Help the Help Desk is a tool that allows users to populate the CMDB automatically with
information about their Windows
computer.
Help the Help Desk is a small web application that downloads and runs locally, using a
WMI login
script to gather information such as serial number, computer name, disk configuration,
network configuration, installed software, memory, and much more. Users have the option of using
two types of SOAP authentication for running the Help the Help Desk script.
Note: Domain separation is not supported for Help the Help Desk.
User roles and user names
Users must have the hthd_user role, and only this role, to use Help the Help Desk from within
an instance. The user should also be configured with web service access only.
For users without access to an instance, you can configure Help the Help Desk to allow users
to run the script without login
credentials. Users with access to an instance can also use Help the Help Desk configured
in this way, but only if they have the hthd_user role.
User name cannot contain these characters: \n
Any user name that contains the \n characters prevents the
Assigned to field on a computer from being populated.
Help the Help Desk device identification
Help the Help Desk uses a predefined series of queries to identify and update existing CIs in
the CMDB or to create a new CI if no match is found. These queries attempt to match devices
using three criteria in a certain order.
Updates to an existing CI require only a single match as the list is evaluated. For example,
if a device's name has changed, but the MAC address is the same, the CI with the matching MAC
address is updated.
- Serial number in the [cmdb_ci_computer] table
- MAC address in the [cmdb_ci_network_adapter] table
- Computer name in the [cmdb_ci_computer] table
Note: Discovery Identifiers
are incompatible with Help the Help Desk queries.
Script include
The script include CIIdentifierForHelpDesk provides the logic for updating
existing CIs or creating a new CI if no matching device exists in the CMDB. Do not modify this
script. Errors introduced into this script can result in update failures or in new CIs being
created for every device found.