How to capture an integration inventory?

[Eric140]

Is there a way in the CMDB/CSDM to capture a classic "integration inventory" of data flows between applications?   This type of inventory is critical to roadmap planning for APM / application rationalization work.   In different organizations, these data flows might also be referred to as integrations or interfaces.   An example in the inventory would be a record describing that the ERP application sends Orders to the Warehouse Management application.     

I know there is a "Sends data" relationship available in the CMDB, but don't understand those relationships well enough to know if that would be helpful.  If so, there would need to be a way to add attributes to the relationship such as the specific type of data (information object) and other attributes such as frequency, technical protocol, volume, etc.

(Note:  I'm not focusing on "user interface" but rather applicaiton to application interfaces although both could be useful.  I am focusing - conceptually at least - on point to point interactions and purposely avoiding a discussion about alternative data distribution models that may or may not exist.  Lastly, I'm not referring to APIs but rather to the data flowing out of one system and into another system whether through a formal API or not.  ) 

Thanks.

[CasperJT]

Hi Eric,

We had a few threads relating to integrations previously:

https://community.servicenow.com/community?id=community_question&sys_id=befd1153dbd3b7001cd8a345ca96...

https://community.servicenow.com/community?id=community_question&sys_id=c4d10186db394c504819fb243996...

In my company we have decided to extend the Application Service class to create an Integration Scenario class.

It is possible we will actually create it as a subclass of another extension called Automation Service, not quite decided on that yet.

The integrations will be managed by two Technical Services that we call 'Business to Business' and 'Application to Application' depending on whether it is an integration with a customer/supplier or between two or more of our own Application Services.

There are other opinions in the two threads, so I recommend you read them through and see if they are useful. So far I have not seen any additional guidance from ServiceNow on the matter.

Best regards,

Casper

[SNFan]

I believe this is an area that is not well handled out of the box today, but is an area where SN will provide more OotB classes / attributes in the future

[Ed Laar1]

Fully agree that it's usefull to register integrations between applications in the CMDB. I think that they are really integrations between applications for example an integration where HR records are exchanged between SAP-HR (acting as Single source of truth for HR records) and consuming systems where HR records are used.

Integrations require attributes describing things like type, direction, schedule, protocol etc.

They should be registered as CI's with relations to the involved applications. In this way incidents can be registered on integrations, changes can be created as soon as an integration changes. Also responsible support parties can be registered by creating Technical Services for Integrations.

Registering integrations should be a seperate chapter in the 'CSDM in the Real World' guidance and example handbook. Who takes the initiative to create such a handbook??

Wondering how you proceeded in registering your integrations and also on idea's about the handbook.

Best regards,

Ed

[Carlo Jimenez]

Hi @Eric140 , I was wondering how did you move forward with this kind of requirement?