New Unified Console

The Operations Manager 2007 Operations Console in some ways resembles the MOM 2005 operator’s console in that it uses an Outlook-like three-pane window, but it now combines access to operator’s functions, administrator’s functions, and reports in a single role-based console. By clicking on the mode buttons in the lower left, the user (an IT professional) accesses different modes permitted by the various roles his Active Directory user account or group has been granted. Depending on their assigned roles, users can get differing capabilities within a single console. A classic navigation tree is displayed in the upper left that reflects the mode selected by the user (in this example, “Monitoring”).

Depending on the mode, the middle pane (in this example, “Computers”) provides access to monitoring views (as in this screen shot), configuration settings, or management pack contents. When in monitoring mode, depending on what object the user has selected in the navigation tree, the top middle pane can display health state views for computers and distributed services, alert views, event views, performance views, and logical topology diagrams. From any one view, the console user can right-click on an object and open another window that provides a different view type to get more detail. The bottom middle pane (in this example, “Detail View”) gives further details on the item selected in the top middle pane.