Author

An author (also commonly named a developer) is a person developing Management Pack to allow SCOM to monitor applications and services, during a process called authoring.

## Profiles

Authors can work for different companies and in different capacities.

* A developer working for a software publisher or a company selling hardware products and offering the official Management Pack for their solutions. Example: Microsoft Exchange 2013 MP by Microsoft, or HP Servers MP by HP.
* A developer working for a 3rd party company licensing Management Packs monitoring applications of other companies. Example: Apache HTTP Server Management Pack by Bridgeways or Blackberry MP by NiCE.
* A person working in their spare time to develop a Management Pack monitoring an application or a service and sharing it with the community. Example: xSNMP on CodePlex.
* A developer working for an organization using a SCOM platform to monitor its in-house application. Example: A financial company developing a Management Pack to monitor its business critical application.

## Responsibilities

An author would work with Management Pack in different contexts.

* Developing a new Management Pack from scratch to monitor an application or a service for which there is no monitoring existing or deemed acceptable.
* Modifying an existing Management Pack to implement updates, new features or fixes.

 User Role

In a Management Group, Author is the name of a formal User Role found in the Operations Console under the Administration pane. It grants permissions to its member to open and interact with the Authoring pane of the Operations Console.

Typically authors have permissions to modify any element displayed in the Authoring workspace (Monitor, Rule, Discovery) and to create override modifying the standard behavior of existing elements.

## Tools

Different solutions are available to work with Management Pack. Each one providing different levels of complexity, capabilities and easiness of use.

Graphical interface and wizard making it very easy for users with little experience to work with MP.
It only offers the most basic feature of MP edition
 Authoring Console | Complex
The interface offers a graphical way to create or modify elements. But it requires a good understanding of the MP structure.
All the elements of the MP structure can be created or edited. Except changing the name of existing elements.
 XML editor | Expert
The modification of the XML code makes it difficult to modify a MP. It requires an advanced knowledge of the MP schema. Can be prone to syntax error.
Provides the deepest level of flexibility to edit a MP.
 Visual Studio Authoring Extensions | Expert
The modification of the XML code makes it difficult to modify a MP. It requires an advanced knowledge of the MP schema and VSAE features. Can be prone to syntax error.
Provides the deepest level of flexibility to edit a MP.
Also provides Visual Studio features to make the process more efficient.
 Visio Management Pack Editor | Moderate
The graphical interface make it easy to create elements. But it requires a good knowledge of the MP schema and class structure.
The tool is more targeted to implement the high-level class and object model of an application.
Works with 2007 and 2012 MP format.