A Micro-Service strategy with your internal ServiceNow instance

[jake_burman]

Leverage existing solutions vs build from scratch

ServiceNow provides REST and SOAP web service API access its capabilities in the platform. These capabilities may be exposed to 3rd party applications for a micro-service approach, enabling rapid development of new solutions. By leveraging this approach, you also gain the benefit of the ServiceNow cloud; a proven reliable SaaS infrastructure.

A Micro-Service by definition is (source Wiki😞  

Microservices is a specialisation of an implementation approach for service-oriented architectures (SOA) used to build flexible, independently deployable software systems. Services in a microservice architecture (MSA) are processes that communicate with each other over a network in order to fulfill a goal.

You may enrich your external application by leveraging capabilities inherit to the ServiceNow platform. Capabilities such as Knowledge Management, group membership, data certification, chat and other capabilities may be exposed via API. These core capabilities are further enriched by the rest of your ServiceNow implementation, for cross function and cross process benefits.

For example, you might choose to build in knowledge capability into your custom application. Rather than creating a knowledge solution from scratch, simply leverage the feature rich ServiceNow Knowledge Management application and functions already developed, for rapid development. You may retrieve articles, post new articles, collaborate with the activity feed for a particular article, mark an article as useful or rate an article, and so forth. Further, you may leverage the ServiceNow search system to perform keyword and natural language search against a knowledge base. All of this 'capability' may be served up in your custom application by leveraging the ServiceNow API's. An added advantage is, you may share this knowledge system and data with other applications in your portfolio. ServiceNow becomes a central Knowledge-as-a-Service solution so that IT, HR, business applications, and your custom applications can cross share and cross search knowledge articles as security permits.

Many companies are actively migrating their on-premise solutions to the cloud, and are struggling with legacy components that must be redeveloped to be cloud ready. As you consider migrating your on-premise solutions to the cloud, you may expedite the migration by leveraging services already available in ServiceNow. e.g. migrate what you can, then leverage ServiceNow APIs to fill the gaps vs redeveloping components that exist elsewhere. This approach also allows you to take advantage of additional components that such as chat, the service portal and catalog, etc.

ServiceNow also provides Scripted REST API. A Scripted REST API allows you to execute application or backend services provided by ServiceNow, where the underlying functions, API calls, Logic is obfuscated by the exposed functions.

To get you thinking outside of the box, consider some of the following additional ServiceNow capabilities, and their potential uses for an external application:

• Data Certification - leverage the data certification capability for data compliance (note: a large manufacturing company is leveraging this capability to audit brand data in their manufacturing processes).

  • Author Data Certification rules to audit/check the data for compliance (e.g. pass/fail condition logic), aligned to your corporate policies).

  • Author a new scripted Rest API to inject new data that the certification rules check against, and automatically run the rule-base against the new data elements for pass/fail.
  • You now have a data compliance functionality available for your application(s) that both internal ServiceNow and external applications and systems may leverage for validation.
• Chat/Connect
  • Expose Chat API's for 3rd party applications chat functionality
  • ServiceNow Connect may be exposed to external applications, allowing standalone chat functionality, or cross-app collaboration
  • These same API's may be made available as-a-Service, so that bot notifications into the chat thread can occur. For example, a DevOps Jenkins Build, could trigger a "Build Complete" message to a chat stream (tied to a release thread) or part of a designated app group (or both).
• Assignment routing
  • ServiceNow has purpose build routing rules and logic, as well as skill based routing. Group membership, on-call rotation, assignment rules and skill based routing drive who is assigned. This may be exposed via API (Scripted Web Service), and made available to 3rd party systems.
  • Assignment logic may be centralized (managed in ServiceNow), or the management logic exposed via API for the 3rd party systems to maintain as well.
  • Similar to the Knowledge example, if all applications in your portfolio leveraged the same "Micro-Service" for assignments, you can create efficiencies and consistency across your portfolio.
• Case Management
  • ServiceNow offers a great at Case Management solution with purpose build functionality, like assignment routing, prioritization, etc.

  • You may offer custom Case Management application(s) in ServiceNow, and enable case logic within your custom application.
  • By centralized the case micro-service, you can now centralized reporting across case management solutions.
  • An Case-as-a-Service approach may also be used: You may leverage personal tasks, or a new case management application to offer a centralized "Inbox" for work from 3rd party systems. Think of this as a Bot service for Case Management, where your external apps notify ServiceNow that there's work to be done. The work can be classified and fulfilled with different workflows such as informational case, acknowledgement case, approval case, yes/no case, feedback or list of question(s) case, etc.
 A working example of this approach may be seen on snexperiences.com, Universal Approval (best viewed from mobile device).

Some added benefit: As you create reusable components, you create standardization across business applications. By leveraging ServiceNow for key business functions and processes, you create a centralized system for reporting and compliance, and you may offer executive reports and dashboards with insights into your application key performance indicators. You may also leverage the transaction and stored data elements for audit and compliance. For you ServiceNow owners, this enables you to offer as-a-Service functionality that may be leveraged holistically across the enterprise, improving the value of your investment.

Given ServiceNow has over 300 capabilities, many more solutions and use cases may be made available using this approach. Please also note, ServiceNow is a development platform, and complete end to end solutions may be developed directly in ServiceNow IDE.

As a ServiceNow owner or developer, you can bridge the gap between external apps and your ServiceNow native apps, to build light speed business applications enabling the light speed enterprise.

Jake Burman | Executive Architect | servicenow.com/inspire

[chrisfowells]

Great post Jake...would be great to chat this week if you are about. We are just starting a "no forms" initiative at BP so would be ideal to pick your brains.

[jake_burman]

Chris, feel free to drop me an email directly to collaborate. jake.burman@servicenow.com.

[pierrondi]

Hi Jake, great post indeed.

Do you have more insights regarding setting up micro-services on a GxP compliance environment as well?

Thanks,

Paulo

[jake_burman]

Paulo,

Using ServiceNow offerings as micro-services in a GxP environment, is no different than a non-GxP environment. First, to ensure a micro-service (series of API's) are GxP compliant, you may leverage the Data Certification capability of ServiceNow, to self-audit. Setup audit policies to ensure that any GxP related process or controls are properly used, for every execution of the API. Second, you may also leverage the Data Certification capability and offer up a micro-service for compliance, to non-ServiceNow solutions. E.g. input = data payload output = pass/fail against certification rules defined in ServiceNow. This 2nd idea then enables global visibility into all execution of the certification audits in ServiceNow reporting.