Wednesday, October 8, 2014

My personal experience with Jalasoft Xian Wings (part 2)

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In an earlier blogpost I was mentioning my personal experience on Jalasoft Xian Wings. More about that can be found here. This time I will have a look how Wings looks like on a Windows Phone 8.1 and Apple iPad 3 device. Let's have a look at the possibilities on both a Phone and Tablet device. Screenshots are taken from my own OpsMgr demo environment. You can ask Jalasoft for credentials on a demo showcase also. Just use comments for that.

Windows Phone
The Xiang Wings app can be found in the MS store, just install it and put in account details. Within the app the following can be seen:
Within Xian Wings you can find Summary (health, alerts, notifications), Navigation (states, alerts, graphs, task status, notifications, settings) and Recent graphs. Within Settings you can find State view (selection of groups and objects wich are same as in OpsMgr console), Notification (all severity, resolution state possible) and Receive notifications. Much to see here if you ask me.
When you choose an specific alert, you can run Tasks, Knowledge and Properties. You can watch the alert rule with the specific description and monitors, watch knowledge base with even more information presented on your screen at once, and tasks to start troubleshooting. Within properties there's even a History field, so when the issue happens before, you can find earlier comments here.
When troubleshooting is needed some (basic) tasks can be started as well. In this case I started the Microsoft System Center Data Access Service. Very nice this can be done by mobile phone or any other device. Stopping the Data Access Service is not that handy, because communication is broken after that ;)

Apple iOS
The Xian Wings app can be found in the Apple store, just install it and put in account details. Within the app the following can be seen: 
Nice to see that the interface is optimized for a tablet device. No screens like Windows Phone here, in this app you can create custom dashboards known from OpsMgr console. Within the dashboard you can configure widgets to display information you like to see. Let's have a look at some possibilities on custom dashboards.
Just created a (basic) dashboard with choices in Alerts, States and Graphs. You can use as many monitors and/or rules what you want. You can create multiple dashboards also to show different parts of the IT infrastructure. Servers, services, network, applications, processes, databases, just choose it yourself on a tablet device.
When tapping on a server (for example) you will see additional information on the object. In my case (OpsMgr server) you see Alerts, Details, Options (Maintenance mode, Remote PowerShell) and Inventory. Much to see here if you ask me. Just to give a quick overview of dashboard functionality here.
Same as on Windows Phone, you can start remote Tasks, put a device in Maintenance mode and set a specific Resolution state (for example: Assigned, Scheduled or Resolved). Very nice this can be done on a tablet device. In my situation it runs very smoothly.
When troubleshooting is needed some (basic) tasks can be started as well. In this case I started the WMI Service. Hope to give you a quick overview of possibilities within Xian Wings. Just ask Jalasoft if you want to know or see more on this.

Personally I like the idea to see much more information on devices like phones and tablets. When thinking about SMS and E-mail messages this seems more advanced and offers more possibilities to start remote management. Jalasoft did a great job on Xian Wings for iOS (iPhone, iPad), Windows Phone (and Android)! Hopefully you now have a good overview on this product. Thanks!

More blogposts on this topic:
My personal experience with Jalasoft Xian Wings (part 1)
Taking my OpsMgr with me… with Xian Wings

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