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ServiceNow Maintenance Plans

ServiceNow Maintenance Plans enable you to silence specific events during maintenance windows for planned changes or outages.

The BigPanda ServiceNow Maintenance Plan integration has two independent methods to automatically generate a BigPanda maintenance plan using the BigPanda Maintenance Plan V2 API. The first method uses ServiceNow Change Requests and the second uses ServiceNow Outage Records as the source of a maintenance plan. Both methods have a separate configuration section and can be used individually or in combination.

Key Features

  • Suppress alerts from infrastructure undergoing maintenance and/or outage events

  • Use ServiceNow encoded queries to filter which changes generate a maintenance plan

  • Define which change states generate a plan

  • Optionally include task data, with optional filtering

  • Specify tag names to match against affected configuration items, supporting exact and wildcard matches.

  • Map classes to BigPanda maintenance conditions

Install the Integration

Administrators can install the integration by following the ServiceNow Installation instructions and then the steps below.

Configure common fields

  1. In the ServiceNow application, navigate to BigPanda > Configuration.

  2. In the General section, the following fields are required to enable Maintenance Plans.

    Field

    Description

    Bearer Token

    Enter the BigPanda organization key here.

    API Key

    Enter the BigPanda API key here.

    Only Authorization

    No other General section fields are required for Maintenance Plans to function.

  3. Configure the Common Maintenance Plan Section

    Field

    Description

    Maintenance Endpoint

    URL to send maintenance plans

  4. Configure the Maintenance Plan Section for Change Request and/or Outage based maintenance plans

    Save Frequently

    Make sure to Save Configuration as you complete sections.

Configure the Change Request-based Integration

Parent or Task

Payloads must be configured to send either Parent Changes with no tasks or Change Tasks

Field

Description

Example

Active

A toggle to enable Change Request based Maintenance Plans for your integration

Change Filter

Optional ServiceNow Encoded Query to filter which changes generate a maintenance plan.

Include Task Data

Checkbox to include Task Data in plan.

If this box is checked, you must use the planned_start_date and planned_end_date format for start and end times.

Task Filter

Optional ServiceNow Encoded Query to filter which Tasks are included in plan.

Task Cancel States

Comma delimited list of states that represent a canceled task.

Change States

Comma delimited list of all change states that will trigger a maintenance plan.

Scheduled, Work in Progress, Closed Incomplete

Stop States

Comma delimited list of change states that represent a stopped change.

Closed Complete

Cancel States

Comma delimited list of change states that represent a canceled change.

Rolled Back

Start Field Name

The field name for the planned start of change.

If parent change: start_date

If change task: planned_start_date

End Field Name

The field name for the planned end of change.

If parent change: end_date

If change task: planned_end_date

Affected CIs Table Name

Table name to query for Affected Configuration Items.

task_ci

Affected CIs Query

Query performed on Affected CIs Table.

task

Name

Tag name to match affected CIs

Default

Checkbox to indicate this Tag is a default tag

Exact

Checkbox to indicate this Tag is to be matched exactly (unchecked will match if Tag Name is found within affected CI, ie host-01 would match a tag name host)

Class

Class to map to maintenance condition

Maintenance Conditions

Maintenance conditions that map to class

Configure the Outage-based Integration

You are able to mark certain Configuration Items as Under Maintenance during an outage to suppress alerts and reduce the administration and ticket volume during outage periods. The following section explains how to configure the BigPanda integration to use the cmdb_ci_outage table to create Maintenance Plans.

Field

Description

Example

Active

Check the active toggle to enable Outage-based Maintenance Plans for your integration

Outage Filter

Optional ServiceNow Encoded Query to filter which outages generate a maintenance plan.

active=true or install_status=1

Default End Time

The default number of hours for an outage-based maintenance period. Used only until an actual end time is sent.

2

Name

Which BigPanda tags will map to the Configuration Item field in the BigPanda Maintenance Plan

Default

Designate this Tag as a default tag. If the affected CI belongs to a class that isn't associated with a tag name above, this tag will apply.

If no class mappings are configured, it is best practice to set all tags as default.

Exact

Checkbox to indicate this Tag is to be matched exactly (unchecked will match if Tag Name is found within affected CI, ie host-01 would match a tag name host)

Class

If using ServiceNow Classes, this defines which mappings to apply to the current affected CI

app_name, host, associated_apps

Maintenance Conditions

Maintenance conditions that map to class

Example Configuration

Here’s an example with some data in the task_ci table and how these would map to maintenance plans in BigPanda given the configuration settings below.

servicenow_OutageBasedIntegrationConfig

Example task_ci Table

servicenow_tagmapping

Example Configuration

The ANNIE-IBM Configuration Item would use the following BPQL because it is of the Computer class: device="ANNIE-IBM"

The Blackberry Configuration Item would use the following BPQL because it is of the Business Service class: host="_Blackberry_" OR device="Blackberry"

The “bondtrade_aus Configuration Item would use the following BPQL because it is of the Database class (and uses the default class mapping): host="_bond_trade_aus"

In this section: