Registering and Onboarding a New Service Bridge Consumer Connection

[Phillip Godwin]

In the third installment in this series of Service Bridge articles, we will cover the registration and onboarding of a new Service Bridge consumer. 

For an introduction to Service Bridge and instruction on installing and configuring Service Bridge on a provider instance, see Installing and Configuring Service Bridge for Providers.

Registration of a new consumer in Service Bridge establishes an instance-to-instance connection between the provider and consumer instances.  The provider registers a new consumer by creating a registration task for that consumer’s company.  The identified consumer company contact will receive an email when the registration task is created, providing them with instructions on how to complete the registration process.  If email sending is not enabled on the provider instance the registration task work notes contain a link to the registration instructions that the provider administrator can copy and send to the consumer contact.

Provider Actions

Consumer registration prerequisites:

• Role required: admin
• A Service Bridge provider record must have been created (See the previous article on Installing and Configuring Service Bridge for Providers)
• The consumer company must exist in the provider instance, with a company contact identified who is a consumer instance administrator
• The consumer company contact must have active credentials and be assigned the Service Bridge Consumer role (sn_sb_pro.consumer) on the provider’s instance
• Service Bridge uses the Key Management Framework (KMF) Key Exchange request process flow to send encrypted data between the Provider and Consumer instances. Before registering a new consumer make sure that the KMF is running correctly by running a Key Management Framework Health Check.
  
  
  1. Grant the admin sn_kmf.admin, sn_kmf_cryptographic_auditor or sn_kmf_cryptographic_manager role then log out and back in.
  2. Navigate to Key Management > Health (Diagnostics) and ensure the health check passes (this may require refreshing the report multiple times)

The provider system administrator should complete the following steps to register a new Service Bridge consumer:

1. Navigate to All > Service Bridge Provider > Consumer Registrations and click New.
   
   
   
   
2. Enter the following details:

• Select the Company associated with the consumer instance being registered.
• Select the contact details associated with the Company you have selected

 This contact must be an admin user in the consumer instance, have valid credentials on the provider instance, and be assigned the sn_sb_pro.consumer role on the provider instance.

• Click the Lock icon on the URL field and enter the URL of the consumer ServiceNow instance.
• Enter the instance ID of the consumer ServiceNow instance in the Instance ID field

3. Click Submit.

An email is generated and sent to the specified Consumer Contact.  If email sending is not enabled, the admin must copy the link from the registration task work notes and manually send it to the consumer admin. The Consumer Contact must follow the steps listed in the Registering with a provider to complete the registration process on the consumer instance.

Consumer Actions

The designated consumer company contact will receive an email containing a registration link from the provider’s instance or directly from the provider administrator. 

Service Bridge uses the Key Management Framework (KMF) Key Exchange request process flow to send encrypted data between the Provider and Consumer instances. Before registering with the provider make sure that the KMF is running correctly by running a Key Management Framework Health Check.

1. Grant the admin sn_kmf.admin, sn_kmf_cryptographic_auditor or sn_kmf_cryptographic_manager role then log out and back in.
2. Navigate to Key Management > Health (Diagnostics) and ensure the health check passes (this may require refreshing the report multiple times)

After the consumer company contact  has received the registration link they should complete the following steps:

1. Log in to the provider instance using their credentials and remain logged in to the provider instance during the registration process.
   
     The consumer admin completing the registration process must be the named contact on the provider’s registration task or registration will fail during the authentication step.
2. Click the Connect to Provider link sent in the provider's registration email or follow the link given to you directly by the provider’s admin.
3. This link will generate and open a Provider connection record.
   
   
   
   
4. On the Provider connection form in the consumer instance, select the Company the provider is associated with and click Save.
5. The Provider connection record is displayed.
   
   
   
   
6. Click Connect to Provider in the provider connection record page.
7. Click Authenticate when the Service Bridge registration message appears.
   
   
   
   
8. The OAuth authentication page appears.
   
   
9. Click Allow and then click Submit to proceed with the registration.
   
   
10. The consumer admin will be redirected to the Registration task where they can view the status.
    When registration is completed, a connection is established between the provider and the consumer instances, and the registration task State is set to Closed Complete on the provider's instance.
    
    

The registration is now complete, and setup can continue on the consumer instance. 

The next article in the Service Bridge series will walk through Installing and Configuring Service Bridge for Consumers.