MicroStrategy System Manager

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MicroStrategy System Manager

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Welcome to this new #BestInMicro article! This is a space where I will be writing about different topics related to MicroStrategy, its use, best practices, and functionalities to get the most out of it.

Today I bring you one of the most underrated and underutilized tools in the MicroStrategy product suite: System Manager.

MicroStrategy-System-Manager-1

This time I will not go into detail on how to use it because it is so complex and so complete that I prefer to dedicate a video to it, where I will be able to cover the topics in detail and show you step by step.

But, as always, first things first…

¿What is System Manager? What is it used for?

Many will already have an idea of this answer, or more or less have it: System Manager is a tool that allows us to automate processes. With it, we can define a sequence of different tasks, mainly administrative, and save them in a workflow that we can then execute whenever we want, either scheduled or on-demand.

Here is a link to the main product page where it goes into a bit more detail on installation and considerations:

https://www2.microstrategy.com/producthelp/10.4/Readme-ES/content/system_manager.htm

In which cases is it used?

As I said before, a System manager is a tool used for administrative tasks. It has a menu of tools that allows us to perform different maintenance, administration, and management tasks (more info on these tasks in the Server Control Utility article).

MicroStrategy-System-Manager-2

Doing some research on what uses it can be put to, I have to say that I haven’t found too much, and what little there was are relatively basic (though useful) examples. For example, I leave you here an article from BIpostIT where he explains a workflow that is constantly checking the status of the Intelligence Server, and another one from James BI tips & tricks where he shows how to plan it… which gives us the entry to the main topic of this article:

How to maximize the use of System Manager?

Although System manager itself is a tool that offers different possibilities, its true potential lies in combining it with other tools.

In the previous example, we saw how to use the Windows scheduler to schedule the execution of a workflow. But in addition to this, you can also add a Command manager script, or even more complex, a Procedure.

So far I’m not saying anything too crazy. Indeed, I have not seen many cases where this combination occurs, but it is still not an example that stands out too much.

But let’s go a bit further. Let’s think together: we can see that System Manager has a functionality that allows SQL queries. And if we process it for a second, let’s also remember that we can make inserts with the Transaction Services functionality. Even run a store procedure that launches a job (both from the transaction and the VLDBs). If we chain all this together, we can achieve that a whole set of processes can be launched from a dashboard, not only at the MicroStrategy level but also mobilizing the entire BI environment! Are you following me?

Now you tell me. since there are so many possible combinations…

How can I have control over the different scenes?

Moreover, how can I keep all this flow automated without having to constantly update workflows, credentials, ports, IPs, etc.?

Everything starts from knowing how to link different control tables where to manage different variables, flags, or connection parameters so that we could control all environments from the same Workflow. Or better yet, from a production dashboard, we could manage practically all the processes that involve data in the company, in all environments! Sounds good, doesn’t it? Well, it sure sounds better than it looks. Here is an example of one of the workflows I use today, created by my colleague Juan Valladares:

MicroStrategy-System-Manager-3

Does it look bad at first? Believe me, this is a piece of art. This, as well as several other workflows that we implement, gives us the possibility to save many hours of work, as well as allowing a complex process to be performed by anyone, with the assurance that it will be done the right way, and without the need for the person to even know what MicroStrategy is.

The truth is that there are many possibilities. As I mentioned at the beginning, I will be uploading a video to YouTube where I will create some examples combining different tools to show in detail what and how to do to get the most out of System Manager. Don’t miss it!

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