ServiceNow Tickets Microsoft Graph connector
With the Microsoft Graph connector for ServiceNow Tickets, your organization can index various tickets that are serviced to users. After you configure the connector and index content from ServiceNow, end users can search for those tickets from any Microsoft Search client.
This article is for Microsoft 365 administrators or anyone who configures, runs, and monitors a ServiceNow Tickets Graph connector. It supplements the general instructions provided in the Set up Microsoft Graph connectors in the Microsoft 365 admin center article. If you haven't already done so, read the entire 'Setup your Graph Connector' article to understand the general setup process.
Each step in the setup process is listed below along with either a note that indicates you should follow the general setup instructions OR other instructions that apply to only ServiceNow connector including information about Troubleshooting and Limitations.
Step 1: Add a connector in the Microsoft 365 admin center.
Add ServiceNow Tickets connector
Follow the general setup instructions.
Step 2: Name the connection.
Follow the general setup instructions.
Step 3: Connection Settings
To connect to your ServiceNow data, you need your organization's ServiceNow instance URL. Your organization's ServiceNow instance URL typically looks like https://<your-organization-domain>.service-now.com.
Along with this URL, you'll need a service account for setting up the connection to ServiceNow and for allowing Microsoft Search to periodically update the tickets details based on the refresh schedule.
In ServiceNow, Task table is the base class for ticket management. It can be extended to create ticket applications such as incident, problem and change Management. Learn more about ServiceNow Task tables.
The service account you use to configure a connection must have read access to the following ServiceNow table records to successfully crawl default ticket fields.
| Feature | Read access required tables | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Index base Task table fields | task |
For crawling default fields from out of the box task tables |
| Sync user tables | sys_user |
To index user access details for tickets |
If you want to index custom properties from extended tables of task table, provide read access to sys_dictionary and sys_db_object. It is an optional feature. You'll be able to index task table properties without access to the two extra tables.
| Feature | Read access required tables | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Select custom table from your organization | sys_db_object |
Find the list of extended task tables including custom tables |
| Index custom fields from a specific <table_name> | sys_dictionary |
Crawling custom fields from a specific table like incident, problem or change_management |
You can create and assign a role for the service account you use to connect with Microsoft Search. Learn how to assign role for ServiceNow accounts. Read access to the tables can be provided to the created role. To learn about setting read access to table records, see Securing Table Records.
To authenticate and sync content from ServiceNow, choose one of three supported methods:
- Basic authentication
- ServiceNow OAuth (recommended)
- Microsoft Entra ID OpenID Connect
Step 3.1: Basic authentication
Enter the username and password of ServiceNow account with read access to task and sys_user tables to authenticate to your instance.
Step 3.2: ServiceNow OAuth
To use ServiceNow OAuth, a ServiceNow admin needs to provision an endpoint in your ServiceNow instance. After that Microsoft Search app will be able to access it. To learn more, see Create an endpoint for clients to access the instance in the ServiceNow documentation.
The following table provides guidance on how to fill out the endpoint creation form:
| Field | Description | Recommended Value |
|---|---|---|
| Name | Unique value that identifies the application that you require OAuth access for. | Microsoft Search |
| Client ID | A read-only, auto generated unique ID for the application. The instance uses the client ID when it requests an access token. | NA |
| Client secret | With this shared secret string, the ServiceNow instance and Microsoft Search authorize communications with each other. | Follow security best-practices by treating the secret as a password. |
| Redirect URL | A required callback URL that the authorization server redirects to. | https://gcs.office.com/v1.0/admin/oauth/callback |
| Logo URL | A URL that contains the image for the application logo. | NA |
| Active | Select the check box to make the application registry active. | Set to active |
| Refresh token lifespan | The number of seconds that a refresh token is valid. By default, refresh tokens expire in 100 days (8,640,000 seconds). | 31,536,000 (one year) |
| Access token lifespan | The number of seconds that an access token is valid. | 43,200 (12 hours) |
Enter the client ID and client secret to connect to your instance. After connecting, use a ServiceNow account credential to authenticate permission to crawl. The account should at least have read access to task and sys_user tables. Refer to the table in the beginning of step 3: connection settings for providing read access to more ServiceNow table records and index user criteria permissions.
