Introduction
ServiceNow is the “Platform of Platforms” and your System of Action that connects processes and data within your enterprise. Different use cases have different requirements regarding the speed and scale at which data is being sent from one system to another, be that your own ServiceNow instances, instances that belong to a ServiceNow partner or service provider working for you, or third-party software platforms.
This is part 1 of an article series that will give you
- An overview of the available technology for transferring or replicating data between your systems (this article)
- Integration best practices (Part 2)
- A guideline on when to choose which option (Part 3)
Note: Some of the products and technology mentioned in this article require a subscription. Please contact your Sales Representative before activating any plugins.
Data integration options
This article will cover different integration options at your disposal. Depending on your target system, use case and desired outcome, you will want to choose a different option (refer to Part 3 of this series for a guidance on the best option for your use case).
- ServiceNow to third-party systems
- IntegrationHub Spokes
- Other options
- ServiceNow to ServiceNow
- IntegrationHub Spokes
- Instance data replication
- System Clone
ServiceNow to third-party systems
ServiceNow is your system of action to make your work flow through your whole enterprise and most systems that you need to integrate with will be third-party software.
IntegrationHub Spokes
IntegrationHub as a technology to automate integrations has been introduced with the Kingston release and has been expanded significantly in functionality over the past years. With the Paris release and the number of ServiceNow-built actions and spokes exceeding the number of pre-built Orchestration activities, FDIH (Flow Designer + IntegrationHub) can now be considered equal or even superior to the legacy Orchestration + Workflow solution. We aim to increase the number of IntegrationHub spokes to 200 by the end of 2020. Migrating from Orchestration to IntegrationHub will take some time and effort, depending on how many Orchestration workflows have been created for your organization, but we have one very important tip for getting started:
Whenever you have a change request to one of your integrations or demand for a new functionality, consider building that artifact in FDIH. It is possible to trigger legacy workflows from Flows or triggering (sub)flows via FlowAPI from a workflow script step. This way you can migrate your workflows piece by piece, easing the total load of artifacts to be migrated.
Third-party software spokes
These spokes are usually part of process automation and integrate transfer data and information to software like MS Azure AD, Adobe Sign, Slack, Jira, etc. Spokes are being published through the ServiceNow Store. For any system that is not covered by the out-of-the-box spokes yet, you can use the FD Action Designer to create your own integrations (e.g. via REST).
Examples: The Jira spoke allows the use of webhooks to exchange data, create and update Issues. The SAP SuccessFactors spoke lets you retrieve data from and create or update records in SuccessFactors. The MS Teams, Slack, and HipChat spokes let you send messages to users or channels with info from your ServiceNow records.
Other options
(Scripted) REST API
Scripted REST API allows for integrating with external systems via REST. ServiceNow provides a wide array of REST APIs which make it easy for developers to request information from ServiceNow in third-party applications or other ServiceNow instances. In the rare case that a necessary method is not available, developers can use Scripted REST Services to create their own APIs on the Now Platform.
New in Paris: HEAD HTTP method support
Import Sets
If your source system can’t call the ServiceNow REST API to deliver data, you can use Import Sets to import data to your ServiceNow instance. Incoming data will be loaded into an import set table through one of the data source options (file, LDAP, REST, Data Stream, JDBC, OIDC, Custom). Transform maps are used to transform the data into the target format to be saved into the correct tables and columns in the ServiceNow database.
New in Paris: Use IntegrationHub Data Stream actions to import data from an external source into platform Data Sources. These can then be transformed and imported to your ServiceNow database through Import Sets.
Examples: One of the major use cases for this will be IntegrationHub ETL data loads to integrate third-party data into the CMDB.
Export Sets
If your target system does not have an API and you still need to supply your ServiceNow data for import, you can create an Export Set that exports your records to your MID server in one of these file types: CSV, XML, Excel, JSON.
ServiceNow to ServiceNow
In theory, any option that works for integrating with third-party systems will also work with other ServiceNow instances, but in general we’ll recommend to use one of these more robust OOB options to integrate between two ServiceNow instances:
IntegrationHub Spokes
Remote Process Sync
New in Quebec: The feature IntegrationHub Remote Process Sync enables you to set up one-way or bidirectional integrations among multiple ServiceNow instances so that your process flows stay in sync.
