Using custom tasks to tune alerts

In Chapter 5, Working with Management Packs we discussed the different types of tasks available in OpsMgr and with the help of some customized console tasks, you will simplify your alert tuning process, quickly identify the root cause of problems and implement resolutions with ease.

Three custom tasks that I always deploy with OpsMgr are—Google It!, Run Remote Desktop, and Run PuTTY. Using these tasks (shown in Figure 8.30), I can lookup information about an alert on the Internet and then pivot to remotely log on to the computer or device to manage it and resolve the issue if required.

Figure 8.30: Custom console tasks for alert tuning

In the following sections, we'll walk you through creating these three custom console tasks and we'll save the tasks into a new unsealed management pack for easy management.

Creating the 'Google It!' task

This task gives us the ability to click on an alert from the console and then open a Google search with the display name of...