Are you an Integrations Developer? Do you have a use case to automate work across multiple instances of the same external system?
This article will help you understand how to connect multiple instances of the same external system using our very own Jira Spoke as an example. Let's dive into Child Aliases within the Connections & Credentials framework.
Example
Infrastructure Details
- You have Jira Instance 1 owned by IT Team
- You have Jira Instance 2 owned by an outsourced DevOps partner
- You have Jira Instance 3 owned by Finance Team
Sample Automation Use Case
- When a ServiceNow Incident record is created – you need to create an Issue in Jira Instance 1 owned by IT Team.
- When a ServiceNow Change Management record is created for an Assignment Group that outsources the work to an external team – you need to create an Issue in Jira Instance 2 owned by DevOps partner.
- When a ServiceNow HR Case record is created requesting to make a new account for the company stock plan – you need to create an Issue in Jira Instance 1 for IT Team to create the account and create an Issue in Jira Instance 3 owned by Finance Team to setup the account.
Did you know you can achieve this implementation using our Jira Spoke? Let's have a look at the details ...
Connections
- In your ServiceNow instance Go to Workflow Studio -> Integrations -> Connections -> Outbound. Search for Jira
- When you first install the Jira Spoke, you will see the default credential alias, which is not configured yet.
- It is imperative that you connect the Jira instance you are going to build the most automations on with the default alias. Whenever you drop an action from Jira Spoke into a Flow, it connects to Jira using the default alias.
- Once you have configured the default credential alias, it's time to add Child Aliases for the other two Jira instances. You can click on Add Connection twice, once each for your Jira instances. After you've configured the additional Jira instances – you should now have 3 connections (see screenshot below): the default credential alias connecting to the Jira instance owned by the IT team, Jira Child Alias 1 connecting to the Jira Instance owned by the DevOps partner, and Jira Child Alias 2 connecting to the Jira Instance owned by the Finance Team. This allows you to connect and automate tasks in each of these Jira instances individually and together in a single Flow.
- When you click on View Details you will be able to see the Child Alias details in a full page.
- Now you are all set from the connections setup side. You can continue learning more about this in our product documentation - Supporting multiple connections.
Now, let's move on to Flows...
Flows
Sample Flow 1: When a ServiceNow Incident record is created you need to create an Issue in Jira Instance 1 owned by IT Team. You do this the same way you've been authoring Flows throughout your development journey, no additional settings required.
Sample Flow 2: When a ServiceNow Change Request is created for an Assignment Group that outsources the work to an external team you need to create an Issue in Jira Instance 2 owned by DevOps partner. In order to author this Flow you need to tell the Flow that it should use the Jira Child Alias 1, and not the default connection.
- Click on the ... icon at the top right hand of your Flow to open the Flow menu and select "Configure Connections" – then select Jira Child Alias 1 and click "Update". This step will tell the Flow to connect to Jira Child Alias 1 for all Jira actions in this Flow.
- The Flow triggers when a Change Request record is created – which has Assignment Group = ACME Support.
- Dive into more details in our product documentation - Override a connection in a Flow.
Sample Flow 3: When a ServiceNow HR Case record is created requesting a new account for the company stock plan – you need to create an Issue in Jira Instance 1 for IT Team to create the account and create an Issue in Jira Instance 3 owned by Finance Team to setup the account.
- Click on the ... icon at the top right hand of your Flow to open the Flow menu and select "Flow preferences" – then enable "Show advanced connection options". This will enable choosing a connection per Action.
- The Flow triggers when a HR Case record is created in ServiceNow – which has Short Description = Open Company Stock Plan Account.
- Please note for the Create Issue Action in step 1, we have not added any additional settings and it is expected to connect to the default alias.
- For the Create Issue Action in step 2, we have expanded "Advanced Options" and chosen Jira Child Alias 2 in the Jira Connection drop down – this means that this particular Create Issue Action will connect to the Jira Instance 3 just for that Action only.
- This is how you can continue to use the default and Child Aliases to perform automations in multiple instances of the same third party in a single Flow. You can read about this in more detail in our product documentation - Supporting multiple connections - refer to the Action-level connection selection section.
Priority
An important item to note here is the order of priority when you have multiple overrides in a Flow. This is explained in detail in our product documentation - Supporting multiple connections - refer to the Multiple overrides within a Flow section.
Notes:
- This blog post focuses on how to use Child Aliases to connect to multiple instances of external systems, hence the Flows shown are very simple, but you will be able to define your actual use cases using the normal Flow authoring that you will perform as part of your application development.
- This blog focuses on our Jira Spoke; However, you should be able to implement this for any Spoke that ships with a default Connection & Credential Alias – which allows you to create Child Aliases.
Now you understand the power of our Connections & Credential Alias framework and how you can leverage it when you need to connect multiple instances of the same external system.
Happy Integrating!
@Joe Wilmoth and @Manish Kothari Co-Authored this Article
5 Comments
