Ansible Certified Content Collection for ServiceNow ITSM

Automation is essential to the modern IT organization, but many companies often lack the right tools to help them launch new automation projects swiftly and efficiently.

Red Hat® Ansible® Automation Platform lets you automate a wide variety of IT processes through Red Hat Ansible Certified Content Collections that are tested, trusted, and reusable. Ansible Automation Platform offers more than 125 Red Hat Ansible Certified Content Collections that can help you automate solutions across your ecosystem, including automation for key functions and even full processes. 

Red Hat Ansible Certified Content Collection for ServiceNow IT Service Management (ITSM) helps you create new automation workflows based on ServiceNow ITSM, while establishing a single source of truth in the ServiceNow configuration management database (CMDB).The key components include the Red Hat Ansible Certified Content Collection for ServiceNow ITSM, the Event-Driven Ansible Notification Service and the Ansible application programming interface (API) for ServiceNow ITSM. 

With the Red Hat Ansible Certified Content Collection for ServiceNow ITSM, you can: 

• Automate change requests. Use Ansible Playbooks to automate ServiceNow ITSM requests, including reporting change results and all information related to those changes. Your service representatives can simply kick off an Ansible Playbook to resolve common requests and reduce rote, repetitive tasks.
• Automate incident response. Assets in the Red Hat Ansible Certified Content Collection for ServiceNow ITSM  support automatic updates to incident tickets to provide a consistent audit trail. Your team can also streamline the required steps for issue remediation and apply them at scale.
• Direct support for other ServiceNow object types. The collection provides explicit support for creating, updating and deleting service catalog requests and items, problems and problem tasks, incidents, configuration items and attachments. This enables a rich and comprehensive workflow for interacting with ServiceNow from Ansible Automation Platform.
• Generic ServiceNow table and API support. If the existing modules do not completely encompass your workflow needs, the collection also provides generic table and API support that can interact with your custom ServiceNow objects or extensions to the standard data tables.
• Using ServiceNow as Ansible Inventory. One of the key features of the collection is the Inventory plugin, which allows the use of ServiceNow Configuration Item tables and queries to construct inventories for Ansible Automation Platform in real time.
• Querying and updating ServiceNow from Ansible. Taking advantage of the collection, Ansible job templates can query information from the ServiceNow CMDB, update the Ansible Inventory based on this data, execute necessary actions, and then advance or close the corresponding ServiceNow request. This eliminates manual steps and ensures timely and accurate updates in ServiceNow.
• Provide full closed loop automation. Simplify the opening, advancement, and resolution of IT service management workflow items while keeping relevant and accurate information flowing into the CMDB across disparate users, teams, and assets. Ensure that infrastructure information is always up to date, actionable, and auditable while work is completed by cross-domain teams that may or may not have access to ServiceNow.

The Event-Driven Ansible Notification Service, available as a ServiceNow application in the ServiceNow store, serves as a key component for integrating ServiceNow with Event-Driven Ansible. This service is designed to send events from ServiceNow to Event-Driven Ansible, allowing automated responses to conditions and changes within your ServiceNow environment.

This service brings value by:

• Sending ServiceNow events to EDA: It allows you to configure ServiceNow to monitor specific tables (such as Incident, Problem, or Catalog Request) and trigger events to be sent to an Event-Driven Ansible controller when predefined conditions are met (e.g., when a record is created or its state changes).
• Allowing automated remediation and workflows: By sending ServiceNow events to EDA, you can trigger automated remediation actions, update other systems, or initiate complex workflows in response to changes or issues detected within ServiceNow, without manual intervention. In addition, the full power of the certified collection can be used by AAP in your job templates and workflows.
• Flexible configuration: The service provides configuration options within ServiceNow to define which events to send, the target EDA webhook or Event Stream URL, and potentially use a MID Server for communication to on-premise EDA controllers.
• Bridging service management and automation: It creates a direct link between your service management processes in ServiceNow and your automation capabilities in Event-Driven Ansible, allowing service-impacting events to automatically trigger appropriate automation responses in real time.

Integrating the Event-Driven Ansible Notification Service with your ServiceNow instance allows you to proactively address issues and automate workflows in response to the dynamic state of your IT services managed within ServiceNow.

Complementing the certified content collection and the Event-Driven Ansible Notification Service is the Ansible application programming interface (API) for ServiceNow ITSM, available at no-cost in the ServiceNow store. This API application helps manage state transitions with ServiceNow ITSM problem objects.

The Ansible API for ServiceNow ITSM brings significant capabilities to the table, providing robust interoperability.

• Updating ServiceNow problems from Ansible: Using the API, Ansible job templates can create, update, and resolve ServiceNow problems. This eliminates manual steps and ensures timely and accurate updates in ServiceNow.
• Ensuring data integrity and auditability: The 2-way communication facilitated by the API ensures that information about your infrastructure remains consistently up to date and auditable in the ServiceNow CMDB, even when automation is performing the changes.
• Closed loop automation: The API is essential for achieving true closed loop automation, allowing Ansible Automation Platform workflows to open, close, and update various ServiceNow ITSM problem objects.

By supporting this robust interoperability, the Ansible API for ServiceNow ITSM, in conjunction with the certified content collection, delivers the best of 2 worlds—a modern service management system combined with flexible automation for required actions, and a trusted source of configuration information about IT assets.

The latest features of the Red Hat Ansible Certified Content Collection for ServiceNow ITSM, enhanced by the Event-Driven Ansible Notification Service and the Ansible API for ServiceNow ITSM, give your Ansible Automation Platform users the ability to add record attachments, apply specific filters to records, update multiple CMDB assets items at once, and much more. You can gather facts, then enrich and update CMDB information as changes occur within your automation workflows. The system can generate and update incident tickets with detailed information, providing the data needed to track, review, and correct issues if automation fails.

Using Red Hat Ansible Certified Content Collection, Ansible API for ServiceNow ITSM, and Event-Driven Ansible Notification Service and the Ansible API for ServiceNow ITSM  allows you to transform and modernize IT service management processes while maintaining strict auditability and control. You can empower your entire organization with role-based access and integration with ITSM workflows, orchestrating development, testing, and production without sacrificing control. 

Ansible Automation Platform customers can access Red Hat Ansible Certified Content Collection for ServiceNow ITSM and many others in the Ansible automation hub on console.redhat.com. The Ansible application programming interface (API) for ServiceNow ITSM and the Event-Driven Ansible Notification Service are available at no-cost in the ServiceNow store, and we support the last 3 production versions of ServiceNow. We are committed to supporting new releases of ServiceNow as they come out.

If you are new to Ansible Automation Platform, visit us online to discover how Red Hat Ansible Certified Content Collection for ServiceNow, the Event-Driven Ansible Notification Service, and the accompanying API, can help you refine your ITSM operations so you can focus on your top strategic and innovative priorities. 

Additional resources

• Video: Automate ServiceNow Catalog Order Fulfillment
• Self-paced Lab: Getting started with ServiceNow automation
• Solution guide: ServiceNow ITSM Automation:
• Brief: Take a closer look at what Automation for ServiceNow ITSM