UPDATE: Feb 14 2012 – Please read
Given some additional testing we have verified that there is an issue here. The code that applies a notification template will place curly braces (i.e. { and } ) around the GUID in the notification that is sent out. When those curly braces are handled by a browser they are escaped in the URL query string with %7b ( { ) and %7d ( } ). The Silverlight web part which displays the activities or service requests/incidents doesn’t know how to handle the additional text in the strings when it tries to look up an object by GUID.
We will probably address this by changing the code which applies the notification template so that it strips the curly braces off.
As the RTM code base is in lock down right now there is no way to fix this until the 1st cumulative update. I’ll target this fix for that release and see if I can get it through.
I’ll leave this blog post up here for now and update it again when the fix is available in a cumulative update or hotfix.
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This blog post was written by Andreas Baumgarten ( blog in German ), one of our super community contributors. Thanks Andreas!
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Including Links to Incidents or Activities in Notification Templates
The Self-Service Portal of SCSM 2012 offers the following options:
· Follow the requests for an affected user (incidents, service requests) -> My requests
· Work with review and manual activities by reviewer and activity implementer -> My activities
It’s a common request to send the URL of the related object by mail via notification workflow.
Here is a short guide how this can be done.
First of all, the link must contain the GUID of the related object:
The GUID is attached at the end of the URL.
For SCSM 2012 Incidents:
https://<server>:<port>/SMPortal/SitePages/My%20 Requests.aspx ? RequestId = <GUID>
For SCSM 2012 Activities:
https://<server>:<port>/SMPortal/SitePages/My%20 Activities.aspx ? ActivityId = <GUID>
Now the GUID is needed as a variable in the notification template.
Open a notification template to add the Link to the SCSM 2012 Self Service Portal.
For this solution, it is required to enable “Send as HTML “in the notification template!
The following line in the notification template will add the link of an incident object:
<a href=”https://<servername>:<port>/SMPortal/SitePages/My%20Requests.aspx?RequestId=$Context/?$Id$?“>Click here</a>
To send a link of an activity the following line can be used in a notification template:
<a href=”https://<servername>:<port>/SMPortal/SitePages/My%20Activities.aspx?ActivityId=$Context/?$Id$? “>Click here</a>
Note: if you have changed your SharePoint site name from ‘SMPortal’ to something else you will need to put your site name in the URL here instead of SMPortal.
Here is the result.
The incident:
The mail:
The SCSM 2012 self-service portal after clicking the link in the mail:
A special thanks to Travis Wright for helping with this tweak!