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Simple Add-ins Overview

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This page is now retired and kept for archival purposes. This programming guide has been published on MSDN at http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/jj860311.aspx

The information in this topic applies only to System Center 2012 SP1.

Simple add-ins do one of two things, they either call custom code or call a predefined action. They do not provide views to the Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) console. You can declare your add-in to perform one of the two predefined actions: display a Web page in the console, or run a program. Otherwise the add-in would call custom code.

Predefined actions

Predefined action add-ins are defined in the manifest file. To configure an add-in to run a predefined action, set the ActionType attribute of the add-in in the manifest to either URL or Application. The ordinarily optional attribute ActionParam is now required. If you had chosen URL as the ActionType, then the ActionParam attribute should be set to the URL of webpage you want to display. If the ActionType was set to Application, the ActionParam represents the file path of the application you want to run.

Custom actions

To configure an add-in to run a custom code, set the ActionType attribute of the add-in to Code. The ordinarily optional attribute AssemblyName is now required. The value of this attribute should be set to the file name of the assembly that contains the code for the add-in.

In the assembly identified by the AssemblyName attribute, a System.Addin.AddinAttribute attribute must be applied to a class that inherits from the Microsoft.SystemCenter.VirtualMachineManager.UIAddIns.ActionAddInBase base class. This attribute takes one parameter when referenced, the name of the add-in. This name must match the Name attribute of the add-in declaration in the manifest. For more information about the Microsoft.SystemCenter.VirtualMachineManager.UIAddIns.ActionAddInBase class, see [[Base Classes]]

See Also

[[How to Define a Manifest]]

[[How to Define a Custom Action Add-in in the Manifest]]

[[How to Create an Action Add-in]]