ServiceNow Events

Cloud Elements supports events via polling or webhooks depending on the API provider. For more information about our Events framework, see Events Overview.

Supported Events and Resources

Cloud Elements supports polling events for ServiceNow. After receiving an event, Cloud Elements standardizes the payload and sends an event to the configured callback URL of your authenticated element instance.

You can set up polling for the events resource. You can also copy the events configuration to poll other resources. See Configure Polling Through API for more information.

Note: Unless configured for a specific time zone, polling occurs in UTC.

Configure Polling Through the UI

To configure polling through the UI, follow the same steps to authenticate an element instance, and then turn on events. Select the resources to poll, and then click Create Instance. For more information, see Authenticate an Element Instance with Events (UI) or the element-specific authentication topic.

Note: Because of the Parent-child relationship among ServiceNow objects,  duplicate events are generated. For example:  core_company and sys_user are implemented as accounts and contacts which are duplicated by agents. sys_user is the parent table of customer_contact and core_company is the parent table of customer_account. Any record created in the child table, is also created in the parent table.

If all the Cloud Elements endpoints are selected under polling (in the instance creation page), any event triggered for a creation/update/deletion of record in the child tables will also create duplicate events of their respective parent tables.

The user may find duplicate events in the logs. In order to just get a single event for the child table, the user must create an instance by deselecting the parent table (under the polling section of the instance creation page). For more information, refer to inbound Rest and community questions.

Configure Polling Through API

Use the /instances endpoint to authenticate with ServiceNow and create an element instance with polling enabled.

Note: The endpoint returns an element instance token and id upon successful completion. Retain the token and id for all subsequent requests involving this element instance.

To authenticate an element instance with polling:

  1. Construct a JSON body as shown below (see Parameters):

    {
      "element":{
        "key":""
      },
      "providerData":{
        "code": "<AUTHORIZATION_GRANT_CODE>"
      },
      "configuration":{
        "username": "<USERNAME>",
        "password": "<PASSWORD>",
        "servicenow.subdomain": "<SUBDOMAIN>",
        "event.notification.enabled": true,
        "event.notification.callback.url": "http://mycoolapp.com",
        "event.poller.refresh_interval": "<minutes>",
        "event.poller.configuration":{
          "accounts":{
            "url": "/hubs/helpdesk/accounts?where=sys_updated_on>'${gmtDate:yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss}'",
                "idField": "sys_id",
                "datesConfiguration": {
                    "updatedDateField": "sys_updated_on",
                    "updatedDateFormat": "yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss",
                    "createdDateField": "sys_created_on",
                    "createdDateFormat": "yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss"
                }
          }
        }
      },
      "tags":[
        "<Add_Your_Tag>"
      ],
      "name":"<INSTANCE_NAME>"
    }
    
  2. Call the following, including the JSON body you constructed in the previous step:

    POST /instances
    
    Note: Make sure that you include the User and Organization keys in the header. For more information, see Authorization Headers, Organization Secret, and User Secret.
  3. Locate the token and id in the response and save them for all future requests using the element instance.

Example JSON with Polling

instance JSON with polling events enabled:

{
  "element":{
    "key":"sageone"
  },
  "providerData":{
    "code":"1c6ff4089d58d80e86482ab7d5b97f15dd7b041d"
  },
  "configuration":{
    "username": "username",
    "password": "******",
    "servicenow.subdomain": "dev12345" ,
    "event.notification.enabled":true,
    "event.notification.callback.url":"http://mycoolapp.com",
    "event.poller.refresh_interval":"15",
    "event.poller.configuration":{
      "customers":{
        "url":"/hubs/finance/customers?where=lastModifiedDate>='${date:yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss'Z'}' and attributes='created_at,updated_at",
        "idField":"id",
        "datesConfiguration":{
          "updatedDateField":"updated_at",
          "updatedDateFormat":"yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss'Z'",
          "updatedDateTimezone":"GMT",
          "createdDateField":"created_at",
          "createdDateFormat":"yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss'Z'",
          "createdDateTimezone":"GMT"
        }
      }
    }
  },
  "tags":[
    "Test"
  ],
  "name":"API_Polling"
}

Parameters

API parameters not shown in Cloud Elements are in code formatting.

ParameterDescriptionData Type
keyThe element key.
string
Name
name
The name for the element instance created during authentication.string
Username
username
Your ServiceNow user name.
Password
password
Your ServiceNow password.string
The ServiceNow Subdomain
servicenow.subdomain
This is the part of your URL that is specific to your organization, for example in https://domain12345.service-now.com/ domain12345 is the subdomainstring
Events Enabled
event.notification.enabled
Optional. Identifies that events are enabled for the element instance.
Default: false.
boolean
Event Notification Callback URL
event.notification.callback.url
The URL where you want Cloud Elements to send the events.string
Event poller refresh interval (mins)
event.poller.refresh_interval
A number in minutes to identify how often the poller should check for changes.number
Configure Polling
event.poller.configuration
Optional*. Configuration parameters for polling.JSON object
accountsThe configuration of the customers resource.JSON object
URL
url
The url to query for updates to the resource.String
ID Field
idField
The field in the resource that is used to uniquely identify it.String
Advanced Filtering
datesConfiguration
Configuration parameters for dates in pollingJSON Object
Updated Date Field
updatedDateField
The field that identifies an updated object.String
Updated Date Format
updatedDateFormat
The date format of the field that identifies an updated object.String
Created Date Field
createdDateField
The field that identifies a created object.String
Created Date Format
createdDateFormat
The date format of the field that identifies a created object.String
tagsOptional. User-defined tags to further identify the instance.string