ServiceNow Input node

Use the ServiceNow Input node to accept input from ServiceNow.

The ServiceNow Input node is available on Windows, AIX®, and Linux® systems.

This topic contains the following sections:

Purpose

Use the ServiceNow Input node in a message flow to accept input from ServiceNow. You can use the ServiceNow Input node to monitor ServiceNow for new or updated objects, such as the following:
Assets
New or updated assets
Attachments
New attachments
Comments
New comments
Departments
New or updated departments
Incidents
New or updated incidents
Problems
New or updated problems
System users
New or updated system users
Tickets
New or updated tickets

For example, the ServiceNow Input node might monitor a ServiceNow system for new assets. When a new asset is created, the ServiceNow Input node generates a message tree that represents the business object with details of the new asset. The message tree is propagated to the Out terminal so that the rest of the message flow can use the data to update other systems or to audit the changes.

The ServiceNow Input node operations are synchronous and non-transactional, which means that, if a message flow fails and rolls back after the ServiceNow Input node, the operation on the data source will still complete.

The ServiceNow Input node is contained in the ServiceNow drawer of the message flow node palette, and is represented in the IBM® App Connect Enterprise Toolkit by the following icon:
This image shows the ServiceNow Request node icon.

Terminals and properties

When you put an instance of the ServiceNow Input node into a message flow, you can configure it. For more information, see Configuring a message flow node. The properties of the node are displayed in the Properties view. All mandatory properties for which you must enter a value (those without a default value) are marked with an asterisk.

The ServiceNow Input node terminals are described in the following table.

Terminal Description
Out The output terminal from which the message tree is propagated. The output message tree contains the object that is returned from the ServiceNow connector.
Catch The output terminal to which the message collection is routed if an exception is thrown downstream and caught by this node.
Failure If an error occurs in the ServiceNow Input node, the message is sent to the Failure terminal.

The following tables describe the node properties. The columns headed M indicate whether the property is mandatory (marked with an asterisk on the panel if you must enter a value when no default is defined). The columns headed C indicate whether the property is configurable (you can change the value when you add the message flow to the BAR file to deploy it).

The ServiceNow Input node Description properties are described in the following table:
Property M C Default Description
Node name Yes No The node type, ServiceNow Input The name of the node.
Short description No No   A brief description of the node.
Long description No No   Text that describes the purpose of the node in the message flow.
The ServiceNow Input node Basic properties are described in the following table.
Property M C Default Description
Action Yes No   This property shows the action to be performed by the ServiceNow Input node. The action is defined through the Connector Discovery wizard, and is then displayed in the Action property in read-only format.

Click Launch Connector Discovery to start the Connector Discovery wizard for the ServiceNow connector, and define the action that you require.

Object Yes No   This property shows the object on which the specified action is to be performed. The object is defined through the Connector Discovery wizard, and is then displayed in the Object property in read-only format.
Schema base name Yes No   The base name of the schema file that describes the format of the message that is returned by the ServiceNow connector for the ServiceNow object. The schema file can be used by a Mapping node to map the data values that are returned. You can open the schema by clicking the Open schema button.
The ServiceNow Input node Connection properties are described in the following table.
Property M C Default Description
Policy Yes No   This property specifies the name of the policy that contains the details of the security identity that is used for the connection. The policy has a type of ServiceNow and is defined in a policy project.
The ServiceNow Input node Retry properties are described in the following table.
Property M C Default Description
Retry mechanism Yes No Failure How the node handles a flow failure. Valid options are:
  • Failure
  • Short retry
  • Short and long retry
Retry threshold No Yes 0 The number of times to try the flow transaction again when the Retry mechanism property value is Short retry or Short and long retry.
Short retry interval No Yes 0 The interval, in seconds, between each retry if Retry threshold property is not zero.
Long retry interval No Yes 300 The interval between retries, if Retry mechanism property is Short and long retry and the retry threshold has been exhausted.
The ServiceNow Input node Input Message Parsing properties are described in the following table.
Property M C Default Description
Message domain Yes No JSON The domain that is used to parse the response message. This property is set to JSON and cannot be changed.
Message model No No   The name of the message model schema file in which the incoming message is defined. This property is set to the full filename of the response schema, which is the base name set in the Schema base name property, suffixed with response.schema.json (for example, gen/flow1.ServiceNow_Input.response.schema.json).
Message No No   The name of the response message. The node detects the message type automatically; you cannot set this property.
Physical format No No   The name of the physical format of the response message. You cannot set this property.
The ServiceNow Input node Instances properties are described in the following table.
Property M C Default Description
Additional instances pool No No None The pool that is associated with the message flow.
Additional instances No Yes 0 The number of additional instances.
The ServiceNow Input node Monitoring properties are described in the following table.
Property M C Default Description
Events No No None Events that you define for the node are displayed on this tab. By default, no monitoring events are defined on any node in a message flow. Use Add, Edit, and Delete to create, change, or delete monitoring events for the node; see Configuring monitoring event sources by using monitoring properties for details.

You can enable and disable events that are shown here by selecting or clearing the Enabled checkbox.