I am excited to be able to present some feature updates to the vRealize Automation ITSM 8.3 Plugin for ServiceNow. vRealize Automation customers can present the vRealize Automation Service Broker Catalog Items to ServiceNow for consumption by ServiceNow users. This has been a strategic integration for our customers who wish to use ServiceNow as their main portal for users and then have vRealize Automation do the deployment and logic on the back-end.
The matrix below will show which versions of vRealize Automation and ServiceNow are supported with both ITSM 8.2 and ITSM 8.3
Some of the new features of ITSM 8.3 are:
- Support for Paris version of ServiceNow
- vRealize Automation 8.3 Support
- Custom Form Support
- Dynamic Fields Support
- Multi-Level Approvals, Custom Approval Flow
- Email Notifications
- Support for Native ServiceNow Catalog and Portal
One of the most significant changes in the ITSM 8.3 plugin is the plugin now support the native ServiceNow portals. If you look at previous plugin versions they were creating a custom vRealize Automation portal within ServiceNow. Below is screenshot of what the ServiceNow portal login page could look like:
Once a ServiceNow user logs into the portal they can see their vRealize Automation deployments, requests and catalog items. In the screenshot below there are widgets like vRA Deployments. You can customize these widgets and the layout of the page using the ServiceNow portal designer.
If a ServiceNow user wants to request an application or service they can to to the linke “Request Something” and then choose from their entitled catalog items and day 2 actions.
Under the Categories section there is a section called vRA Items, under that grouping the ServiceNow user can choose from the vRealize Automation Projects that contain various catalog items. In this scenario we will run the MOAD Retail Website catalog item. Once the item is clicked then the request form comes up.
Once all the fields are populated the ServiceNow user can click Order Now to kick off the process. However in our environment we have setup approvals and the request needs to be approved before anything is deployed. The ServiceNow user will see the request in an approval state.
The ITSM approver(s) will get an email stating there is a request awaiting approval. Once they login to ServiceNow the approver will see there are items to approve. The approver then can reject or approve the request.
Once the request is approved the ServiceNow user will see that the request is not approved and waiting to hear back from vRealize Automation Cloud in this case.
The Cloud Admin can then look into vRealize Automation and see the deployment has kicked off. The ServiceNow user will see the creation is in progress from the ServiceNow portal.
Once the deployment is complete then the ServiceNow user can interact with the deployment and the resources that were deployed.
Notice that the ServiceNow user can take actions on the Virtual Machines and the Deployment as well. Some Day2 Actions could be to reboot, power off, take snapshots and many more.
Our integration with ServiceNow has helped customers to create a single portal for their organization to request applications and services while using the powerful deployment engine that is vRealize Automation.
