Transform data with the Service Exchange transform framework

  • Release version: Zurich
  • Updated July 31, 2025
  • 2 minutes to read
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    Summary of Transform data with the Service Exchange transform framework

    The Service Exchange Transform Framework enables ServiceNow customers to integrate and transform remote task data—such as incidents, cases, and service requests—between two ServiceNow instances, typically between a provider and a consumer. This framework facilitates seamless data exchange by converting data across tables and fields, ensuring both parties can effectively collaborate and resolve issues.

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    Key Features

    • Reusable Transforms: Transforms are created once and can be applied across multiple remote task definitions, improving efficiency and consistency.
    • Transform Types:
      • Simple: Uses predefined inbound and outbound field values to map data, such as converting incident states between instances.
      • Advanced: Employs scripting to customize data transformation, useful for complex mappings like converting sysids for reference fields.
      • Virtual Inbound: Uses scripting to set or transform values for inbound virtual fields, requiring specification of the inbound field.
      • Virtual Outbound: Similar to Virtual Inbound but for outbound virtual fields, also script-based with mandatory outbound field specification.
      • Global: Defines default transform behavior applicable to all consumer accounts, overridden by company- or account-specific transforms.
    • Data Synchronization Behavior: Each transform runs twice per update to detect field changes, which may cause conditions to trigger actions twice; customers should be aware of this to prevent false positives in workflows.

    Practical Benefits

    By leveraging the Transform Framework in Service Exchange, ServiceNow customers can:

    • Ensure consistent and accurate data mapping between provider and consumer instances.
    • Handle complex data relationships and references through scripting capabilities.
    • Apply global or account-specific transform logic to tailor data integration to organizational needs.
    • Improve collaboration and streamline resolution of incidents, cases, and service requests shared across instances.

    Next Steps

    To implement data transformations, customers should follow the guidance on creating transforms within the Service Exchange application. Awareness of transform execution behavior and condition triggering is important to avoid unintended workflow results.

    Use the Transform Framework to integrate tasks between two ServiceNow instances to transform remote task data in the Service Exchange application.

    As a provider, you can use the Transform Framework to transform your inbound and outbound data (such as incidents, cases, and service requests) of the remote tasks between your ServiceNow instance and your consumer's instance. To learn what a remote task is, see Remote tasks.

    While using the Service Exchange for Providers application, you and your consumer can exchange the remote task data through tables and fields. The Transform Framework helps you to convert the data between those tables and fields so that you and your consumer can easily communicate with each other while resolving the incidents, cases, and consumer requests. Transforms can be created once and used across all remote task definitions.

    You can use the following transform types in the Transform Framework for your remote tasks:
    • Simple: Select the simple transform option to use the predefined values of the inbound and outbound fields for your remote tasks. For example, by using this transform type, you’re converting the Open state of an incident in the provider's ServiceNow® instance to the In Progress state in the consumer's ServiceNow instance.
    • Advanced: Use an advanced transform where you run a script to determine the inbound and outbound data values for your remote tasks. For example, use this transform type to convert an incoming sys_id into a correlated sys_id for a reference field.
    • Virtual Inbound: Use this to transform or set a value for an Inbound Virtual field. This option uses a script to transform the data and adds a mandatory Inbound Field field.
    • Virtual Outbound: Use this to transform or set a value for an Outbound Virtual field. This option uses a script to transform the data and adds a mandatory Outbound Field field.
    • Global: Use the global transform option to create a default transform definition that can be applied to all consumer accounts.
      Note:
      A matching company or account specific transform overrides the Global transform option.
    Note:
    A transform runs twice on every update to determine which of the mapped fields have changed. If the transform includes a condition, that condition can be met on both runs, causing the action tied to it to run twice instead of once and produce a false positive. To learn more about the behavior, see Service Bridge: Preventing False Positives in Service Bridge Transform Conditions on the ServiceNow Community.

    To learn how to create a transform, see Create a transform in Service Exchange.