From essential to beautiful — transforming SCCM data

• You can interrogate hardware and software data in the reporting container of SCCM.
• Your results can be filtered by a chosen collection of computers.
• This data can be exported to CSV, PDF or your chosen output.

Results: The data is presented in a text-based format. The hardware reports provide a click through to view additional data on disk, memory, processors, etc.

• The Software Inventory reporting container holds reports to list the applications installed on groups of devices with click through for information on individual machines.
• You have to provide a few parameters to view the reports, so you need to know information about the software publisher, which collection you want to filter against, or the software versions, for example.

Results: Very basic, readily available.

Assessment: Inventory data is currently spread between various interfaces in SCCM. To get good results from the native tools you need to know your way around SCCM and you need a fair amount of information about what you’re looking for. If these results were instantly pulled into a dashboard tool, you’d have a one-glance view of your hardware and software inventory.

Within SCCM you can create, simulate and monitor the deployment of an application to a device.

• Reporting on application deployment is possible within SCCM by accessing Software Distribution – Application Monitoring but the process is complex.
• The report calls for a number of detailed inputs to run.

Example of SCCM ready made chart:

Results: Once the reports are generated, some results show embedded charts and clickable content, but they lack depth.

Assessment: Application deployment reporting is complex within SCCM and calls for loads of upfront information. The results aren’t bad, but they lack a bit of depth and know-how. With a portal that collates and displays all your application deployment data, you’d have a far quicker, more user friendly way of assessing your app deployments. 

The update compliance of your devices is an area of SCCM that your non-technical audiences will be interested in, so it’s worth having an easy-to-access report on software update health.

• It’s possible to check software update health by using the reporting container within SCCM, but the native reports are numerous and clunky.
• Go to: Monitoring – Reports – Software Updates – Compliance – Compliance 9 – Overall health and compliance and input your Software Update Group, Limiting Collection and date range for the information you need.

Results: You can output visual charts from your software updates reporting in SCCM, but you can’t drill through for more information, or take any action.

Assessment: Only a few parameters are needed to generate these results, but the drill-through data is unintuitive and data tables offer no interactivity. This view can’t tell you the individual machine state and the views that can are difficult to interpret. If you had a dashboard portal, this data could be filtered, searched and displayed — and then actioned — however you want.

Software metering allows for inventory software usage. It allows you to see how many copies of an application has been deployed to computers and among these you can see how many actually use the application.

• Information on metered software programs is a basic capability in the monitoring node in SCCM.
• Users can run a number of reports, like ‘total usage for all metered software programs’, for example.
• Select a single month and a year to report on to display the relevant data.

Results: Once you drill deeper into the results, the data isn’t clickable. Results are there, but they are basic.

Assessment: There are plenty of reports easily available on app and software metering within SCCM, but the results are limited. The in-built reporting displays the data, but the information is text only. Your results could be transformed with interactive visuals and drilldown data if you were using a dashboard to run these reports.

So, the data SCCM hosts is well-suited to dashboard and chart representation, generally speaking.

The examples we’ve mentioned are just the tip of the iceberg; there are close to 500 reports included with SCCM that you can run. There are, however, some obvious gaps in common requirements. Of the 500 out of the box reports, only five of them have any chart features.

We have assessed the basic, text-based inventory reporting in SCCM in section 2. Callisto, on the other hand, is a far quicker, friendlier and more intuitive interface. The information is gathered in a single location rather than spread all over the SCCM console.

• To interrogate software using Callisto, use the Software Client Inventory page.
• The same filtering can be applied as with SCCM’s native reports, but results are lightning fast.
• To make analysis more straightforward, multiple versions of products are collated into a single dataset.

Results: Immediate and easy to access. By clicking through on the results you get a list of all versions, even if there are multiple versions installed.

Assessment: Instead of having to pull data from across various SCCM interfaces, inventory information with Callisto can be glanced at in a single location. Drilling down further to any individual machine shows the device modal software tab.

TIP: Unlike SCCM’s native reporting capabilities, Callisto makes it simple to identify devices with insufficient RAM, low disk capacity, devices by vendor, and so on. SCCM contains this data, but the results are complex to unearth. Callisto also provides integration with warranty services to bring warranty information into the SCCM environment.

Any IT department wants to make sure that the software it’s managing is delivering value for the business. SCCM’s software metering should make it easy to track where software is unused so that licenses can be reclaimed and redeployed, but as we saw — the functionality is lacking.

• With Callisto, you can instantly see where software is unused so that licenses can be reclaimed and redeployed.
• Rather than the text-based report results held within SCCM, Callisto brings this information to life in seconds.
• Results are displayed for the last three months, by default. And up to 12 month’s data is available at a click.

Results: Interactive, highly visual. Colour-coding makes it easy to understand and take action.

Assessment: Running reports on software metering in Callisto provides instant understanding of where licenses can be redeployed. Clicking through to a specific application in the Callisto portal displays the relevant data, overcoming a common frustration within SCCM, natively.

Callisto offers a far more visually appealing and intuitive way of displaying your OS deployment information. There’s a dashboard and drilled down format, whichever you prefer.

• The top level dashboard animates all vital summary information.
• The OS deployment chart shows the last 10 days of deployment activities.
• It shows all task sequences by default, but these can be filtered and changed according to the information required.

If you need more information than the summary dashboard provides, you can drill down even further on the OS deployment page.

This drill down page can tell you:

• More information from specific date ranges.
• Number of machines built.
• Minimum average and maximum runtime statistics.
• Average build times.
• How to filter by collection.

Perhaps most importantly, when it comes to OS deployment, IT teams need to know which activities haven’t been completed successfully on which devices, and take action.

• To find deployment errors in the task sequence, Callisto has a quick, friendly view to identify which devices show a failed status.
• Drilling down to task level shows verbose output for any action.
• The build history of the device is always available from the moment the task sequence begins execution, to long after the build completes.

Results: Extensive but highly intuitive. You can choose between dashboard stats or granular data, whichever suits your scenario best. With visually beautiful results and endless interactivity, you’ve always got the information you need at your fingertips. 

Assessment: Callisto transforms your OS deployment reporting. It provides a highly-visual guide to your OS deployment task sequences and required actions. You can quickly and easily identify where activities have failed, and see where follow up action is required. All in one central location.