PowerShell/SCSM - Get the Work Item parent of an Activity

In the last couple of months, I have been busy on some projects involving System Center Service Manager (SCSM), System Center Orchestrator (SCORCH) and Cireson Portal/Asset Management and I had to script a couple of repetitive tasks using PowerShell.

The following solution allows you to retrieve the parent Work Item of an Activity.

This is useful when you are using a Runbook Activity in your workflow that will invoke a Runbook inside System Center Orchestrator.

Example: In the case where you have a Work Item, a Service Request for instance, with bunch of activities (Review Activity (RA), Manual Activity (MA), Runbook Activity (RBA), etc... ). You could have a Runbook Activity (RBA) calling a System Center Orchestrator runbook.

From a SCORCH perspective it would be useful to find which Work Item the runbook activity belongs to if you want to perform some actions on the Work Item itself and other Activities.
Example: Edit the Work Item Title, Add a reviewer, Skip any Activities with a particular stage, etc...

Here is a PowerShell function that can just do this job for you: Get-SCSMWorkItemParent.

Installing Microsoft System Center Orchestrator 2012 SP1

In one of my last post I installed a new SQL Server 2012 in my Home Lab. This was a requirement for a few incoming home lab projects. One of those projects is Microsoft System Center 2012 Orchestrator. I will have to install, configure and manage this product at my work and thought it would be nice to get familiar with it. 

In 2009, Microsoft bought a company called Opalis that offers an automation platform for orchestrating and integrating IT tools to decrease the cost of datacenter operations while improving the reliability of IT processes. It enables IT organizations to automate best practices, such as those found in Microsoft Operations Framework (MOF) and Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL). Opalis operates through workflow processes that coordinate System Center and other management tools to automate incident response, change and compliance, and service-lifecycle management processes.

Opalis was recently renamed Orchestrator and integrated into the System Center suite.

The following procedure will cover a basic/generic install of System Center Orchestrator 2012. This is to be used as a template or POC only.