How to use the ServiceNow Tile

This article covers how to use the ServiceNow tile available with SquaredUp v4.4 and above to query data from ServiceNow and display this data in SquaredUp.

The ServiceNow tile is easier to configure than the Web API tile, and additionally offers the donut visualisation. For more flexibility and advanced configurations you may prefer to use the Web API tile with ServiceNow.

The ServiceNow tile needs a new ServiceNow specific provider to be configured in SquaredUp, and cannot use an existing Web API oauth provider you created for use with the Web API tile. The new provider can of course use the same ServiceNow account and settings as the old provider (so there is nothing to change within ServiceNow). The new ServiceNow specific provider is backwardly compatible with the Web API tile.

Overview

The ServiceNow tile button indicates that there are more tiles available from this one button:

After selecting the ServiceNow tile you will get further choice of tile types:

ServiceNow (Scalar) button:

Shows a single value such as a number of customers or incidents:

ServiceNow (Grid) button:

Displays a table of data, e.g. incidents:

ServiceNow (Donut) button:

Displays a donut summary of the data:

This article covers these areas

1. Configuration in ServiceNow
2. Adding a ServiceNow provider in SquaredUp.
3. Configuring the ServiceNow tile

Prerequisites

• SquaredUp v4 with the Enterprise or EAM edition – this gives you the ServiceNow tile. The SquaredUp server must have access to your ServiceNow instance on port 443 (HTTPS), since it is the server that connects to ServiceNow, and not your users' browser.
• A ServiceNow instance.
• The username and password of the account to use for requests (we recommend a service account). This ServiceNow user must have the 'web_service_admin' role and check 'Allow access to this table via web services'. You may need some help from a ServiceNow admin to get an account with the correct privileges.
• If you use a proxy server you may need to configure the proxy to allow the ServiceNow tile to communicate with ServiceNow.

Configuration in ServiceNow

If you previously configured a ServiceNow account for use with the Web API tile, you can skip this section and go straight to Adding a ServiceNow provider in SquaredUp because the new provider can use the same ServiceNow account and settings as the old provider (so there is nothing to change within ServiceNow).

1. In the Application Navigator (left-hand menu) go to System OAuth and click Application Registry.
2. Click Create an OAuth API endpoint for external clients.
3. Call it something like SquaredUp to make it easier to remember, all the other defaults should be fine.
4. Once you've created the endpoint, open the entry to view the client ID and secret (click the padlock next to the client secret to see it!) and copy these into a notepad for use later.

Adding a ServiceNow provider in SquaredUp

The ServiceNow tile requires a new ServiceNow specific provider to be configured and cannot use an existing provider you may have created for use with the Web API tile. You can use the same ServiceNow account that used with the Web API provider as long as you know the client ID and secret.

1. Log on to SquaredUp and navigate to the right-hand menu ☰ then system and then click on the web api perspective.
2. Click add new provider.
3. Change the provider type to servicenow and type in a suitable name, e.g. ServiceNow.
4. The instance url should look something like https://instancename.service-now.com/api/now/ where instancename is your instance (if /api/now/ is not included as part of the instance URL then it will be automatically appended to this URL when the provider is created). If ServiceNow is installed on-premises, this may be something different. This URL is prepended to every request URL.
5. client id and secret are taken from the notes you made earlier.
6. username and password are exactly those used to sign into the account which was setup with the permissions mentioned in the prerequisites.
7. Click add provider.

If the configuration is correct you will see a green tick.

If the provider is not authorized it could be that some of the provider configuration is incorrect (for example the username, password, secret etc), or if you use a proxy it could be that the proxy is not configured. See How to configure SquaredUp to use a proxy.

Walkthrough: Configuring the ServiceNow tile

This walkthrough takes you through configuring the ServiceNow Grid tile to show a list of the open incidents.

You'll find the ServiceNow document with the relevant information here: ServiceNow Aggregate API

1. Create a new dashboard or perspective and click on the ServiceNow tile.
   

2. Select ServiceNow (Grid).
   
   

3. The scope section is optional. It allows you to specify a scope of SCOM objects, which will automatically be inserted into the ServiceNow query. For this walkthrough you can leave the scope empty.

   If you wish to add a scope you could click on group and search to find a suitable group of computers. You need a group that contains servers monitored by ServiceNow which we can query later.

   Or for a perspective for use with Enterprise Applications (EAs), you might want to to scope to the servers that are specified on the EA map by selecting something similar to the following:

   This /<YourApplicationName> Map / ... / Windows Computer

   The above will scope the tile to all the objects of class Windows Computer on this EA's map.

4. In the provider section select the ServiceNow provider that you created earlier. If you have only one ServiceNow provider it will be selected by default. Only providers of the provider type service now are shown in the list.

   If you are unable to see your provider in the list check that it is a specific servicenow provider that shows (servicenow) next to the provider name in system > web api providers list, rather than the generic (oauth) provider created for use with the Web API tile.

   You can click the add new provider button to open a new tab and create a new ServiceNow provider now.

5. In the table section click on incidents as the table you wish to query.

   The ServiceNow tile can show Incidents or Change Requests. If you wish to query other tables use the Web API tile with ServiceNow instead of the ServiceNow tile.

   Rows of data should now be shown.
   
   

6. Choose a view from the drop down list to determine the set of columns which will be displayed. The list of views is populated from ServiceNow.
7. Choose a filter to restrict the query to certain items. The list of filters is populated from ServiceNow.
8. Leave the display section as it is for now. Limit allows you to change the limit for the number of rows of data returned (default is 20) and sort by allows you to sort the data by a column in ascending or descending order. The Sort option uses the many incident fields, and you can sort by one of them even if that field is not currently displayed in your results table. To make this more clear you may like to reference this in the tile title, for example Incidents, sorted by priority.
9. Click on one of the lines in the results and you will see that it takes you to that incident in ServiceNow.
10. Click done.

FAQs

I can't find the provider I created in the drop down list?

If you are unable to see your provider in the list check that it is a specific servicenow provider that shows (servicenow) next to the provider name in system > web api providers list, rather than the generic (oauth) provider created for use with the Web API tile.

How do I query tables other than Incidents or Change Requests ?

The ServiceNow tile can only show Incidents or Change Requests. If you wish to query other tables use the Web API tile to query the ServiceNow API instead of the ServiceNow tile.

How do I create a new view or filter ?

The list of views and filters is pulled from ServiceNow. You should create any new views and filters in ServiceNow and they will be available in SquaredUp.