Interfaces as separate CI Object between Business Applications/Application Services

Frank Eck3 · ‎02-06-2023

Dear community,

looking for a solution for reflecting the interfaces relation between two Business Applications or to be more précised Application Services.

Here an example, you have let's say ServiceNow and Jira which are connected via let's say Mulesoft for the Incident Process. So in a graph you would have a bi-directional Relation between ServiceNow and Jira via Mulesoft.

That I can build relations between Business Applications and Application Services I know, so I could connect Mulesoft to ServiceNow, Jira and more, but is that the good practice way?

I even want to document attributes and technical settings on those kind of integrations for later usage. Any ideas?

Best regards,

Frank

Stig Brandt · ‎02-06-2023

Hi @Frank Eck3

I think this post is covering your question : Modelling of application interfaces - ServiceNow Community

My view for a simpler solution is that you define - technical services (Interface) - depending on Mulesoft - and the link these dependencies in the Service Portfolio View.

View solution in original post

Bruno De Graeve · ‎02-06-2023

Hello Frank,

ServiceNow intends to release "Digital Integration Management" as a Store app on top of APM. The release should take place in February 2023 (safe harbour, this can be subject to change) and will be supported for the Tokyo and Utah releases.

Use case:

Enterprise Architects, Business Application Owners, and Solution Architects need visibility to integrations between business applications

•The increasing commoditization of applications and promotion of microservices architectures has resulted large increase in the number of applications and proliferation in how they integrate that’s difficult to understand and manage at scale.

•With little to no governance to connect applications, and lack of documentation to track how and why these Applications interact, production issues are hard to troubleshoot and the pace of change grinds to a halt while potential impacts are chased down.

•IT organizations need a better approach to understand integrations required given data sovereignty rules, and new legislation being passed requiring organizations to track and manage information flow across their organizations and externally.

•Declaration and governance over the use of Interfaces can be of great benefit for SecOps teams who are concerned about API attacks for both API’s that are internal or externally facing.

It will introduce the following objects:

Digital Interface and Digital Integration

•Digital Interface:

–Digital Interface are usually provided by a Business Application, but can also stand on their own (for examples in cases of serverless architecture).

–Provides a way for other Business Applications to interact with the Application that provides the interface

–Contains Meta data about the interface including: Name, Version, owners, protocol and more.

–Contains a list of all the integrations that are using this interface

•Digital Integration:

–Represent the integrations between 2 business Applications.

–In a typical scenario there would be a consuming business application, a provider business application, and an interface that is provided by the provider business Application.

–Contains meta data on the integration including: name, version, type, data flow direction, Middleware used, owners and more.

–An easy form enables creation of a digital integration from a single page, including introduction of a new digital interface if it doesn’t exists.

–Once a digital integration is created, a new CMDB link is also created between the two business applications with the type of (interfaces/Interface by). This link enables seeing the integration as part of the node map for any business application

–A new catalog entry is provided to request an approval for a new digital integration. Once approves, the integration would be created.

Model:

a) Business Application --(related list)--> Digital Interface(s) --(referenced by a )--> Digital Integration <--(reference to)-- Business Application.

b) Business Application --(CI relationship: Interfaces::Interfaced by)--> Business Application.

In this first stage, the focus is on the Design aspect of Interfaces (high level description of any sort of API) and the Digital Integrations describing why to Business Applications exchange data with each other.

Bruno De Graeve,
Principal Platform Architect, Customer Success, ServiceNow

View solution in original post

scott_lemm · ‎02-06-2023

Hello @Tobias

The material that @Bruno De Graeve references is within APM and not part of the CMDB. It is meant to assist in the Design of Business Applications and will require licensing of APM to utilize. Because these are intended to assist enterprise/solution architects, assist in Design activities, and are not CI's, these will NOT be available for ITSM: Incident, Problem, & Change.

There ARE tables within the CMDB that will be introduced in the near future to represent the Operational aspects of these interfaces. These tables will support the operational configurations of standalone API's as well as API services. The design is currently being tested.

For those looking for objects to utilize within ITSM's Incident, Problem, & Change, you will want to use the API Classes that will be released to the CMDB.

For those looking for objects to utilize within APM and capture the design details of Application, you will want to learn more about the features referenced by Bruno (a contributor to this new capability).

Hope this helps,

Scott Lemm

Colin20 · ‎02-07-2023

It seems the app is now released.

https://store.servicenow.com/sn_appstore_store.do#!/store/application/71e7ac97a33251109eb0cc4a66fcda...

Bruno De Graeve · ‎02-07-2023

yes it was 😉 It is also recommended to install the Enterprise Architecture Workspace.

Bruno De Graeve,
Principal Platform Architect, Customer Success, ServiceNow

JoGo · ‎05-15-2023

Hi @Bruno De Graeve ,

Thank you for sharing the information. Has Digital Integration Management now been released?

Many thanks,

Jonathan

edkester · ‎02-06-2023

@Frank Eck3

I have just been in an engagement that we implemented a 'custom' version of the ServiceNow Interfaces design as mentioned by @Bruno De Graeve Please know that I fully endorse the OOB ServiceNow solution, however, the first release of it did not meet all the requirements ... so it had to be customized. Noting that I followed as closely as I could to the original data model design.

The overall reasons for customization are as follows:

> desire for a relationship between Digital Integration and Digital Integration Subscriber:

>> issue: the Digital Integration and Digital Integration Subscriber classes are 'outside' of the cmdb_ci so we represented this as referenced Business Applications.

> desire to use multiple Information Object(s) and have those offered as Related Lists on the respective Digital Integration and Digital Integration Subscriber forms.

>> issues: IO would not be related to the Digital Integration and Digital Integration Subscriber class but the Business Application that they are attached [i.e., referenced] to. Also, a desire to offer the complete 'list' of information objects that the digital integration/digital integration subscriber [i.e., the respective Business Applications] are related to on the Integration form [i.e., Related List].

==> I've attached a rudimentary level one diagram which shows that there is an m2m 'interface' table created between the Information Object and the Integration forms. Also, there are a series of Business Rules and an overall 'utility' which manage the creation and deletion of relationships and also manage the m2m table contents.

not sure if any of this will help but thought I'd share,

thx,

ed