Change Request calendar invite: how to adjust to the Planned Start date?

[Shawn Horley]

Wanting to know how to adjust the calendar invite that is sent when Change Requests are created. Currently the invite is sent with the created date, but we need our invites adjusted to match the Planned Start date.

Can any one show me how to do this properly?

I have looked at these articles:

Calendar integration

ServiceNow Calendar Invites

Change Request Calendar Invite

And the first one from the SN docs site gives me a good idea of what is involved. I get that the {dtstart} and {dtend} variables are apparently what I need to configure to get the time that I want, but I don't know the proper way to configure it. or where to do so appropriately.

Any help would be very appreciated!

Cheers

A.

[Michael Fry1 · Accepted solution]

ok - I'm with you now! So in my personal instance, I don't see one either but in my prod instance, I have one. I would try creating one like this:

[Shawn Horley]

Greetings Michael

Interesting that My prod instance does not have one... but I digress.

So in creating one for the Change Requests, I can more or less match what you are showing me there. I assume your mappings for dtend and dtstart are both mapped to variable names and not a database field? (or are they?)

So once I have those variable mapped, how do I specify that they point to the Planned Start and Planned End date fields in the Change Request.? I don't see how to add the Field Labels...

Any Idea?

Cheers

A.

[Shawn Horley]

I got it. It SHOULD map to the database field. That's how to pull the field type into the map...

This looks right. I'll just test it and see how it goes.

Thanks for all your Help Michael! I won't bug you further if I am successful!, and I will try to update this with what worked so others can use it in future.

Cheers

A.

[Shawn Horley]

So yes it worked. The trick was creating the field maps for the Import Export map.

EDIT: Speaking of dumbing down I need to add this after the fact for new folks that may not know (I had to look at a few articles before finding it) Where to create the import export map.

Enter sys_impex_map.list in the filter navigator to get there

By default the only columns you see in the Field Maps section of the form are the Mapped field, External Name, and Table columns like in Michaels screenshot in the article above:

So when you choose to make a New field mapping you are presented with an immediate choice to make, Mapping to a database field or Mapping to a variable name:

If you choose to map to a variable name you will then proceed to fill out this record:

But there isn't any way here that I could see to link them to the Planned Start or Planned End dates that I need them to in the Change Request table.

There are two main reasons for this confusion on my part. 

1. I am still a relative noob to much of this stuff in ServiceNow

2. The documentation and community articles mostly refer to Variables and not Database fields. (here's an example of one of the docs I was looking at:Create iCalendar invitations for custom tables

So sometimes the documentation I think, could be clearer (or more likely dumbed down for people like me.)

In any case I decided I wasn't finding what I needed in that form so I figured I'd try the other one and attempt mapping to a database field:

Once I had chosen the Change Request [change_request] field I saw all the field options to pull from populate in the Database Field. My final product looked like this:

and it tests properly and is making users much happier in our Prod instance than the initial version that just used the create date.

I hope this is helpful for other folks in future.

Cheers

A

[KenStimson]

Thank you for taking the time for posting this.  Your solution saved me days of effort.

Sincerely, thank you very much!

Ken