ServiceNow native connector
Overview
By default, the ServiceNow native connector automatically discovers and synchronises content from the following ServiceNow services. You can customise this behaviour.
- 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 you want. Synchronised content has an appropriate content type set so it can be filtered in general search.
As well as choosing which services to synchronise, you can customise some services more granularly. For example, you can choose which knowledge bases to synchronise.
Roles
Content is only visible to users in the roles defined in the connector config for each service. By default (and you can customise this), these roles are:
| Service | Default roles |
|---|---|
| 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 which users are in a specific role, to manage which roles have access to different service content.
In the ServiceNow connector config, you can choose which users to synchronise roles against (All or Specific). If you choose All users, you can also exclude certain users.
Security
Encrypted credentials
To configure the ServiceNow native connector, include the username and password of a ServiceNow account with sufficient access to the APIs.
The credentials of a connector are encrypted on save using current recommended encryption algorithms and best practices. Once saved and encrypted, the credentials cannot be retrieved by any end user or administrator. For more details, see Credentials.
What is synchronised
Content is synchronised to the search index for search discoverability only. This ensures that a search can run across the relevant fields of synchronised documents (title, description, content) and surface the most relevant results.
The connector synchronises only the ServiceNow content specified in the config. You can also set more granular controls over which services or knowledge bases to synchronise.
What is viewable
Only the basic synchronised information, such as title and summary, is shown in search results within search, content widgets, and Content Listing Blocks. Users cannot load the entire document content within the intranet. When a user selects a result, they are directed to the external ServiceNow system, which performs its own security checks before any document is accessed.
Taxonomy values
Content type
By default, content has its content type set based on the service it came from:
- Knowledge Base
- Knowledge Base Article
- Knowledge Base Article Attachment
- Request Item
- Request Item Attachment
- Incident
- Incident Attachment
- Change Request
- Change Request Attachment
You can customise the display names for these content types. They appear as a pill within search result cards and in the Filters panel in general search.
Additional taxonomy
As well as the content type, content is enriched with other metadata (taxonomy), so articles can be found by using the filters in general search:
- File Extension — the file extension of any synchronised attachment.
- Knowledge Base — the name of the knowledge base that contains the knowledge base articles.
- Category — populated for knowledge base articles, so they can be found by specifying one or more categories in the filters in general search.
You can customise the display names for these additional taxonomy values.
Note: To make the custom taxonomy visible within filters in general search, see Filters and taxonomy aggregations.
Breadcrumbs
Synchronised content is displayed in general search results in rich cards that include a breadcrumb with navigational and contextual information.
The breadcrumb items are populated automatically with relevant link text and home URLs. You can customise both the link text and the URL for the breadcrumb root-level elements in the ServiceNow connector config:
- 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 in search results, from all synchronised services, uses default icons. You can customise the icon for each content type in 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 include built-in logging that shows:
- The batches of users and documents as they are processed
- The order of synchronisation
- Which documents are processed or skipped, with the reason why
Domain mapping
If your ServiceNow is configured with a different domain than the one associated with your intranet and users, you can configure a domain replacement. During user synchronisation, when a ServiceNow user is matched with a user in the intranet, the email address is altered, only for the purpose of user lookups, based on this configured domain replacement.