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Contact contact SNCGuru Service-now.com makes extensive use of the XML format for storing and transporting system updates and changes. Update sets, System Import Sets, and certain export methods all make use of XML files in one way or another. One feature that a lot of people don’t know about until somebody shows them is the ability to export and import XML files in a Service-now instance. A manual XML import/export can be extremely helpful in the right circumstances and is something that every Service-now consultant or administrator should have in their tool belt. In this post, I’ll explain how simple it is to transport system changes from one Service-now instance to another with a few clicks.
SATURDAY, MAY 19, 2012
Category: System Definition
Thursday, 28 October, 2010 11:31
Much of the behavior of a Service-now instance is controlled by System Properties. System properties are a great way to add options to your system and keep people (including yourself) from having to make modifications to back-end code later on. Business rules, UI actions, and UI pages rely pretty heavily on system properties just for this purpose. If I’ve ever got variable values that should be available system-wide then my first thought is to put that value in a system property that can be changed in the UI and be referenced from multiple places in the future. Chances are you’ve worked with these properties as part of your system setup. It’s always a good idea to be aware of the different properties in the system and what they do. The Service-now.com wiki contains a listing of system properties with their descriptions that you can review.
The purpose of this post is to show the different ways you can access, display, and work with properties in the system UI and in the Service-now scripting environment.
Tuesday, 28 September, 2010 06:57
I
recently had a customer ask me a question dealing with validating a username entered at login in Service-now. This question prompted me to write this post. The Service-now login mechanism works exactly how you would expect it to. If a valid username and password are provided, the user is allowed into the system. If you want to perform additional validation on a username or check for a role, then you’ve got to add that logic somehow. This post explains how you can override the out-of-box login routine to perform some custom validation before allowing login to your Service-now instance. I’ll give you a couple of common installation exits that I’ve created and used before.
Wednesday, 01 September, 2010 14:30
O
ne of the most common LDAP integration requirements is to disable users in Service-now when they become disabled in the LDAP source.
Because the exact steps to set up this behavior vary depending on your LDAP setup and processes, this configuration isn’t something that can be predefined in Service-now. Typically a Service-now consultant assists with this setup and specific requirements are determined on a client-by-client basis. It has been my experience that there are two common approaches that can be used to disable Service-now users from LDAP. This article explains these approaches and how you can implement the needed functionality.
Tuesday, 17 August, 2010 09:43
BSM
maps (Business Service Maps) are a central feature of Service-now.com that allow users to view a visual representation of the Service-now CMDB and the Business Services and CIs that those services are composed of. Service-now BSM maps also allow you to display additional information about (and take action on) the CIs represented in the map through the use of BSM Map Actions. I was recently working to create a BSM Map Action that I wanted to display for particular types of CIs and I couldn’t see how to set up a condition that would allow me to identify the type of CI.
What I learned is that each BSM Map has certain information available through URL parameters and through a ‘Data’ object about each node on the map. I just had to find the right piece of information! The solution was to use something like the following in my ‘Condition’ field on my BSM Map Action definition.
Wednesday, 11 August, 2010 11:10
H
ere’s a cool tip that was just sent to me by my friend Jim Coyne. We collaborated to solve a problem that he had in his environment and this post shows the result he came up with. This post shows how you can manipulate records in the email log (sys_email table) when you have a need to change the contents or recipients of an email record. Manipulating the outbound email logs isn’t something that should be relied upon heavily and I would consider it basically a last resort but it can prove very helpful in solving the right type of problem.
The problem in this example was that there were emails being sent from Jim’s Service-now system that contained sensitive information. It was necessary to send this information as part of an integration with a 3rd party system but they didn’t want to retain that information in Service-now to be viewed in logs and in the activity history of task records.
Monday, 09 August, 2010 13:48
I
often get the request to set up access for group managers to be able to manage the members of their groups in Service-now. This configuration isn’t too difficult to set up but it does involve a few different pieces. It’s also important to consider your group setup in your system before allowing access in this way. If you are bringing in group memberships from a data source like LDAP for example, the last thing you want is to have your managers manually changing those group memberships within Service-now. The configuration shown below could be easily customized to allow access only to non-LDAP groups if you needed to do both however.
Wednesday, 14 July, 2010 06:22
Choice lists are one of the basic input elements available in Service-now.com. They are very simple to personalize and add or remove any options you need for your application. Something I see fairly often is the need to use the EXACT same choices in different tables that may not be directly related as extended database tables. Another scenario is where you have a choice list defined on a standard field and you want to use that same field and its choices in a service catalog ‘Select box’ variable. Service catalog record producers often have this requirement. In these cases, you may be tempted just to manually re-create the entire list of choice list options for the new field or ‘Select box’ variable. As long as the lists are the same, you can save yourself some setup time (not to mention the ongoing headache of maintaining the same information in 2 places) by making use of the ‘Choice table’ and ‘Choice field’ options.
Wednesday, 30 June, 2010 10:49
O
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.
