TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 07, 2012

Category: Integration

Scheduled File Import via Mid Server

Wednesday, 17 November, 2010 09:23 Written by Jacob Andersen
32 Comments

There so many ways to get information from a 3rd-party system into Service-now and back. It can be done via web services, JDBC, email, file transfer, etc. Let’s say a customer wants to send a CSV file to the Service-now instance, they have a couple of choices: attach the file manually to a data source or place the file on an FTP(s) server. Oddly, there is no option to simply have the mid server send the file directly to the Service-now instance to be processed by an import set. This is a very common complaint/recommendation that I hear from customers.

Placing a file on an FTP server is typically a good idea, especially when that file will be used by other vendors and you want a common location for these CSV files to be retrieved. This is not always an easy thing to do, however, when there is no public-facing FTP(s) server available and you simply need to send a CSV of users, for example, to Service-now.

Introducing, the Scheduled File Importer.

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Scripted Web Services

Friday, 20 August, 2010 14:50 Written by Jacob Andersen
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ne of Service-now.com’s principal strengths comes from its extensible framework. Built into the framework is the ability to retrieve information using one of a myriad of methods. If you want to get data out of any table, you can get it via direct web services, using basic auth data retrieval, having it pushed to a client, FTP server or  linux server by using the scheduled data extract, and more.  However, there are times when none of these solutions give you a logical way to achieve what you want in a simple manner.  I will give two examples: 1) adding an item to a cart, 2) fetching an attachment from a record.  For tasks such as these, the flexible Scripted Web Services is the answer.

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The Best LDAP Integration Tip You’ve Never Heard Of

Wednesday, 30 June, 2010 10:49 Written by Mark Stanger
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ne of the basic (but often forgotten) guidelines that should be followed whenever you consider importing any data into your Service-now instance is to only import the information that is actually necessary within the tool. Just because you CAN import the data into Service-now doesn’t necessarily mean that the data SHOULD be imported or that it has any value. Even if somebody thinks the data has value within Service-now, you should also consider if that value outweighs the work and trouble of importing and maintaining that data going forward. This is particularly true for CMDB and old ticket data but is also true of user data imported from LDAP. One thing that a lot of people don’t realize is that you can end up with ‘garbage’ data from LDAP but that it is also very simple to configure your system to prevent this from happening.

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Outbound Single Sign-on via Digested Token

Monday, 28 June, 2010 15:35 Written by Jacob Andersen
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ervice-now makes configuring SSO into your Service-now instance very simple.  By enabling a plugin and configuring a couple of properties, single sign-on can be set up in less than 10 minutes.  Documentation surrounding these SSO methods are also well done and easy to follow.

Recently, I’ve come across a number or clients that want to use Service-now as their main company portal and wish to configure their Service-now instance to generate an SSO token that can be consumed by a third party service provider.  In other words, they desire to have outbound single sign-on directed to of their other internal applications.  Because of this increasingly common request, I have created an update set that can be used for such a purpose called, Outbound Single Sign-on via Digested Token.

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BES Integration (Interlink)

Monday, 14 June, 2010 07:49 Written by Jacob Andersen
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here is a new integration to our downloads page for those that need to receive alerts from Interlink’s Business Enterprise Server (BES).  This integration is structured just like any other alerting integration and follows the same process flow:

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Sending attachments to a 3rd-party service desk

Wednesday, 14 April, 2010 16:47 Written by Jacob Andersen
11 Comments

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ast week I wrote about how to send a file to Service-now via web services and attach it to a target record.  While that is the most common request for attachment handling in regards to an integration, I often hear requests for this to be bidirectional.  Sending attachments from Service-now to a third-party system isn’t something that we’ve actually implemented in the past.  However, with the number of people asking for it lately, I decided to write up a solution.

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Sending an attachment to Service-now via Web Services

Wednesday, 24 March, 2010 10:16 Written by Jacob Andersen
3 Comments

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ttaching a file to a record within the Service-now interface is a trivial task.  However, many customers have found it necessary to send an attachment via web services to Service-now.  This need is usually spawned from an integration with a 3rd-party product.  The SOAP Attachments update set is the perfect solution for this problem.

The update set has now been added to the latest release of Service-now as part of the core code.  You will only need this update set if you’re on an older build.

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Exporting a Report Directly to FTP

Tuesday, 16 March, 2010 12:26 Written by Jacob Andersen
16 Comments

Scheduled Data Extract

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ervice-now provides numerous ways of getting data into the system. The import set functionality supports pulling data in from an attachment, FTP(S) servers, JDBC data sources, etc. However, a common problem that many customers have is trying to get data out of their SN instance and into their data center. The simplest way to handle this currently is by having a report emailed to you on a scheduled basis. There has to be a better way!

Scheduled Data Extract ModulesThe good news is that there is a better way. The “Scheduled Data Extract” update set has been designed to allow a user to have reports, tables, or table views sent to a specific directory on a local mid server or FTP to a customer’s FTP/FTPS server on a scheduled basis. The “Scheduled Data Extract” update set has been battle-tested and is used by several large Service-now customers today.

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The Correlation ID / Display fields

Monday, 08 February, 2010 13:07 Written by Jacob Andersen
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If you have looked at the schema for many of the tables within Service-now, you’ve probably noticed the Correlation ID and Correlation Display fields and may have wondered what they are for.  Typically, these fields are used for integrating a third-party system with Service-now. Let’s assume that I am doing an integration with a alerting system system from HP called OpenView.  In this integration, alerts are sent from HP to Service-now.  When the ticket is updates and/or closed, Service-now updates/closes the alert in OpenView.

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Removing or modifying the default Service-now.com login page

Monday, 28 December, 2009 12:51 Written by Mark Stanger
2 Comments

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or some Service-now.com implementations, there may be a need to modify the default login page.  In other implementations, it may be necessary or desirable to remove the login page SNC login formaltogether (this scenario would only apply if you have set up Single sign-on for your instance and you didn’t want users to authenticate directly against Service-now).  Even if you thought you wanted to disable the login page entirely I wouldn’t recommend it unless you had some very stringent security requirements that you couldn’t make an exception to.  The problem with removing the page entirely is that you cut off access to your Service-now instance entirely if your SSO portal goes down.  In an event like this, you probably want your Service-now administrator – and potentially process users – to be able to access the instance through a local login account (which requires a login page!).

Whatever the reason is, you may find it necessary to modify the behavior of the Service-now login page.  If you do, there are a couple of options I would recommend.

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Latest Comments

  • Mark Stanger: This functionality doesn’t connect to an FTP server. See this line in the post above…...
  • Mark Stanger: The report page is back-end XML so there’s no way to directly manipulate the behavior of that...
  • Mark Stanger: Due to some ServiceNow limitations, the localhost MID server option had to be removed.
  • Matt Haak: Is it possible to use this with the local Mid Server (mid.server.localhost) It appears from this community...