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Demo video: Integrate Moogsoft Cloud and ServiceNow for bidirectional updates ►

This video explains how to configure a bidirectional integration between Moogsoft Cloud and ServiceNow.

After watching this video, you will be able to set up a bidirectional integration to send incidents from Moogsoft Cloud to ServiceNow, and accept updates from both systems. First we’ll conceptually trace the resulting workflow. Then, we’ll walk through the steps to install the integration.

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This demo uses the San Diego version of ServiceNow, but the integration also works with the Rome and Quebec versions.

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This is how the finished integration works. Suppose you receive an event in Moogsoft with a minor severity. It becomes an alert and then an incident.

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Moogsoft forwards the incident in JSON format to ServiceNow using an outbound webhook. ServiceNow uses the provided URL to link back to the incident in Moogsoft.

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Then, Moogsoft parses the webhook response from ServiceNow to generate a link to the ServiceNow incident in Moogsoft.

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Here is the incident in Moogsoft…with the link to ServiceNow.

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Here is the same incident in ServiceNow…with the link back to the incident in Moogsoft. Any additional data that arrives after the initial incident creation is also shared between the two systems.

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So if a new event arrives and updates the severity and description in Moogsoft...

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...the counterpart in ServiceNow is also updated.

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Interaction with these incidents is synced bi-directionally. So you can work on the incidents from either system.

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Now let’s see what’s involved in setting it up. You could provide all the functionality we’ve demonstrated by manually configuring an outbound webhook here to sync Moogsoft incidents with ServiceNow, but the Moogsoft ServiceNow integration provides a shortcut. This shortcut installs automation on the ServiceNow side, and the automation uses API calls to configure a webhook on the Moogsoft side.

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We’ll follow that path. It has just a few steps.

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The first step is to download a ServiceNow update set. The update set is an XML file which contains reusable ServiceNow customizations. We’ll get it from here.

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Next, upload it to ServiceNow.

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We’ll preview the update set…all set.

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We can commit the update set, and the Moogsoft functionality is installed.

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Next we want to affirm all the integration features that we want to include. Let’s change our scope to Moogsoft.

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We’ll search here for Moogsoft and go to the properties page.

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We need to provide authentication information here and make some decisions about the integration behavior. In this demo, we’ll be clicking yes in all of the checkboxes to accept the integration defaults.

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Checking this box sets up an integration user in ServiceNow. This provides authenticated access from Moogsoft to ServiceNow.

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Even though it looks like there is a password already here, you actually need to specify one for the integration to work.

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We need to add the authentication information for our Moogsoft Cloud instance here to provide access from ServiceNow to Moogsoft.

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We’ll go to our Moogsoft instance to define an API key.

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For this demo we’re using a test api for the Moogsoft API URL, but you should keep the default value. We’ll paste our API key here, and keep the defaults for the other values.

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This checkbox affirms that we want to create an outbound webhook in Moogsoft to send incidents to ServiceNow.

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If we already had existing ServiceNow credentials stored in Moogsoft, we could uncheck this box…

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…and fill in the credential set name here. Since we are having ServiceNow create an integration user for us, we’ll leave it blank.

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This checkbox needs some explanation. You can set up your incident data payload in Moogsoft to send information about impacted CIs, or configuration items, to ServiceNow using a tag field. When an incident is updated, you probably only want to add new CIs to the incident, rather than replace the whole list each time. Checking this box enables that default behavior.

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This checkbox affirms that we want bidirectional functionality.

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This setting is separate from the Moogsoft integration user. It is the user that is automatically assigned in Moogsoft when an incident is resolved on the ServiceNow side.

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This checkbox activates the maintenance window feature. This is an optional feature that lets you apply ServiceNow maintenance windows to alerts in Moogsoft.

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You can learn more about the maintenance window feature in this video.

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Finally, these last two sections let you adjust the mapping of Moogsoft severity to ServiceNow priority, impact, and urgency. We’ll keep the defaults for these.

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Clicking ‘Save’ triggers the business rules that send API commands to Moogsoft to set up the integration. Let’s see what that looks like on the Moogsoft side. Here’s the new outbound webhook.

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The integration automation has configured all the connection settings for us.

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We are almost good to go, but there is one more set of adjustments to make. Here is an example data payload for ServiceNow, but we want to set up mappings to match our data.

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You can read about the details of specifying your payload in Moogsoft’s outbound webhook docs here. You’ll need mappings that match your specific Moogsoft and ServiceNow configurations. The dollar-sign substitution syntax lets you match ServiceNow fields to Moogsoft fields. You can use the “type ahead” feature to see a list of fields for macro substitution. Our Moogsoft classes match ServiceNow categories in this example, so we’ll map them.

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You can also map Moogsoft tag fields. We’ll map this tag to the ServiceNow assignment group.

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Here’s our fully mapped data payload…

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…and we’ve also adjusted the payload for incident updates.

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Let’s make sure this is working. First let’s test. Looks good.

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The integration will remain in provisioned status until the next incident is created and forwarded.

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Here’s a new incident. Let’s resolve it in ServiceNow…

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Done.

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…and you can see the incident updated in Moogsoft.

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Our installation is successful. Your own ServiceNow setup is likely to be more complex. For example, you can make copies of the outbound webhook…

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…adjust them as needed, and then use filtering…

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...to send different types of incidents to different teams.

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And, watch these videos to learn more about leveraging ServiceNow maintenance windows in Moogsoft. Now you know how to install Moogsoft’s ServiceNow integration. Thanks for watching!

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