Step 3.3: Microsoft Entra ID OpenID Connect
To use Microsoft Entra ID OpenID Connect for authentication, follow the steps below.
Step 3.3.1: Register a new application in Microsoft Entra ID
To learn about registering a new application in Microsoft Entra ID, see Register an application. Select single tenant organizational directory. Redirect URI isn't needed. After registration, note down the Application (client) ID and Directory ID (Tenant ID).
Step 3.3.2: Create a client secret
To learn about creating a client secret, see Creating a client secret. Take a note of client secret.
Step 3.3.3: Retrieve Service Principal Object Identifier
Follow the steps to retrieve Service Principal Object Identifier
Run PowerShell.
Install Azure PowerShell using the following command.
Install-Module -Name Az -AllowClobber -Scope CurrentUserConnect to Azure.
Connect-AzAccountGet Service Principal Object Identifier.
Get-AzADServicePrincipal -ApplicationId "Application-ID"Replace "Application-ID" with Application (client) ID (without quotes) of the application you registered in step 3.a. Note the value of ID object from PowerShell output. It's the Service Principal ID.
Now you have all the information required from Azure portal. A quick summary of the information is given in the table below.
| Property | Description |
|---|---|
| Directory ID (Tenant ID) | Unique ID of the Microsoft Entra tenant, from step 3.a. |
| Application ID (Client ID) | Unique ID of the application registered in step 3.a. |
| Client Secret | The secret key of the application (from step 3.b). Treat it like a password. |
| Service Principal ID | An identity for the application running as a service. (from step 3.c) |
Step 3.3.4: Register ServiceNow Application
The ServiceNow instance needs the following configuration:
Register a new OAuth OIDC entity. To learn, see Create an OAuth OIDC provider.
The following table provides guidance on how to fill out OIDC provider registration form
Field Description Recommended Value Name A unique name that identifies the OAuth OIDC entity. Microsoft Entra ID Client ID The client ID of the application registered in the third-party OAuth OIDC server. The instance uses the client ID when requesting an access token. Application (Client) ID from step 3.a Client Secret The client secret of the application registered in the third-party OAuth OIDC server. Client Secret from step 3.b All other values can be default.
In the OIDC provider registration form, you need to add a new OIDC provider configuration. Select the search icon against OAuth OIDC Provider Configuration field to open the records of OIDC configurations. Select New.
The following table provides guidance on how to fill out OIDC provider configuration form
Field Recommended Value OIDC Provider Microsoft Entra ID OIDC Metadata URL The URL must be in the form https://login.microsoftonline.com/<tenandId">/.well-known/openid-configuration
Replace "tenantID" with Directory ID (Tenant ID) from step 3.a.OIDC Configuration Cache Life Span 120 Application Global User Claim sub User Field User ID Enable JTI claim verification Disabled Select Submit and Update the OAuth OIDC Entity form.
Step 3.3.5: Create a ServiceNow account
Refer the instructions to create a ServiceNow account, create a user in ServiceNow.
The following table provides guidance on how to fill out the ServiceNow user account registration
| Field | Recommended Value |
|---|---|
| User ID | Service Principal ID from step 3.c |
| Web service access only | Checked |
All other values can be left to default.
Step 3.3.6: Enable Task, User table access for the ServiceNow account
Access the ServiceNow account you created with ServiceNow Principal ID as User ID and assign the read access to task and sys_user table. Refer to the table in the beginning of step 3: connection settings for providing read access to more ServiceNow table records and index custom fields.
Use Application ID as Client ID (from step 3.a), and Client secret (from step 3.b) in M365 admin center configuration window to authenticate to your ServiceNow instance using Microsoft Entra ID OpenID Connect.
Step 4: Select tables, properties and filter data
In this step, you can add or remove available tables and properties from your ServiceNow data source. Microsoft 365 has already selected few tables and properties by default.
