Creating a service desk integration for ServiceNow

Integrate ServiceNow with Oomnitza to monitor, track, and resolve asset tickets efficiently.

The Oomnitza plugin for ServiceNow associates incidents, requests, and request item tickets with Oomnitza asset records to enable desk agents to resolve incidents dynamically without having to switch between applications. In ServiceNow, service desk agents can view the tickets and associated Oomnitza assets to track, update, and resolve issues. And, in Oomnitza, they can view the ServiceNow tickets associated with an Oomnitza asset, update the tickets, and link and unlink tickets.  

Check out the insights that the Oomnitza integration offers to service desk agents:

• Display the assets that belong to users who raise tickets.
• Resolve issues efficiently and quickly by using Oomnitza to retrieve asset records and view the history of ServiceNow tickets.
• Display the assets that are associated with tickets based on a set of custom attributes that you can define. 
• Configure asset management fields to track the attributes that matter to you.
• Automate the tracking of hardware and software attributes so that you can get an asset’s details easily and efficiently.

About the plugin

The Oomnitza plugin for ServiceNow enables you to view and link assets associated with incidents, requests, and request items in ServiceNow and Oomnitza. The Oomnitza plugin displays all the assets that are associated with tickets and allows users to link additional assets to ServiceNow tickets. 

Before you start

Use the global setting in your instance to ensure secure Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS). See Enhanced CORS Policy for Service Desk integrations.

Installing the Oomnitza plugin

To make Oomnitza asset information available in ServiceNow, you must install the Oomnitza ServiceNow plugin. 

Important
The ServiceNow compatible versions are Zurich and Yokohama. The plugin is available in the ServiceNow Store.  For more information, see ServiceNow documentation: Downloading an application from the ServiceNow Store. 

When you install the plugin, you must activate the application in ServiceNow. To activate the application, complete the following steps:

1. Navigate to System Applications > All Available Applications > All.
2. Enter Oomnitza in the search panel.
3. Follow the prompts to install the application. For further information, refer to the ServiceNow documentation: Activate a ServiceNow Store application.

Note
If you use a free Personal Development Instance (PDI) or demo instance for ServiceNow, you cannot install plugins from the ServiceNow store. If you try to install a plugin, you get the following error: Sorry, you can’t login with this ServiceNow Id. However, you can contact Oomnitza directly in the ServiceNow store with your vendor instance name. Your vendor instance name has this format https://<dev123456>.service-now.com/. Oomnitza can then push the plugin to your instance for you to install. Once you receive notification from Oomnitza that the plugin has been pushed to your instance, complete the steps above to search for and install the Oomnitza plugin.

Result

The Oomnitza plugin is installed. When you log into your ServiceNow instance, two additional tabs are added:

• The Oomnitza Configuration tab
• The Oomnitza Support tab 

Connecting ServiceNow to Oomnitza

1. In the side panel of ServiceNow, enter Oomnitza in the search field.
2. Select the Configuration tab.
3. Enter the URL of your Oomnitza instance such as https://<your_company_name>.oomnitza.com.
4. Click Save.

Configure ServiceNow roles

After you install the plugin, you can assign roles and permissions in ServiceNow to grant access to users to the Oomnitza plugin. You can assign a role directly, or update an existing role to add or inherit the new role. You can also assign the role to a group.

• For users that will configure or interact with the Oomnitza app, assign the following role: x_333437_oomnitza.configuration_user.
• For users who require access to the asset information that the Oomnitza app provides in ServiceDesk, assign either one of these roles: sn_incident_read, incident_manager , or itil.

Note
You can add the Oomnitza app role as a child role of the existing incident_manager or itil role for users to automatically inherit access to the Oomnitza plugin, otherwise you can assign the Oomnitza app role individually.

Creating roles in ServiceNow

To create a role in ServiceNow, go to Users and Groups > Roles. 

To assign a role to a user in ServiceNow, go to  User Administration > Users

See ServiceNow documentation. 

Warning
You might encounter issues with the plugin if the Service Now roles listed above have been modified. This can take the form of the plugin erroring out unexpectedly. If this is the case you might  need to add additional roles. Refer to the sys_user_role table in ServiceNow for a complete list of user roles. We recommend that you first test the issue by adding the admin role to the service account user to ensure that it is not a permission issue. 

Integrating Oomnitza with ServiceNow

Before you complete the integration in Oomnitza, you’ll need the following information:

• The URL of your ServiceNow instance.
• The username and password of the user account. The user must have been assigned the following role: x_333437_oomnitza.configuration_user.

To integrate Oomnitza with ServiceNow, complete the following steps:

1. Log into Oomnitza.
2. From the menu, click Configuration > Integrations and click Block view. 
3. Scroll down to Service Desk Integrations, and click the ServiceNow tile.
4. Click NEXT.
5. Enter the URL of your ServiceNow instance.
6. Enter the username and password of the dedicated user account that you created for the integration.
7. Click CONNECT.
8. Choose the fields that you want to display in the Oomnitza tab in ServiceNow. Select which fields are editable.
9. Click FINISH.