ServiceNow

ServiceNow is a cloud-based workflow automation platform. It enables users to optimize workflows by automating repetitive tasks across platforms.

Integrating FireHydrant with ServiceNow enables you to create and manage incidents using best practices from FireHydrant while keeping ServiceNow as a source of all your teams’ work.

Prerequisites

  • You'll need Owner permissions on FireHydrant and administrative permissions in ServiceNow.

Required Accounts and Permissions:

  • Admin Account
  • You'll need an admin account to set up the integration. This account must have permissions to:
    • Create and manage OAuth applications
    • Create and manage service accounts
  • Service Account
    • You'll need to create or use an existing service account that FireHydrant will use for ongoing operations. This account needs the following API access:
      • Table API access
      • CMDB Instance API access
      • Permissions to create and update records in your incident tables

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Note: Use a generic ServiceNow service account

FireHydrant recommends using a generic ServiceNow service account rather than an individual named user to avoid problems if the named employee were to depart the organization.

Installing the ServiceNow integration in FireHydrant

OAuth Application Setup:

ServiceNow connection setup

ServiceNow connection setup

  1. Log into ServiceNow with your admin account
  2. Navigate to System OAuth → Application Registry
  3. Click 'New' and select 'Create an OAuth API endpoint for external clients'
  4. Configure the OAuth application:
    1. Name: FireHydrant Integration
    2. Grant Type: Resource Owner Password Credentials
    3. Add the service account user to the application's allowed users
  5. Click 'Submit' and save the generated Client ID and Client Secret
  6. Go to the FireHydrant Integrations page (Settings > Integrations list) and search for ServiceNow. Click the '+'.
  7. Enter your Instance URL, ServiceNow Username/Password, Client Id, and Client Secret on this page and click Continue to Table Selection.

Configure ServiceNow Tables

ServiceNow table configuration

ServiceNow table configuration

Ticketing Tables

  • Select the ServiceNow tables that FireHydrant should create tickets in. We've pre-populated common ServiceNow tables, but you can add custom tables if needed.
  • Type a table name and press enter to add it as a Ticketing table.

Services Tables (Optional)

  • Select tables that contain service-related data. FireHydrant will import these as services, mapping the name field from each table entry to create corresponding services in FireHydrant.
  • Type a table name and press enter to add it as a Service table.

Authorize ServiceNow

  • After you have configured ServiceNow tables click Authorize ServiceNow

Ticketing Project

ServiceNow ticketing project

ServiceNow ticketing project

Before using the ServiceNow integration with incidents and follow ups, you will need to configure a mapping for each ServiceNow project you would like FireHydrant to interact with so we know what types of issue states to use when creating ServiceNow tickets. To start, select a project to integrate with.

  • Select Ticketing Project from the dropdown menu and click Use this Project
  • Click Continue to begin setting up issue types and statuses for incident tickets and follow ups.

Incident Tickets

These settings will be necessary to create incident tickets in ServiceNow but can be ignored if you only plan to use this project for Follow-Ups.

  1. Milestone Mappings - These are the ServiceNow ticket statuses we'll use in ServiceNow to correspond to the FireHydrant incident's Milestone.
    1. Any Active incident in FireHydrant corresponds to milestones in the "Active" Lifecycle phase. The default milestones are: Started, Detected, Acknowledged, Investigating, Identified, and Mitigated.
    2. Any Inactive incident in FireHydrant corresponds to the "Post-Incident" Lifecyle phase. The default milestones are: Resolved, Retrospective Started, and Retrospective Completed.

Follow Ups

These settings will be necessary for creating Follow-Ups in this ServiceNow but can be ignored if you only plan to use this project for incident tickets.

For example, many FireHydrant organizations will have a specific "Incidents" project where FireHydrant creates incident tickets. Then they may configure separate projects for different engineering teams to create Follow-Ups.

The available field:

  • Follow-up status mappings - Maps the FireHydrant Follow-Up status to selected ServiceNow issue statuses. FireHydrant's terminology uses "Open," "In Progress," and "Done" to refer to a ticket's overall state.

Testing

Testing the ServiceNow integration

Testing the ServiceNow integration

Your project is now configured for one way sync to ServiceNow. Next, we will add this project to a runbook and test the connection.

  • Select a runbook from the dropdown or choose New runbook to create a new runbook to test. Click Add and test
    • A new incident with GAMEDAY severity, will be created it will have the runbook selected attached with both a ServiceNow incident and follow-up ticket

Setting ServiceNow as the default ticketing project

Selecting ServiceNow as the default project

Selecting ServiceNow as the default project

  1. Go to Settings > Ticketing settings.
  2. Under Default project, select the ServiceNow project you just configured.
  3. Click Save settings.

Creating a ServiceNow incident from a Runbook step

You can create a ServiceNow incident from the Create a ServiceNow Incident step. This allows you to create an incident record in ServiceNow automatically any time you create an incident in FireHydrant.

Next Steps