Helpdesk customers often ask how easy it is to customize the solution to match their company requirements. Desired customizations range from branding the console with their company logo, adding or removing fields, or even re-designing the entire look and feel of the console.

A great way to gain experience on how to customize Helpdesk Solution is by attending the Advanced Helpdesk Customization lab at ManageFusion. The hands-on-lab provides several common customization examples with step by step instructions on how to make the changes.

Take a look at the following lab exercise on how to modify a label in the Helpdesk Solution. If it is useful to you, make sure to attend this course at ManageFusion this fall to learn more.

Helpdesk Customization Overview

Templates, images, strings, presentations, and other components that make up the Helpdesk application need not be modified directly in order to customize the look, feel, and functionality of the tool. Using some simple methodologies outlined in this article, it is possible to make the desired modifications to copies of the original files, stored in a separate directory. Then, by using simple pointers to the modified copies in a file called custom.config, substitute them for the originals when called by the application.

In this way, the customizations are also made instantly portable, allowing them to be transported to other Helpdesk instances, or from development and testing servers to the production server. The custom.config file can reside either at the root of the \AeXHD folder or at the root of any of the console folders to which you would like to apply console-specific customizations.

Example Exercise: Changing a label by overriding a string

The console forms in Helpdesk Solution contain many useful fields such as Title, Comment, Priority, Urgency, and Impact that are used to categorize and prioritize incidents, changes, and requests. Although the out-of-box labels are sufficient for many customers, some prefer to rename a field label to clarify its purpose or even re-purpose its functionality. For example, customers may choose to change the label for the "Title" field and rename it to "Title of incident."

A. Identify the string

1. On your Notification Sever with Helpdesk Solution installed, open your Helpdesk Worker console.
2. In the left pane, select Incidents > New Incident
3. Look at the URL. What is the name of the command that displays this console?
   (Hint: ./default.aspx?cmd=…..)


Click to view.

4. Now that we know the name of the command, we need to look it up in the existing web.config file and identify which template is being used. The template will tell us the name of the string to override.
   • On your server, browse to the worker console directory located under
     c:\program files\Altiris\helpdesk\AeXHD\Worker
   • Open the web.config file with either Notepad or XML Marker
   • Search the web.config file for the value you wrote down in step 3.
   • This section of the web.config file will look like this example:

   <command id="newItem" moduleID="TemplateModule"….>
         <commandParam name="template" value="WorkItemEdit" />
         <commandParam name="action" value="new" />
   </command>
   
   

   • The "value" represents the name of the template file that we need to lookfor, which is WorkItemEdit.ascx
5. Close the web.config file.
6. On your server, browse to the templates directory located under
   c:\program files\Altiris\helpdesk\AeXHD\templates
7. Find WorkItemEdit.ascx and open it with notepad
8. Search the contents of the file for the value of ItemDataField="workitem_title"


Click to view.

9. What is the value for Label= on this line? _________________________________________
10. By completing these steps, you have determined that the String used to label the Title field is called SidLblTitle.

B. Override the string with a new value

1. Browse to the C:\Program Files\Altiris\Helpdesk\AeXHD directory.
2. Using either Notepad or XML Marker, open the custom.config. If you do not have a custom.config file, you may create one:
   • Create a new file and open it with either XML Marker or Notepad.
     (Tip: if you use XML Marker, it will verify the syntax of your XML file)
   • Enter the following information in your file:

   <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
   <custom.configuration>
   	<strings>
   	</strings>
   </custom.configuration>
   
   

   (Hint: there is one return between <?xml version…> and <custom.configuration>. There are no spaces between the contact search fields)

• Save and close the custom.config file.
3. Insert this new line between the tags:
   

   <string id="sidLblTitle">Title of incident:</string>
   
   



Click to view.

4. Save and close the custom.config file.
5. Restart IIS (Hint: Click Start > Run > Type IISReset > Click Ok).
6. Open your Internet Explorer and select the Incidents tab.
7. Click Incidents > New Incident. The New Incident page appears.
8. Notice that your new label is displayed.
9. Open your MyHelpdesk Winuser console.
10. Click New Incident ().
11. Your new label is displayed.


Click to view.