Safely connect your Badge Reader Client to ServiceNow’s Walk-Up Experience

[isabellafredian]

Walk-Up Experience application provides customers the capability to create work queues and operate the Walk-Up Experience venue locations where the requests and issues are fulfilled and resolved by experienced and skilled agents – in person or remotely. Out of box (OOB) implementation of Walk-Up Experience requires employees to check in via a screen click-based experience. Employees must enter their name, email & reason for visit to check-in to a Walk-Up Experience location, and OOB this is done by typing in or clicking the required information.

ServiceNow used to provide OOB support for HID Omnikey 5427ck USB Badge Reader. However, this format is only compatible with Mac OS-X and Linux devices. In order to support badge reader configurations across a wider variety of operating systems, we have decided to open up the badge reader integration framework, while also providing steps that will allow our customers to develop their own client software. Upon developing this client software, customers will be able to integrate their badge reader of choice directly with the ServiceNow system.

See the attached white paper for more information. 

[Janet Achorn]

Provided to SC looking for why there is only a Linux and Mac connection.... 

[Dawn Khan]

Hmmm @isabellafredian I got excited when I read "in order to support badge reader configurations across a wider variety of operating systems, we have decided to open up the badge reader integration framework" 

How do you use a Windows OS, instead of Linux,  to connect ServiceNow Walk Up Experience to an HID Badge Reader?  

Am I correct in deducing that most who had been successful in a WIN >HID>ServiceNow experience were doing so in legacy or completely customized system?   

[tdexter]

Where can I download the Client Software provided by service now so I can reverse engineer a custom one. Alternatively, where are the docs showing how to get an `access_token` to use in the `headers` for a call to `/api/sn_badge/v1/reader/scan`. I'm trying to call the endpoint and am getting: 

{
    "result": {
        "status": "error",
        "message": "The access token is invalid"
    }
}

[chercm]

I tried to use the client software with the correct reader but it never written the reader to the screen . Was wondering that if I need to do something more than that to get it working ???

[tdexter]

@chercm where did you get the client reader? Can you provide a link or a zip file? 

[tdexter]

@chercm not sure how far you've gotten into your development, but FYI with the badge reader the user can't choose the reason for their visit, so if you need that capability you would either need 1 badge reader for each reason or to build your own software that lets them choose a reason and then posts the data back to a custom scripted rest endpoint for checkin. 

[chercm]

@isabellafredian @Janet Achorn 

the white paper does not really tell much on how are going to come out with the Client component and how it is being used to generate the access token 

[ajs4]

@isabellafredian @Janet Achorn @tdexter @chercm @Dawn Khan :

We see not complete information present in White paper or Badge Integration documents related to building of Custom Client Software ( eg: extension of software(.exe) , what are files needs to present in customer client software (eg : json , .js files etc) which needs to be installed on Physical location Machine.

Please can you provide additional details.

 

[chercm]

@ajs4  i am afraid you might have to wait for a long time to get or even SN will never give it to you. i given tried to open a Hi ticket and all the support is saying a lot of companies are asking for the simpler integration but it all depends on the SN developer on prioritising . which in short wait long long .

[RanaAhmed]

Hi @chercm , 

I am trying to implement Badge Reader for my client.

I apologize in advance for my probably very naive queries, but I really need some help regarding the implementation.

1. I was going through the SN Washington docs where it mentions that Badge Reader client needs to be downloaded and configured:

I am not sure from where can we download the Badge Reader client or is it the custom client which needs to be built? If its the custom client, do you have any guidelines on how to build it?

2. We got our HID OmniKey badge reader and connected it to the MAC. The workbench tool from HID is asking to select the mode - CCID or KBW with EEM interface.  as per the whitepaper, its expecting KBW: 

But there are security concerns as well. Do you have any suggestions on which mode to be selected and if we need the EEM interface?

Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks and regards,

R'ana

[tdexter]

@RanaAhmed @ajs4 I do not believe the badge reader software is supported any longer (as far as I know, it's only available in Tokyo). 

For us, we created a custom web app that runs on iPads with the badge reader hooked up as a keyboard to input the card numbers into the UI and then we make API calls to servicenow to get the user information, check-in reasons to present to the user, and perform the check-in. 

[chercm]

@RanaAhmed you can create widget and use this:  

		var facade = new sn_walkup.ExtPointUtil().loadExtension("InteractionFacade");
		facade.createInteraction(
			userId,
			queueId,
			reasonId, // reasonID
			reasonDescription, // reason description
			false, // is_guest
			"", // guest_name
			"", // guest_email
			false, // is_online_checkin
			false, // is_appointment
			badgeId ? true : false // is_badge_checkin
		);

[pavanibaradi]

Updated the white paper with more details.

[chercm]

@pavanibaradi a lot of us are having issue in creating the client component file . any more tips on helping on that and how to get it working in windows ?

[Ajit Chaudhari]

Hi Team,

Do we have any updates on this thread? We want to understand detailed step by steps guide for Badge Reader integration with ServiceNow. Official document is not much helpful.

Please suggest.

Regards

Ajit Chaudhari

[Ganesh73]

Is anyone ble to build the client for Windows or Mac?

[UmaMaheswari]

@tdexter  - I am working on Badge Reader Integration. Could you please help me with what you have done.

[RanaAhmed]

We were finally able to get the Badge Reader integration working on MAC using Python.

The Badge reader was configured in KBW mode as there were some encryptions being performed by the client on all the scanners. We used Python script to read the badge scanned, convert it into the relevant format, add it to the payload and then send the payload to the SN API. Once the card data reaches SN, the API and the OOTB script includes validate the badge data and the user profile.

[chercm]

@RanaAhmed  is it possible for you to share that ? are you using any badge reader or just hid ?