Integrating SailPoint with ServiceNow Service Desk

ServiceNow Service Desk is a software platform that supports IT service management and automates common business processes for requesting and fulfilling service requests across a business enterprise.

This guide helps you configure the ServiceNow Service Desk Integration Module (SDIM). It converts SailPoint provisioning actions into tickets (Service Requests or Incidents) in the ServiceNow managed system.

Supported Features

The SailPoint ServiceNow Service Desk Integration Module (SDIM) supports the following features:

• Creation of tickets for manual provisioning operations and status check.
• Synchronization of ticket status between the ServiceNow Service Desk Integration Module (SDIM) and the ServiceNow Service Desk managed system.
• Retry Mechanism for check ticket status failure.
• The supported operations for the ServiceNow Service Desk Integration Module:
  • List
  • View
  • Create
  • Edit/Update
  • Delete

Prerequisites

• Configure the virtual appliance cluster only when using a VA-based connection type. For instructions, refer to the Virtual Appliance Reference Guide.

  Note

  This requirement doesn't apply to SaaS connections.

• Configure at least one source to generate manual tasks for Provisioning. For more information, refer to Configuring Source Account Provisioning.

• Be familiar with Apache Velocity scripting. For more information, refer to Apache Velocity Engine - Getting Started.

• A source must be set up between ServiceNow and SailPoint to aggregate and correlate ServiceNow users with SailPoint identities.

• Have at least one ServiceNow instance that is an established part of your IT environment. Refer to Connecting SailPoint and ServiceNow Service Desk for more information.
• Know the authentication option (Basic Authentication or OAuth2 Authentication) to authenticate into ServiceNow. For token generation and OAuth Client setup on the ServiceNow instance, refer to Create an endpoint for clients to access the instance in the ServiceNow help.

Required Permissions

• A Service Desk Administrator must be assigned the x_sap_sdim.admin role on the ServiceNow instance.
• In SailPoint, the Admin user level permissions are required to access the ServiceNow Service Desk UI integration.

System Requirements

• For supported ServiceNow releases, refer to SailPoint for Service Desk on the ServiceNow Store.

• The virtual appliance must be able to connect to the ITSM system when using a VA-based connection type, typically using outbound access for port 443 (HTTPS).

  Note

  This requirement doesn't apply to SaaS connections.

Best Practices

Before you start the configuration process, you should make decisions about the following components of this integration:

• Identify - Find the ServiceNow Service Desk system and the resources that will be used in the connection. Use the Name and Description fields in General Settings to clearly identify the specific ServiceNow Service Desk system and the sources used in the connection.
• ServiceNow Details - You can create an integration for each ServiceNow Service Desk system your company uses. If the integration meets the prerequisites, you need to identify the URL for each instance you want to integrate with. You also need to identify the administrator details and the applicable authentication requirements.

• Sources - For each source you want to integrate with an ServiceNow system, verify that it is configured for provisioning. For more information, refer to Prerequisites.

  Tip

  Edit the Description field for these sources to indicate they are used in the ServiceNow Service Desk Integration Module.

• ServiceNow Statuses - Make a list of each possible status in the ServiceNow Service Desk system that you want to map to a status in SailPoint. This will help you track tickets as they're worked. Most importantly, SailPoint uses this mapping to determine when a ticket is closed in the ServiceNow Service Desk system so that the related provisioning task is also treated as complete. For more information about mapping statuses, refer to Status Mapping.

• Requests - Identify each type of provisioning action in SailPoint that you want to create a ticket for in the ServiceNow Service Desk system, along with the information from those actions that should be included in the related ServiceNow Service Desk system ticket. For more information, refer to Ticket Creation.

• Catalog Items - Make note of the Catalog Items in ServiceNow associated with the sources you want to integrate with.

• Attribute Synchronization - For the ServiceNow UI Integration, attribute synchronization is not recommended because it depends on aggregation operations. If attribute synchronization is not managed correctly, it can cause excessive ticket creation.

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