Book Image

ServiceNow: Building Powerful Workflows

By : Tim Woodruff, Martin Wood, Ashish Rudra Srivastava
Book Image

ServiceNow: Building Powerful Workflows

By: Tim Woodruff, Martin Wood, Ashish Rudra Srivastava

Overview of this book

ServiceNow is a SaaS application that provides workflow form-based applications. It is an ideal platform for creating enterprise-level applications, giving requesters and fulfillers improved visibility and access to a process. ServiceNow-based applications often replace email by providing a better way to get work done. This course will show you how to put important ServiceNow features to work in the real world. We will introduce key concepts and examples on managing and automating IT services, and help you build a solid foundation towards this new approach. You will then learn more about the power of tasks, events, and notifications. We’ll then focus on using web services and other mechanisms to integrate ServiceNow with other systems. Further on, you’ll learn how to secure applications and data, and understand how ServiceNow performs logging and error reporting. At the end of this course, you will acquire immediately applicable skills to rectify everyday problems encountered on the ServiceNow platform. The course provides you with highly practical content explaining ServiceNow from the following Packt books: 1. Learning ServiceNow 2. ServiceNow Cookbook 3. Mastering ServiceNow, Second Edition
Table of Contents (39 chapters)
Title Page
Credits
Preface
Free Chapter
1
Module 1
36
Bibliography

Connecting to web services


So far, this chapter has concentrated on how other systems can connect to a ServiceNow instance. But communication works both ways! Here's how:

  • Creating an outbound SOAP message is achieved in just a few clicks. When the platform is provided with a WSDL, it scans it, automatically building the relevant methods. This process of consuming the WSDL means that the configuration of a SOAP message is very straightforward.
  • Building an outbound REST integration won't be automatic, but since the majority of REST services follow conventions, defaults and assumptions usually work pretty well: POST to create, GET to retrieve, and so on.

However, regardless of the connection mechanism, to send a message, you must write some code, usually to include in a business rule. But the platform will generate a starting point for you!

Using SOAP to send tasks

One common use of SOAP web services is to send information about a task to a remote system. This often occurs when work is outsourced...