Elastic ServiceNow connector reference | Enterprise Search documentation [8.13]

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Elastic ServiceNow connector referenceedit

The Elastic ServiceNow connector is a connector for ServiceNow.

This connector is written in Python using the Elastic connector framework.

View the source code for this connector (branch 8.13, compatible with Elastic 8.13).

Native connector (Elastic Cloud)edit

View native connector reference

Availability and prerequisitesedit

The ServiceNow connector is available natively in Elastic Cloud since 8.10.0.

To use this connector natively in Elastic Cloud, satisfy all native connector requirements.

Create a ServiceNow connectoredit

Use the UIedit

To create a new ServiceNow connector:

Navigate to the Search → Connectors page in the Kibana UI.
Follow the instructions to create a new native ServiceNow connector.

For additional operations, see Using connectors.

Use the APIedit

You can use the Elasticsearch Create connector API to create a new native ServiceNow connector.

For example:

PUT _connector/<my-servicenow-connector>
{
  "index_name": "<my-elasticsearch-index>",
  "name": "Content synced from ServiceNow",
  "service_type": "servicenow",
  "is_native": "true"
}

You’ll also need to create an API key for the connector to use.

The user needs the cluster privileges manage_api_key and write_connector_secrets to generate API keys programmatically.

To create an API key for the connector:

Run the following command, replacing values where indicated. Note the id and encoded return values from the response:

POST /_security/api_key
{
  "name": "<connector_name>-connector-api-key",
  "role_descriptors": {
    "<connector_name>-connector-role": {
      "cluster": [
        "monitor"
      ],
      "indices": [
        {
          "names": [
            "<index_name>",
            ".search-acl-filter-<index_name>",
            ".elastic-connectors-v1*"
          ],
          "privileges": [
            "all"
          ],
          "allow_restricted_indices": false
        }
      ]
    }
  }
}

Use the encoded value to store a connector secret, and note the id return value from this response:
```
POST _connector/_secret
{
  "value": <encoded_api_key>
}
```

Use the API key id and the connector secret id to update the connector:

PUT /_connector/<connector_id>/_api_key_id
{
  "api_key_id": "<API key id>",
  "api_key_secret_id": "<secret id>"
}

Refer to the Elasticsearch API documentation for details of all available Connector APIs.

Usageedit

To use this connector natively in Elastic Cloud, see Native connectors (managed service).

For additional operations, see Using connectors

Compatibilityedit

The ServiceNow connector is compatible with the following versions of ServiceNow:

ServiceNow "Tokyo"
ServiceNow "San Diego"
ServiceNow "Rome"
ServiceNow "Utah"
ServiceNow "Vancouver"

Configurationedit

The following configuration fields are required to set up the connector:

ServiceNow URL

The host URL of the ServiceNow instance.

Username

The username of the account used for ServiceNow.

Password

The password of the account used for ServiceNow.

Comma-separated list of services

Comma-separated list of services to fetch data from ServiceNow. If the value is *, the connector will fetch data from the list of basic services provided by ServiceNow:

User
Incident
Requested Item
Knowledge
Change Request

Default value is *. Examples:
User, Incident, Requested Item, Knowledge, Change Request
*

Enable document level security

Restrict access to documents based on a user’s permissions. Refer to Document level security for more details.

Documents and syncsedit

All services and records the user has access to will be indexed according to the configurations provided. The connector syncs the following ServiceNow object types:

Records
Attachments

Content of files bigger than 10 MB won’t be extracted.
Permissions are not synced by default. Refer to Document level security for more details.

Sync typesedit

Full syncs are supported by default for all connectors.

This connector also supports incremental syncs, but this feature is currently disabled by default. Refer to the linked documentation for enabling incremental syncs.

Document level securityedit

Document level security (DLS) ensures identities and permissions set in ServiceNow are maintained in Elasticsearch. This enables you to restrict and personalize read-access users and groups have to documents in this index. Access control syncs ensure this metadata is kept up to date in your Elasticsearch documents.

The ServiceNow connector supports roles for access control lists (ACLs) to enable document level security in Elasticsearch. For default services, connectors use the following roles to find users who have access to documents.

Service	Roles
User	`admin`
Incident	`admin`, `sn_incident_read`, `ml_report_user`, `ml_admin`, `itil`
Requested Item	`admin`, `sn_request_read`, `asset`, `atf_test_designer`, `atf_test_admin`
Knowledge	`admin`, `knowledge`, `knowledge_manager`, `knowledge_admin`
Change Request	`admin`, `sn_change_read`, `itil`

For services other than these defaults, the connector iterates over access controls with read operations and finds the respective roles for those services.

