ServiceNow
Use the BigPanda ServiceNow application for a convenient & deep integration between BigPanda and ServiceNow.
The BigPanda application for ServiceNow is a native ServiceNow application that enables easy setup of multiple different integrations between BigPanda and ServiceNow, including Incidents, Incident Reports, Changes, Maintenance Plans, and CMDB.
No matter which ServiceNow integration type you are creating, you can follow the steps below to install or update the application.
ServiceNow Incidents
The ServiceNow Incidents integration allows you to automatically create incidents in ServiceNow from correlated, insight-rich incidents in BigPanda. Incidents in ServiceNow and BigPanda are automatically synchronized throughout their life-cycle, ensuring relevant workflows are triggered as needed and teams are always up-to-date so they can quickly resolve critical issues.
Reference the ServiceNow Incidents and ServiceNow Incident Advanced Customization documentation to learn about:
- Configuring the Integration in BigPanda and ServiceNow.
- Uninstalling the integration
- Data Shared With ServiceNow
- Custom Headers
- OAuth 2.0 Support
- Override URLs
- ShareIncident Transform Map
- BigPandaUtility Functions
ServiceNow Incident Reports
The ServiceNow Incident Reports feature allows you to push incident data into BigPanda for analysis in Unified Analytics. Fields can be customized and adjusted if you rely on properties that differ from BigPanda’s standards.
Reference the ServiceNow Incident Reports documentation to learn more about:
- Key Features of the integration
- Configuring the Integration
- Disabling and Uninstalling the integration.
Update the BigPanda App
To use ServiceNow Incident Reports, you must be using either version 2.8 or 2.9 of the BigPanda ServiceNow application.
If you are currently using a version of the BigPanda ServiceNow application from the ServiceNow Store, you'll need to switch to the latest version from the ServiceNow Developer Page. To streamline the migration, please follow the Migrate from the ServiceNow Store to the Update Set instructions.
ServiceNow Changes
The ServiceNow Changes integration immediately notifies BigPanda of any new or updated changes in your ServiceNow Change Management, ensuring these changes are available for machine-language-driven root cause analysis in BigPanda, with the root Root Cause Changes feature.
In the ServiceNow Changes documentation, learn more about:
- Key Features of the integration
- ServiceNow Changes Data Model
- Configuring the integration
- Disabling and Uninstalling the integration
ServiceNow CMDB
The ServiceNow CMDB integration allows you to enrich your incoming BigPanda alerts with contextual information from your ServiceNow CMDB. The added context enables NOC operators to quickly assess and resolve incidents.
In the ServiceNow CMDB documentation, learn more about:
- Key Features of the integration
- Configuring the integration
- Disabling and uninstalling the integration.
ServiceNow Maintenance Plans
The ServiceNow Maintenance integration provides a method for suppressing alerts originating from infrastructure during a maintenance window.
In the ServiceNow Maintenance Plans documentation, learn more about:
- Key Features of the integration
- Configuration for common fields
- Configuration for Change Request-based integrations
- Configuration for and an example of Outage-based integrations
- Disabling and uninstalling the integration
Install the BigPanda ServiceNow Integration
To install the integration, follow the on-screen instructions in BigPanda.
To download the BigPanda application Update Set and see the features added in the most recent version, check out the ServiceNow Developer Portal.
- Navigate to System Update Sets > Retrieved Update Sets.
- Under Related Links, select Import Update Set from XML.
- Under Preview Set, select Fix any errors.
- If the error Could not find a record in sys_app_application for column menu referenced in this update is encountered, select Accept Remote Update. The error is expected and the remote update must be accepted for the application to function.
- Once imported, the application should now be available from the Navigation Pane and Scope.
If you’ve previously downloaded the BigPanda ServiceNow application and need to update to a newer version, see the Update the BigPanda ServiceNow App documentation.
Create a BigPanda ServiceNow User
Follow the instructions below to create a new BigPanda ServiceNow user.
You can add existing ServiceNow users to the
x_bip_panda_user
role to allow a user to make edits to the BigPanda Configuration form.
Skip this section if you are using ServiceNow on-premises
- In ServiceNow, under User Administration > Users, click New.
- Fill out the New User form (make sure to include the following fields):
- User ID -
bigpanda
- First name -
BigPanda
- Password - create a password of your choosing and save for later
- Make sure that the Active checkbox is checked.
