The ServiceNow Native Connector can automatically discover and synchronise by default (can be customised) content from the following ServiceNow services:

• Knowledge Bases
• Knowledge Base Articles (and attachments)
• Request Items (and attachments)
• Incidents (and attachments)
• Change Requests (and attachments)

You can customise the connector to synchronise content from only the specific services that you are interested in.

Content that is synchronised from these services will have an appropriate Content Type specified so that they can be filtered appropriately in General Search.

As well as customising which service to synchronise, you can also customise some of the services more granularly.

• Customise which knowledge bases to synchronise

Roles

The content will only be visible to users who are in the roles as defined in the connector config for each service.

By default (can be customised), these roles are:

• Knowledge Bases
  • admin, knowledge, knowledge_manager, knowledge_admin
• Knowledge Base Articles (and attachments)
  • admin, knowledge, knowledge_manager, knowledge_admin
• Request Items (and attachments)
  • admin, sn_request_read, asset, atf_test_designer, atf_test_admin
• Incidents (and attachments)
  • admin, sn_incident_read, ml_report_user, ml_admin, itil
• Change Requests (and attachments)
  • admin, sn_change_read, itil

In ServiceNow you can create custom roles and adjust the users who are in a specific roles and therefore modify/manage which roles have access to different service content.

Within the ServiceNow Connector Config you can also choose which users you want to synchronise roles against (All or Specific). If choosing to to synchronise All users, then you can also choose to exclude certain users.

Security

Encrypted Credentials

To configure the ServiceNow Native Connector, you must include the username and password of a ServiceNow account which has sufficient access to the APIs.

The credentials of a connector are encrypted during save using the latest industry recommended encryption algorithms and best practices. Once saved and encrypted, the credentials cannot be retrieved by any end user or any administrator.

What is synchronised

Content is synchronised to the search index for the purpose of search discoverability only. This ensures that a search can search across all the relevant fields of synchronised documents (title, description, content) and surface the most relevant results to the user.

The connector will only synchronise ServiceNow content as specified in the config. It is also possible to specify more granular controls of which services or knowledge bases to synchronise.

What is viewable

Only the the basic synchronised information such as title and summary are presented in search results within Search, Content Widgets and Content Listing Blocks. It is not possible for users of the intranet to load up the entire document content within the intranet, and instead when clicking a result, they are directed to the external ServiceNow system - allowing that system to perform its own security checks again before any document is accessed.

Taxonomy Values

Content Type

By default, content has its Content Type set based on the service where the content came from.

• Knowledge Base
• Knowledge Base Article
• Knowledge Base Article Attachment
• Request Item
• Request Item Attachment
• Incident
• Incident Attachment
• Change Request
• Change Request Attachment

The display names for these different Content Types can be customised. They are displayed as a pill within search results cards and also in the Filters panel within General Search.

Additional

As well as the Content Type, the content is also enriched by other meta data (taxonomy). This allows articles to be found easily by using the Filters to specify one or more of these within General Search.

• File Extension
  • The file extension of any attachment that has been synchronised
• Knowledge Base
  • Populated with the name of the knowledge base which contains the knowledge base articles.
• Category
  • Populated for knowledge base articles, so that articles can be found easily by using the Filters to specify one or more categories within General Search.

The display names for these different additional taxonomy can be customised.

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To enable the custom taxonomy to be visible within filters in general search see Filters / Taxonomy

Breadcrumbs

Synchronised content will be displayed in general search results in rich cards which include a breadcrumb with navigational and contextual information related to the content.

The items within the breadcrumb are automatically populated with relevant link text and home urls, but it is possible to customise both the link text and the url for the breadcrumb root level elements within the ServiceNow Connector Configuration.

• ServiceNow home url and link text
• Requests home url and link text
• Incidents home url and link text
• Knowledge Base home url and link text
• Change Requests home url and link text

Icons

All synchronised content within search results from all of the synchronised services are populated by default icons. The icon can be customised for all the different content types within the ServiceNow Connector Config

• Knowledge Base
• Knowledge Base Article
• Knowledge Base Article Attachment
• Request Item
• Request Item Attachment
• Incident
• Incident Attachment
• Change Request
• Change Request Attachment

Refining, Troubleshooting and Logs

Native connectors have built in

• Including the batches of users / documents as they are processed
• seeing the order of synchronisation
• which documents are processed or skipped (with information why)

Domain Mapping

If your ServiceNow is configured with a different domain than what is associated with your intranet and users, then it is possible to configure a domain replacement. During user synchronisation, when a ServiceNow user is being matched with a user in the Intranet, the email address is altered (only for the purpose of user look ups) based on this configured domain replacement.