The ServiceNow connector does not support scripted and conditional permissions.

Sync rulesedit

Basic sync rules are identical for all connectors and are available by default.

Advanced sync rulesedit

A full sync is required for advanced sync rules to take effect.

Advanced sync rules are defined through a source-specific DSL JSON snippet.

The following sections provide examples of advanced sync rules for this connector.

Indexing document based on incident number for Incident serviceedit

[
  {
    "service": "Incident",
    "query": "numberSTARTSWITHINC001"
  }
]

Indexing document based on user activity state for User serviceedit

[
  {
    "service": "User",
    "query": "active=False"
  }
]

Indexing document based on author name for Knowledge serviceedit

[
  {
    "service": "Knowledge",
    "query": "author.nameSTARTSWITHSystem Administrator"
  }
]

Known issuesedit

There are no known issues for this connector. Refer to Known issues for a list of known issues that impact all connectors.

Connector client (self-managed)edit

View connector client reference

Availability and prerequisitesedit

The ServiceNow connector was introduced in Elastic version 8.9.0. This connector is available as a self-managed connector client. To use this connector as a connector client, satisfy all connector client requirements.

Create a ServiceNow connectoredit

Use the UIedit

To create a new ServiceNow connector:

Navigate to the Search → Connectors page in the Kibana UI.
Follow the instructions to create a new ServiceNow connector client.

For additional operations, see Using connectors.

Use the APIedit

You can use the Elasticsearch Create connector API to create a new self-managed ServiceNow connector client.

For example:

PUT _connector/my-servicenow-connector
{
  "index_name": "my-elasticsearch-index",
  "name": "Content synced from ServiceNow",
  "service_type": "servicenow"
}

You’ll also need to create an API key for the connector to use.

The user needs the cluster privileges manage_api_key and write_connector_secrets to generate API keys programmatically.

To create an API key for the connector:

Run the following command, replacing values where indicated. Note the encoded return values from the response:

POST /_security/api_key
{
  "name": "<connector_name>-connector-api-key",
  "role_descriptors": {
    "<connector_name>-connector-role": {
      "cluster": [
        "monitor"
      ],
      "indices": [
        {
          "names": [
            "<index_name>",
            ".search-acl-filter-<index_name>",
            ".elastic-connectors-v1*"
          ],
          "privileges": [
            "all"
          ],
          "allow_restricted_indices": false
        }
      ]
    }
  }
}

Update your config.yml file with the API key encoded value.

Refer to the Elasticsearch API documentation for details of all available Connector APIs.

Usageedit

To use this connector as a connector client, use the Customized connector workflow.

For additional operations, see Usage.

Compatibilityedit

The ServiceNow connector is compatible with the following versions of ServiceNow:

ServiceNow "Tokyo"
ServiceNow "San Diego"
ServiceNow "Rome"
ServiceNow "Utah"
ServiceNow "Vancouver"

Configurationedit

When using the connector client workflow, initially these fields will use the default configuration set in the connector source code. These are set in the get_default_configuration function definition.

These configurable fields will be rendered with their respective labels in the Kibana UI. Once connected, you’ll be able to update these values in Kibana.

The following configuration fields are required to set up the connector:

url

The host url of the ServiceNow instance.

username

The username of the account for ServiceNow.

password

The password of the account used for ServiceNow.

services

Comma-separated list of services to fetch data from ServiceNow. If the value is *, the connector will fetch data from the list of basic services provided by ServiceNow:

User
Incident
Requested Item
Knowledge
Change Request

Default value is *. Examples:
User, Incident, Requested Item, Knowledge, Change Request
*

retry_count

The number of retry attempts after a failed request to ServiceNow. Default value is 3.

concurrent_downloads

The number of concurrent downloads for fetching the attachment content. This speeds up the content extraction of attachments. Defaults to 10.

use_text_extraction_service

Requires a separate deployment of the Elastic Text Extraction Service. Requires that ingest pipeline settings disable text extraction. Default value is False.

use_document_level_security

Restrict access to documents based on a user’s permissions. Refer to Document level security for more details.

