Authoring Console

The Authoring Console is a software used to create and edit Management Packs to monitor applications.

Description
The authoring console assists author to develop Management Pack, a process known as authoring.

It involves the creation of MP elements responsible for the behavior of the monitoring. Classes to model the components of the applications, discoveries to find those components installed on monitored servers, and monitor and rules to run health check on those discovered objects.

All those configuration are stored using the XML language in one or several MP files. The editing of raw XML code can be challenging, especially for authors with little experience of the process. The authoring console provide a graphical interface and wizards to edit those elements without any required knowledge of the MP schema and XML language.

The Authoring Console is a part of the SCOM Authoring Resource Kit provided by Microsoft. It is intended to be installed on a personal computer, such as a desktop or laptop. But it is not uncommon to find it installed on a server hosting a SCOM component like a Management Server in some organizations.

Features
The console offer a graphical interface to represent the structure and elements of a Management Pack. The creation and modification of an element is made possible by the use of wizard and property windows. Which is far easier to interact with than writing the XML code in an editor.

Interface
The interface of the authoring console is very similar to the Operations Console. Organized with panes and navigation buttons.
 * 1) The Navigation Pane on the left display as a tree view the type of MP elements found in the current workspace.
 * 2) The Navigation buttons allows to switch between different workspace. In the authoring console, the workspaces represents major area of the Management Pack structure.
 * 3) The Results pane display the elements existing for the type of element selected in the Navigation pane.
 * 4) The Details pane provide more information on the properties of the selected element in the Results Pane
 * 5) The Actions pane offers contextual actions doable on the element selected in the Results pane.

Elements managed
Virtually all the elements found in the MP schema can be edited in the console. Which is far more extensive than the capabilities offered by the Authoring workspace in the Operations Console.

Internal Checks
The by-design behavior of the console prevent to modify an existing element ID, or to create an element when there are logic errors. Example: It is not possible to create a discovery for a class that was not implemented yet.

Those checks ensure the Management Pack consistency, reducing the errors and guiding authors with little experience of the authoring process.

Sealing
The authoring console provide a sealing feature similar to the MPSeal.exe tool. Allowing to seal MP more quickly.

Restrictions
Because of the internal checks, some changes are restricted. While those changes are beneficial to ensure the logic of the code, sometime authors would like to modify the ID of some elements, or to modify some modules used monitor types.

Those changes can be made by using an editor to manipulate the XML code.

Duplication
On some large MP, several are going to be created using the same template and then modified to reflect the specifics of the workflow. Example: Creating a dozen of service monitor check the health of application windows service.

In the authoring console, the process would required to create each monitor one by one using the graphical interface. Which might a tedious and long process. There is no feature allowing an author to duplicate an existing element.

The alternative is to modify the XML code by copying and pasting the code, and then changing the relevant part of the code.

Compatibility
The last version of the console was released with SCOM 2007 R2. Since the Management Pack format was updated since SCOM 2012, the authoring console cannot work with MP created for SCOM 2012.

However, there are methods to benefit of the generated code of the console and convert it to the 2012 format.
 * 1) Create a MP with the authoring console at the SCOM 2007 R2 format, and then update it using other tools like Visual Studio Authoring Extensions.
 * 2) Another method is to create a first prototype of the MP in the authoring console, and then reverse engineer the code produced to implement it in a SCOM 2012 format version of the MP.

Complexity
Even if the authoring console makes the authoring process far more easier than editing directly the XML code, it requires some knowledge of the MP internal structure. Especially for complex scenarios involving creating custom-made modules, data source, probe actions and monitor types.

So there might be some situations where a code-editing software might be more useful than the console. Solutions like an XML editor or Visual Studio Authoring Extensions.