Can I or Should I add an iFrame on the Service Catalog item that is actually a form from an external application?

[Jeff316]

Use Case:

There is an application at this company called "Order Servers" that has a GUI that asks all the questions the admins will need to build the server. 

however, they don't want any user to log into the "Order Servers" application but rather go to the ServiceNow service catalog on the portal and have ServiceNow render via iFrame the "Order Servers" GUI so ServiceNow can capture this request in ServiceNow and at the same time create the request in real-time in the "Order Servers" application and have the 2 system communicate so when the "Order Servers" application has fufilled the request it updates the request that was opened in ServiceNow.

[Johnnie O_]

I would try and stay away from iFrames if at all possible. If you have orchestration enabled you could replicate the form in Service Portal and have the workflow submit the request to the external system via API if that is an option. Otherwise I suppose you could use a UI Page or macro variable to embed the external page in the item.

[Jeff316]

Thanks Johnnie,

If you had to give 1 or 2 reasons why NOT to use an iFrame what would it be? Security, complexity, unsupported ?

[Johnnie O_ · Accepted solution]

iFrames were the go to for the old CMS Service Catalog and its not a clean UI experience. Service Portal is meant to move away from iFrames to a more modern reactive UI and placing an iFrame in the middle of that will break some of the re-activeness of the UI.