- Click Submit.
- Find the user by writing
bigpanda
in the filter box above the User ID column. - Go to the Roles section (the first section) and click Edit.
- Filter for
x_bip_panda_user
on the left table and then double-click it to move it to the right table. - Click Save.
Update the BigPanda ServiceNow App
Updating the BigPanda ServiceNow app may involve different steps depending upon the version that you are currently running. Determine which version you are on, and follow the steps below to upgrade.
- If you are integrating ServiceNow for the first time, follow the on-screen instructions in BigPanda.
- If you are using BigPanda ServiceNow v1, first update to the BigPanda ServiceNow v2 app.
- If you are running the non-customized ServiceNow Store version, update to the developer custom app (Update Set) prior to installing the latest version.
- If you are running the version downloaded from the Developer Store, see the instructions for Installing the Latest Version.
For more information about updating the ServiceNow App, see the Update ServiceNow and ServiceNow Merge Conflicts and Application Scripts documentation.
BigPanda App Version
To determine your BigPanda ServiceNow application version, navigate to System Applications > My Company Applications within your ServiceNow instance. The BigPanda Application tile will list which version has been installed.
Uninstall the Integration
Deleting an integration requires changes to both the integrated system and BigPanda. You must uninstall the integration on the integrated system and then delete the integration from BigPanda.
When replacing an existing integration with a new tool or system, we recommend configuring the new integration first to ensure no data is lost.
Stop Sending Data to BigPanda
On the integrated system, disable any settings that send data to BigPanda.
Manually resolve any open alerts sent from the integration to remove the associated incidents from your incident feed. These incidents will not automatically resolve without an ok
status from the original sending integration.
Stop Sending Data from BigPanda
In BigPanda, disable any settings that send data to the integrated system. This includes modifying or removing AutoShare rules or Environments that are tied to the integration.
Delete the Integration from BigPanda
- In BigPanda, navigate to the Integrations tab and select the desired integration from the list.
- In the integration details on the right, click Delete Integration. A support message opens, pre-populated with a request to delete the selected integration.
- Press Enter to send the request.
- The BigPanda support team will remove the integration from the UI.
️
This procedure does not remove any data from BigPanda or the integrated system. As needed, remove data from each system before deleting the integration.
Release Notes
ServiceNow Version 2.9.1
The ServiceNow version 2.9.1 deepens the integration with BigPanda incidents and improves the usability of cross-platform data in ServiceNow.
- A new menu item Active Incidents lists active incidents synced to BigPanda and gives you access to a BigPanda view so you can access detailed tabs without changing your standard incident list. Available tabs in the BigPanda view include:
- The Automated Incident Analysis tab includes the AIA summary generated in BigPanda (for orgs with the Advanced Insight Module).
- The BP Alerts tab provides a real time view of BigPanda alert data. These alerts used to be added to the incident description but can now be accessed in a much cleaner view. This data can also be added to the ServiceNow Alert Table. Talk to your BigPanda account team about enabling this feature.
- The Incident Tasks tab improves visibility and accountability by listing all alerts where the task tag is set to
true
. - The Root Cause tab will show you changes matched with the incident through Root Cause Change Analysis
- The Activity tab displays work notes and the activities log for the incident.
- The Resolution tab allows you to add codes, notes, and other resolution details to the Incident.
- The Task SLAs, Affected CIs, Impacted Services/CIs, and Child Incidents tabs now connect to BigPanda alerts.
- Related link buttons make it easy to take action or view data in BigPanda with just a click.
- You can now access individual alert records from the BP Alerts table through Alert Processing - Addon menu. The Description field for these records include all alert data sent from BigPanda, including status, source, configuration item, assignments, and all alert tags.
- Alerts that cannot match the alert hostname or CI to the CMDB will appear in their own table to provide better awareness for troubleshooting.
- Missing alert hosts can be configured to automatically be added to the CMDB via CI Discovery.
- Additional advanced configuration options for alerts enable you to customize what data you receive in the BP Alerts table.
- New script includes drive automation and AI features:
- BigPandaAIM script include - provides processing for RCC and AI features
- BigPandaAlert script include - processes alert data for alert tables
Install the BigPanda app from the ServiceNow Developer Portal .
