Different techniques to automate importing data into ServiceNow, from say a regularly emailed excel spreadsheet?

[Batman3]

Does anyone have/had experience with automating a scheduled excel spreadsheet with data.

Temporarily we are looking to get printer CI data loaded into our CMDB from a vendor who will periodically email us updates regarding what printers have been added to our environment. 

I'm interested in trying to automate this process as manually importing the data will quickly become tiresome and inefficient. 

Long term we will be getting this data through another system, but in the meantime we need this data to support a few of our items in our service catalog.

My first thought was is there a way for ServiceNow to receive an email with an attached report (excel printer data) and automatically import that on a daily or weekly schedule?

Just wanted to pick some brains and get some thoughts on the matter. Thanks in advance.

[Michael Kaufman · Accepted solution]

Wrote an article for this that may help!

• Load CMDB Data via Email

[Batman3]

Wonderful article, full of great information!

What are the drawbacks of loading CMDB data via email?

[sachin_namjoshi]

There are many drawbacks.

- This data import will NOT be dynamic.IF there are any updates for CI after import, users will have to wait till next run of import.

- It has dependency on email inbound mailbox to process inbound emails.

- What @ CI relationships? You need to store valid relationships between CI to do impact analysis.

Regards,

Sachin

[sachin_namjoshi]

you will have to configure email inbound action to read attachment data and insert records in cmdb_ci table.

Regards,

Sachin