1 Introduction to the Connector
The Oracle Management Connector for ServiceNow integrates ServiceNow with Enterprise Manager through a REST connection. Using this connector, you can create and update a ticket for any incident created in Enterprise Manager.
The ticket generated by the connector contains the relevant information about the Enterprise Manager incident, including a link to the Enterprise Manager console to enable helpdesk analysts leverage Enterprise Manager's diagnostic and resolution features to resolve the incident. In Enterprise Manager, the ticket ID and its link to navigate to the ServiceNow Ticket is shown in the context of the incident. This easily enables Enterprise Manager administrators to quickly access the ticket.
Note:
Before proceeding, see the Using Incident Management chapter in the Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control Administrator's Guide to understand the event and incident management concepts.
The following sections explain various ServiceNow Connector concepts that you must understand before you start using the ServiceNow Connector.
Versions Supported
The ServiceNow Connector communicates through version 2 of the Table REST API component of ServiceNow, which is available starting with the Geneva release. The ticketing connector functions with Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 13c Release 5 (13.5.0.0.0) and later versions.
Ticket Generation Contents
The ticket generated by the connector contains the relevant information about the Enterprise Manager incident, including a link to the Enterprise Manager console to enable help desk analysts leverage Enterprise Manager's diagnostic and resolution features to resolve the incident.
In Enterprise Manger, the ticket ID, and link to the ServiceNow ticket isshown in the context of the incident. This provides Enterprise Manager administrators an easy way to quickly access the ticket.
Auto Ticketing
Auto ticketing refers to creating or updating tickets automatically for any matching rule(s) in Enterprise Manager. You can define a set of event or incident rules for which tickets must be opened/updated for changes in underlying event or incident attributes. For example, changing event severity from Warning to Critical can update the associated ticket.
See Also:
Using Incident Management chapter in the Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control Administrator's Guide.
After the ticket is opened, any subsequent update of the incident attributes or underlying event attributes, such as a change in underlying events severity, updates the ticket. After the incident is cleared in Enterprise Manager, the ticket is updated and you can optionally close the ticket in ServiceNow.
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Manual Ticketing
From the Enterprise Manager console, you can manually open a ServiceNow ticket based on an open incident in Enterprise Manager. The ServiceNow Connector populates the ticket with details based on the incident and the ticket template selected.
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Ticket Templates
Ticket templates are XML transformation style sheets that transform Enterprise Manager incidents to a ServiceNow ticket format before the requests are sent to ServiceNow. A ticket template specifies how an Enterprise Manager incident and its associated event attributes can be mapped to the ticket attributes of ServiceNow.
In Auto Ticketing, while setting up a rule, you select a configured connector and select the ticket template from the template list. The selected ticket template is used when a ticketing request is sent to ServiceNow. For manual ticketing, you have to select a connector instance and ticket template before submitting a request for ticket creation.
The ServiceNow Connector includes some out-of-box default ticket templates. You can customize default templates according to your functional needs. Oracle recommends that you back up these factory-built templates before customizing them.
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Grace Period
The grace period enables you to prevent creating a large number of tickets for frequently created incidents due to reoccurrence of the same event.
For example, an event is raised and causes an incident to be created in Enterprise Manager. The rule defined to create the ticket enforces the ticket to be created in ServiceNow. If the grace period is one hour and the event is cleared at 10:00 a.m., this clears the incident and ticket. If the same event reoccurs before 11:00 a.m. and enforces creation of another incident, the grace period functionality stops creation of a new ticket for this and reopens the same ticket instead.
Retry
The “Retry" section, available on the connector configuration page, enables you to specify whether a failed ticketing request needs to be retried within a configurable expiration time.
Enabling the Retry option gives you the option of specifying whether you want to resend a ticketing request if the request fails the first time and specifying the time period after which you want to abandon the retry. Enterprise Manager retries every 2 minutes until the request is successful or the retry interval expires.