ServiceNow

Flow Designer has a ServiceNow 5.x trigger and built-in ServiceNow steps to help you integrate ServiceNow into your alert management and incident response flows.

ServiceNow steps

The following steps are available:

  • Create Incident: automatically create a new incident in ServiceNow, populating it with information from the alert or any previous steps in the flow.
  • Update Incident: automatically update an incident as information about the event changes.
  • Add Comment: automatically add a comment to an incident, either as a public comment or an internal work note, including information from the alert or previous steps in the flow.
  • Send Integration Update: automatically update an existing incident or engage record in an xMatters integration with ServiceNow.
  • Create Record: automatically create any ServiceNow record type, populating it with information from the alert or any previous steps in the flow.
  • Update Record: automatically update any ServiceNow record type as information about the event changes.

In the example above, the flow creates a ServiceNow incident based on the response a recipient selects in the alert notification, and includes details from the source system. A Jira Cloud issue is created with additional information from the ServiceNow incident. A comment (internal) is added to the ServiceNow incident with the Jira Issue ID, then a message is posted to a Slack channel with information from the alert, the ServiceNow incident, and the Jira Cloud issue. Finally, the ServiceNow incident is updated with the name of the Slack channel and the thread the team used to collaborate in resolving the issue.

If you want to update an existing incident or engage record in an xMatters integration with ServiceNow, replace the Add Comment and Update Incident steps with the Send Integration Update step in the example.

Create Incident

Use the Create Incident step to automatically create a new incident in ServiceNow. Map outputs from previous steps to the inputs; at runtime, the values in the inputs are used to fill in the incident record.

Update Incident

Use the Update Incident step to automatically update the details of an existing ServiceNow incident. Map outputs from previous steps to the inputs; at runtime, the values in the inputs are used to determine the incident to update and update the record.

Add Comment

Use the Add Comment step to automatically add a comment to a record in ServiceNow, either as an public comment or an internal work note. Map outputs from previous steps to the inputs; at runtime, the values in the inputs are used to determine the incident to update and the comment to add.

Send Integration Update

Use the Send Integration Update step to automatically update an incident or engage record in an existing xMatters integration with ServiceNow and send alerts about these updates back to ServiceNow.

Map outputs from previous steps to the inputs; at runtime, the values in the inputs are used to determine the incident or engage record to update and the type of update to make.

This step is for users with existing xMatters integrations with ServiceNow that want to utilize Flow Designer in their incident management process. If this your first time integrating xMatters with ServiceNow, we recommend that you start your integration with our built-in ServiceNow (Flow Designer) workflow instead. The workflow comes with more out-of-the-box features that integrate with Flow Designer, allowing you to seamlessly connect ServiceNow to your xMatters toolchain.

Create Record

Use the Create Record step to automatically create a record in ServiceNow. Map ServiceNow table columns to your custom inputs and outputs. Configure inputs by specifying their values manually or mapping outputs from previous steps to the inputs. At runtime, the values in the inputs are used to fill in the record.

Update Record

Use the Update Record step to automatically update the details of an existing ServiceNow record. Map ServiceNow table columns to your custom inputs and outputs. Configure inputs by specifying their values manually or mapping outputs from previous steps to the inputs. At runtime, the value in the default input is used to determine the record to update.

ServiceNow 5.x Trigger

The built-in ServiceNow 5.x trigger initiates a flow when it receives a request from a ServiceNow webhook.

Configure ServiceNow to send requests to the trigger URL

To have ServiceNow send alerts to the flow trigger, you need to configure a webhook and set it to use the trigger URL.

Prepare ServiceNow

There are a couple of steps to get ServiceNow ready to integrate with xMatters — first and foremost, installing the xMatters app. However, you also need to create a user in ServiceNow to make requests, and assign the user specific roles installed with the application.

Configure xMatters

Now that you've completed the first part of the configuration in ServiceNow, it's time to configure xMatters.

Complete the xMatters Configuration pages

The xMatters application installs four configuration pages into ServiceNow:

  • Common Configuration: Configures the connection, credentials, and logging level for the communication between xMatters and ServiceNow.
  • Incident Notifications: Enables or disables the incident notification features, and configures when and how ServiceNow sends an incident to xMatters for notification.
  • Engage with xMatters: Enables or disables the Engage with xMatters action in the ServiceNow user interface, sets the connection parameters for the feature, and sets the maximum number of results to return when searching for people or groups to target.
  • Data Sync: Configures the user and group seeding, and the data synchronization between xMatters and ServiceNow.

You need to update most of the settings on these pages with information specific to your xMatters deployment. See the following sections for more information on the settings in the Common Configuration, Incident Notifications, Engage with xMatters, and Data Sync tabs.

You're ready to use the webhook to trigger automated flows, including steps such as sending updates and initiating incidents, though we always recommend testing before putting things into use.

Send payloads to xMatters using the latest payload format

To maintain compatibility with existing integrations, the payload to trigger an alert is sent using a legacy format. For new installations, we recommend you change this to use the latest payload format. Besides being more future proof, it means you can also use the information in the xMatters REST API documentation to customize your payload if needed.

ServiceNow 5.x trigger outputs

The trigger has the following outputs you can use as inputs to steps further along the flow, including values for a ServiceNow major incident. The output values depend on whether the signal came from an Incident Notification configuration or an Engage with xMatters configuration.