ThisCanBeAnythingAsLongAsItIsUnique.TypeProjection">
          <Name>
            Incident (Is created by)
          </Name>
        </DisplayString>
      </DisplayStrings>
    </LanguagePack>
  </LanguagePacks>
</ManagementPackFragment>