Technical Requirement Gathering for an integration!!
Integrations well is not something new. Thanos used it in a way. If you are a Marvel fan then you can understand that the six Infinity Stones - Space, Mind, Reality Power, Time, and Soul - are all dangerous in their own right, but when combined with each other, are capable of much devastation.
Well Thanos used for devastation but it could be used for good as well. Well let’s leave that discussion since it was just a movie and my idea behind telling you this was to make you understand what business looks for when they think of integrations. Each tool is like an infinity stone for the organization and motive behind integrating them is to enhance the power of these tools and achieve a strategic objective.
Toughest part of Integration:
Well I have done a few integrations in my career. One thing I have realized that toughest part in integration is not doing the integration. Servicenow has empowered the developers with so much options that doing integration is not tough. All you need to follow certain steps in a correct order with some amount of troubleshooting skills and you are done. You don’t believe me check out Live Coding Happy Hour Series where experts like
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3rNcyAiDYK3YiwkTj8OUSs_FRz-YSIw2
And if you are looking for right skillset Check out this Series from
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9npfsOxOQk&list=PL3rNcyAiDYK0at2ypM6uhp_Mg6-gZlIdP
The biggest challenge in my experience is the first step that is:
I know the feeling project managers and all stakeholders have when they see the next item on the roadmap is an integration, reason being the fact if a good integration can increase the power of tools but a bad integration can put lots of things on risk as well. So yess below is the feeling:
I will share few questions which one should ask. You can also consider them as the checklist questions. I consider them as one the best practices. I will divide them into three parts:
Define how the systems will connect to each other and how data will be transmitted between them (i.e., the network path)
- Where is the data and is it available to the internet?
ServiceNow typically doesn’t have direct access to on-site infrastructure so it maybe be necessary to use a proxy to connect (e.g., MID Server* or tunneling through with a VPN). Integrations are simplified if the data can be made available on the internet.
- Is the system you want to integrate with capable of integration with ServiceNow?Some older systems (e.g., mainframes) don’t easily support ServiceNow integrations.
- Do you have any security concerns that could make data transmitting more difficult (e.g., firewalls)?
- What technique (language) will the two systems use to talk to each other (e.g., https) ?
- How will errors be handled? Who is responsible for resolving errors? What monitoring or logging will be required? Is any middleware required?
Explore details about the data you intend to transmit data across systems
- How and in what format is the data available?
- What is the data quality like? Does it need to be transformed prior to applying it?
- How frequently should data be transferred/synced(i.e., in real-time or batches)? While some cases require real-time exchange (e.g., some process and all UI integrations), most data transfers should be asynchronousto limit effects on system Consider potential time zone impacts if your instance is global.
- What is the volume of data transfer(e.g., estimated number of transactions and their size)? Work with your enterprise architecture team to ensure that the system(s) can handle your expected volume and file sizes, especially considering attachments.
- How does data need to be packaged?
Identify the events that will trigger an exchange of data between systems
- What are the triggers for the process?
This could be events—such as creating an incident or assigning it to a particular group—when certain fields such as Priority are changed, when a work note is added, etc.
- Will you always send/receive all records or only the delta between records since the last synchronization (i.e., a “changes only” file).
I recommend transmitting only the delta between records instead of sending all records, when possible, to minimize system performance impacts.
- Will ServiceNow and/or the external system push or pull data?
Pushes tend to be more real time and transactional in nature. You always need to batch pull triggers.
One final Pro tip(from Servicenow Docs): Implement ServiceNow functionality so that users can't make changes to a record that impacts the integration. Lock fields (e.g., updating the state field directly) on forms as needed. Users not allowed to make updates can use journal fields, such as comments and work notes instead
If you find the article helpful, please mark the article as helpful and do remember to bookmark this article.
In case you need any help, please do connect with me. It will be my pleasure to help you.
Happy Learning Guys!!!
----->Dhruv Gupta
