Inventory connector for ServiceNow

Note:This feature is available with IT Asset Management.

A new connector for your inventory beacons allows you to use ServiceNow as an inventory source for hardware and installed software information.

Tip:This inventory connector is quite separate from the existing integration between ServiceNow and IT Asset Management that allows two-way exchange of information about contracts and assets. You can continue to use that kind of data exchange alongside the import of raw inventory information with the new inventory connector.

The inventory collection process requires some set-up in the ServiceNow side:

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At a minimum, the Discovery plugin must be in use within ServiceNow. More complete inventory is available if you also have the SAM plugin in use.

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The Flexera Integration app must be scheduled to run under a suitable user account, and extract data and save it into .csv files on your chosen MID server (typically, in a relatively stable environment, data collection once a week is adequate). This is the same Flexera Integration app that you may already have in place for other forms of interaction between the products, including the contracts/assets exchanges mentioned above. There is no 'second installation' required: it is 'one app to save them all', regardless of data type.

Once the raw inventory data is being saved into .csv files on your MID server, the new ServiceNow inventory connector, configured on a convenient inventory beacon, extracts the data from the .csv files, and uploads the raw inventory to the central application server. There it joins the normal process of import and license consumption calculations.

One limitation of inventory “discovery” by ServiceNow concerns partitioning technologies that provide virtualization on several UNIX-like platforms. If you are supporting these platforms, best practice is to install the inventory agent locally on them, reporting directly to your inventory beacon(s). This allows collection of all details needed for your license consumption calculations. This additional information integrates smoothly with the information collected from ServiceNow.

Full details are available in the Flexera One Help, and in even greater depth in within the ServiceNow Inventory Connector topic in the Inventory Adapters and Connectors Reference guide.