Quick Post – Documenting Setups & Installations Smartly

I am a big fan of smart solutions and approaches. Today I had one of these moments which I really liked. I was going to update a SCOM 2012 environment to SCOM 2012 SP1. Because the customer only had Thin Clients, which basically only provide an RDP client, it was somewhat limited with tools available. SCOM 2012 management server was installed on Windows Server 2008 R2. The customer asked me to document the steps I am doing. Well, not really easy having this kind of setup because usually I use the Snipping Tool or other tools which can create screenshots. Luckily, the customer had a very smart idea, why not use the Problem Steps Recorder to document the SP1 installation :).

Problem Steps Recorder is a small utility which is normally used for a user to document problems on his computer. This utility is a built-in tool since Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. It is even available in Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012(R2). So, how does it work and what do you get? Let’s see…

Start the Windows Run dialog and type psr.exe…

…the utility starts and if you click Start Record now…

Every mouse click will be recorded, when you are finished press Stop Record and a ZIP file will be created respectively saved. This ZIP file contains a *.mht file…

You can open the file in Internet Explorer and voilà everything is documented. In this sample, I just ran it on my notebook to give you some idea…

Problem Steps Recorder is capable of doing much more, but for a quick way of documenting and for traceability it is just perfect. I hope it provides you some smart help and documentation.

All credits go to Martin Zeindler from Emmi for this great idea!