If installing the BigPanda ServiceNow integration for the first time, you will want to use the download button to retrieve the latest full version.
If upgrading from 2.9.0, use the UPDATE link in the developer portal or through this update link. Read more about upgrading your integration in the Update the BigPanda ServiceNow App documentation.
v2.9 (2/9/24)
New Features
- Application: Introduced a toggle to store BigPanda integration configurations within BigPanda for improved troubleshooting capabilities
- Changes: Proper date formatting is used in BigPanda regardless of date format used in ServiceNow
- CMDB: "Choice Table" SNOW records now use Display Value in CMDB
- Incident Reports: Updated default fields to improve reporting capabilities
- Incident Reports: Proper date formatting is used in BigPanda regardless of date format used in ServiceNow
- Incidents: Updated the default settings for Transform Field Maps to remove maps that have no logic associated
- Incidents: Suppressed callback activity back to BigPanda from resolved ServiceNow incidents
- Incidents: Restructured SNOW Layout to match design language in BigPanda Unified Console
- Incidents: Added RCC Suspect/Matches to ServiceNow Incident Description
- Incidents: Added AIA Summary to ServiceNow Incident Description
- Incidents: Updated Impact/Urgency fields, removed Priority field
- Incidents: Added a dropdown to control direction of incident tag sync ("to and from BigPanda," "to BigPanda only," or "to SNOW only")
- Incidents: Added option to insert description of incident in the worknotes
- Incidents: Created Button Elements in ServiceNow that open BigPanda
Bug Fixes
- Changes: Ensure support for all ServiceNow timezone options
- CMDB: Rows will now be skipped when records contain non UTF-8 compatible values
- Incidents: Incident Tags Sync Configuration is now case-insensitive
- Incidents: OK alerts excluded from
setPrimaryAlert()
utility
v2.8 (4/28/23)
The BigPanda team resolved logical bugs related to the newly introduced event-type metadata tracking that were present in v2.5-2.7.
New Features
- Application: The Javascript Mode has been updated to ES12 (ECMA2021) For more details check this ServiceNow Developer Blog post.
- CMDB: Support for inactivating individual tables, which can be used to test the addition of new tables
- CMDB: Improved logging (track incorrect queries, missing columns, etc.)
- CMDB: Prepopulate configuration with most frequently used tables (only for new downloads; these will not be applied when updating)
- Configuration: Set Affected CIs checkbox in Changes to true as default
- Incident Reports: Sync historical incidents with BigPanda for MTTR analysis
- Incidents: Flapping - Block Resolve toggle will only resolve a ServiceNow incident if it is not flapping
- Incidents: When tickets fail to get created in ServiceNow, Comments are now posted back to BigPanda with details
- Incidents: Description and Short Description defaults were updated based on feedback from users
- Incidents: Update BigPanda incident tag to use HTML anchor link
- OAuth: Support for OAuth-based authentication when creating tickets from BigPanda
Bug Fixes
- Incidents: Prevent occasional duplicate notifications on initial ticket creation
- Incidents: Support syncing BigPanda Incident Tags with space characters
- If using v2.7, clearing browser cache may be required to fix configuration form entries
- Resolve issues when using CMDB and upgrading from version < 2.2.1
- Updated the CMDB Script Includes to retrieve the display names of glide_list and Choice Table records
- Changed "===" to "==" and "!==" to "!=" in Business Rules and Script actions
- Resolved NLU “fix missing record” errors when installing/applying Update Sets
- CMDB 'Active' checkbox now works on individual rows for ServiceNow Utah
- Added Incident ID to Incident Reports
v2.7 (removed following fixes applied in v2.8)
v2.6 (removed following fixes applied in v2.7)
v2.5 (removed following fixes applied in v2.7)
v2.4 (7/1/22)
Bug Fixes
- When a closed incident in ServiceNow is reopened in BigPanda a new ServiceNow incident is created instead of reopening the closed incident
- Set standard "Content-Type", 'application/json' Request Headers to support debugging
- CMDB will now replace newline characters with spaces
- In Chrome, auto-complete will be unable to insert incorrect passwords on the Configuration form
- All changes sent to BigPanda will be in UTC to prevent incorrect time zone shifting
- Fix bug sending blank values for Incident Tags
Updated about 1 month ago