Documents and syncsedit

All services and records the user has access to will be indexed according to the configurations provided. The connector syncs the following ServiceNow object types:

Records
Attachments

Content of files bigger than 10 MB won’t be extracted.
Permissions are not synced by default. Refer to Document level security for more details

Sync typesedit

Full syncs are supported by default for all connectors.

This connector also supports incremental syncs, but this feature is currently disabled by default. Refer to the linked documentation for enabling incremental syncs.

Document level securityedit

Service	Roles
User	`admin`
Incident	`admin`, `sn_incident_read`, `ml_report_user`, `ml_admin`, `itil`
Requested Item	`admin`, `sn_request_read`, `asset`, `atf_test_designer`, `atf_test_admin`
Knowledge	`admin`, `knowledge`, `knowledge_manager`, `knowledge_admin`
Change Request	`admin`, `sn_change_read`, `itil`

For services other than these defaults, the connector iterates over access controls with read operations and finds the respective roles for those services.

The ServiceNow connector does not support scripted and conditional permissions.

Deployment using Dockeredit

You can deploy the ServiceNow connector as a self-managed connector client using Docker. Follow these instructions.

Step 1: Download sample configuration file

Download the sample configuration file. You can either download it manually or run the following command:

curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/elastic/connectors/main/config.yml.example --output ~/connectors-config/config.yml

Remember to update the --output argument value if your directory name is different, or you want to use a different config file name.

Step 2: Update the configuration file for your self-managed connector

Update the configuration file with the following settings to match your environment:

elasticsearch.host
elasticsearch.api_key
connectors

If you’re running the connector service against a Dockerized version of Elasticsearch and Kibana, your config file will look like this:

# When connecting to your cloud deployment you should edit the host value
elasticsearch.host: http://host.docker.internal:9200
elasticsearch.api_key: <ELASTICSEARCH_API_KEY>

connectors:
  -
    connector_id: <CONNECTOR_ID_FROM_KIBANA>
    service_type: servicenow
    api_key: <CONNECTOR_API_KEY_FROM_KIBANA> # Optional. If not provided, the connector will use the elasticsearch.api_key instead

Using the elasticsearch.api_key is the recommended authentication method. However, you can also use elasticsearch.username and elasticsearch.password to authenticate with your Elasticsearch instance.

Note: You can change other default configurations by simply uncommenting specific settings in the configuration file and modifying their values.

Step 3: Run the Docker image

Run the Docker image with the Connector Service using the following command:

docker run \
-v ~/connectors-config:/config \
--network "elastic" \
--tty \
--rm \
docker.elastic.co/enterprise-search/elastic-connectors:8.13.2.0 \
/app/bin/elastic-ingest \
-c /config/config.yml

Refer to DOCKER.md in the elastic/connectors repo for more details.

Find all available Docker images in the official registry.

We also have a quickstart self-managed option using Docker Compose, so you can spin up all required services at once: Elasticsearch, Kibana, and the connectors service. Refer to this README in the elastic/connectors repo for more information.

Sync rulesedit

Basic sync rules are identical for all connectors and are available by default.

Advanced sync rulesedit

A full sync is required for advanced sync rules to take effect.

Advanced sync rules are defined through a source-specific DSL JSON snippet.

The following sections provide examples of advanced sync rules for this connector.

Indexing document based on incident number for Incident serviceedit

[
  {
    "service": "Incident",
    "query": "numberSTARTSWITHINC001"
  }
]

Indexing document based on user activity state for User serviceedit

[
  {
    "service": "User",
    "query": "active=False"
  }
]

Indexing document based on author name for Knowledge serviceedit

[
  {
    "service": "Knowledge",
    "query": "author.nameSTARTSWITHSystem Administrator"
  }
]

End-to-end Testingedit

The connector framework enables operators to run functional tests against a real data source. Refer to Connector testing for more details.

To perform E2E testing for the ServiceNow connector, run the following command:

$ make ftest NAME=servicenow

Generate performance reports using the following flag: PERF8=yes. Toggle test data set size between SMALL, MEDIUM and LARGE with the argument DATA_SIZE=. By default, it is set to MEDIUM.

Users do not need to have a running Elasticsearch instance or a ServiceNow source to run this test. Docker Compose manages the complete setup of the development environment.

Known issuesedit

There are no known issues for this connector. Refer to Known issues for a list of known issues that impact all connectors.

Troubleshootingedit

See Troubleshooting.

Securityedit

See Security.

Content extractionedit

See Content extraction.

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