IntegrationHub Process Sync provides you with these benefits:
- Automate cross-enterprise automated processes that span multiple instances, keeping various process stakeholders up-to-date
- Manage how to synchronize and correlate your record, attachment, and journal field data across multiple instances
- Ensure order delivery for data updates in remote instances, using a standalone correlation engine and queueing system
- Manage and troubleshoot errors and outages in your automated mutli-instance processes with Flow Designer's built-in execution engine
ServiceNow Remote Instance Spoke and ServiceNow eBonding spoke
The ServiceNow Remote Instance Spoke provides actions to export, import and manage records when events occur in your local ServiceNow instance. It provides sample transform maps to demonstrate using transform maps to save the remote data in your local ServiceNow tables. This spoke fully replaces the ServiceNow eBonding demo spoke and is available for Orlando instances and up through the ServiceNow Store.
Examples: The ServiceNow Remote Instance spoke can be used if you have several distinct prod instances, for example one external facing with CSM and one for internal workflows. Data transfer will happen conditionally from within a flow. You can also use this spoke to escalate tasks to an external remote ServiceNow instance, for example one that belongs to a service provider who covers your third-party support for a sub-set of your tasks.
ServiceNow eBonding is a demo spoke to show how to sync incidents between two ServiceNow (prod) instances. It is deprecated for instances Orlando and above with the release of the ServiceNow Remote Instance spoke. It uses a basic auth credential to establish the connection and transfers a pre-defined payload of incident data (payloadbuilder script) to the target instance. This spoke could be used as an example to create your own custom eBonding to sync other task types than incident or to sync additional fields if your instance has not been upgraded to Orlando yet.
Instance data replication
Instance data replication (IDR) copies data from a source instance to one or more target instances. It has high flexibility in managing what data is being replicated and under what circumstances. The transferred data can be transformed and mapped to other tables and table columns in the target instances. Business rules can trigger post-replication flows to generate notifications after completion of the transfer. IDR replicates data and not metadata, configurations nor most user and system tables. In contrast to integrating via IntegrationHub spokes (usually REST/SOAP), which are part of business workflows, IDR is not supposed to be transactional. It is purely a means to copy or synchronize data between a producer instance and one or more consumer instances.
On the security side, IDR has significant benefits as it runs on dedicated infrastructure that is integrated with ServiceNow, delivering security, redundancy and support across all data centers. Data that is in transit during the unlikely event of a crash is recoverable.
New in Paris: Bi-directional data replication for customers with multiple instances or service providers with multiple service customers. This feature allows the easy setup and maintenance of a bi-directional IDR configurations within the producer instance and removes the need of maintaining settings in the consumer instances.
Examples: IDR is used to replicate data on an ongoing basis within a replication set of instances. The main use case would be to sync multiple prod instances, for example for large customers or to sync prod data to a UAT instance. Data transform allows modifications by mapping the data, for example localizing it during replication.
System Clone
System Clone is a base platform capability available to all customers. Cloning replicates prod instance data (like users, groups, CIs, and tasks) and configuration to pre-production instances before installing a patch or upgrade to make sure that any resolved conflicts and successful tests will also apply to the prod instance. It also provides the test instance with a real-life set of data to allow for realistic tests when testing new developments on the platform.
New in Orlando: Clone Profiles, Preserve In Progress Update Sets
Examples: Cloning can be used to set up a new or zBooted sub-prod instance with prod data and configuration. It is generally used to prepare your sub-prod for an upcoming release or patch.
Resources
NowLearning
System Administration Advanced
Flow Designer Fundamentals / IntegrationHub Fundamentals
NowCreate assets (Search) + Success pack “Integration with External Solutions”
Developer Portal
Learning Plans / New to ServiceNow / ServiceNow Administrator / ServiceNow Application Developer
Developer Blog / Flow Designer / IntegrationHub / Import Sets / REST API
Docs
IntegrationHub / Remote Instance Spoke / Remote Process Sync / Full spoke list
Web Services / REST API / Scripted REST APIs
Community
Learn Integrations on the Now Platform - YouTube playlist
Flow Designer / IntegrationHub
DK20 CCW0490 Best practices for Spoke development in IntegrationHub
Cloning Best Practices (Data Anonymization)
Knowledge21 Training
CCL1021-K21 Flow Designer - Leveraging low-code digital process automation
CCL1031-K21 Simplifying integration authentication with configuration templates
CCL1065-K21 Full stack app development adventures part 2: Integrations
@Alexander Versh have you checked Docs? I can see several articles on how to set up the spoke & webhook. When it comes to the data structure for the SuccessFactors API, you'll have to check their API documentation.