With a ServiceNow query string, you can specify conditions for syncing tickets. It's like a Where clause in a SQL Select statement. For example, you can choose to index only tickets that are created in the last six months and are in open state. To learn about creating your own query string, see Generate an encoded query string using a filter.
Use the preview results button to verify the sample values of the selected properties and query filter.
Step 5: Manage search permissions
The ServiceNow Tickets Graph Connector supports search permissions visible to Only people with access to this data source. Indexed tickets appear in the search results and are visible to users who have access to them via assigned_to and opened_by fields.
When you choose Only people with access to this data source, you need to further choose whether your ServiceNow instance has Microsoft Entra ID provisioned users or Non-Azure AD users.
To identify which option is suitable for your organization:
- Choose the Microsoft Entra ID option if the Email ID of ServiceNow users is same as the UserPrincipalName (UPN) of users in Microsoft Entra ID.
- Choose the Non-Azure AD option if the email ID of ServiceNow users is different from the UserPrincipalName (UPN) of users in Microsoft Entra ID.
Note
- If you choose Microsoft Entra ID as the type of identity source, the connector maps the Email IDs of users obtained from ServiceNow directly to UPN property from Microsoft Entra ID.
- If you chose "Non-Azure AD" for the identity type see Map your non-Azure AD Identities for instructions on mapping the identities. You can use this option to provide the mapping regular expression from Email ID to UPN.
- Updates to users or groups governing access permissions are synced in full crawls only. Incremental crawls do not currently support processing of updates to permissions.
Step 6: Assign property labels
Follow the general setup instructions.
Step 7: Manage schema
Follow the general setup instructions.
Step 8: Choose refresh settings
Follow the general setup instructions.
Note
For identities, only full crawl scheduled will be applied.
Step 9: Review Connection
Follow the general setup instructions.
After publishing the connection, you need to customize the search results page. To learn about customizing search results, see Customize the search results page.
Limitations
The ServiceNow Tickets Microsoft Graph connector has the following limitations in its latest release:
- Everyone feature under Manage Search permissions step doesn't process any permissions. Don't select this option unless you want to test the connection between selected team members in an isolated environment.
Troubleshooting
After publishing your connection, customizing the results page, you can review the status under the Data Sources tab in the admin center. To learn how to make updates and deletions, see Manage your connector. You can find troubleshooting steps for commonly seen issues below.
1. Unable to log in due to single sign-On enabled ServiceNow instance
If your organization has enabled single sign-On (SSO) to ServiceNow, you may have trouble logging in with the service account. You can bring up username and password based login by adding login.do to the ServiceNow instance URL. Example. https://<your-organization-domain>.service-now.com./login.do
2. Unauthorized or forbidden response to API request
2.1. Check table access permissions
If you see forbidden or unauthorized response in connection status, check if the service account has required access to the tables mentioned in step 3: connection settings. Check whether all the columns in the tables have read access.
2.2. Change in account password
The Microsoft Graph connector uses access token fetched on behalf of service account for crawl. The access token refreshes every 12 hours. Ensure that service account password isn't changed after publishing the connection. You may need to reauthenticate the connection if there's a change in password.
2.3. Check if ServiceNow instance behind firewall
The Microsoft Graph Connector may not be able to reach your ServiceNow instance if it is behind a network firewall. You'll need to explicitly allow access to connector service. You can find public IP address range of connector service in the table below. Based on your tenant region, add it to your ServiceNow instance network allowlist.
| Environment | Region | Range |
|---|---|---|
| PROD | North America | 52.250.92.252/30, 52.224.250.216/30 |
| PROD | Europe | 20.54.41.208/30, 51.105.159.88/30 |
| PROD | Asia Pacific | 52.139.188.212/30, 20.43.146.44/30 |
2.4. Access permissions not working as expected
If you observe discrepancies in access permissions applied to search results, verify whether the search user is part of assigned_to and opened_by fields.
3. Issues with Only people with access to this data source permission
3.1 User mapping failures
ServiceNow user accounts that don't have a Microsoft 365 user in Microsoft Entra ID won't map. Non-user, service accounts are expected to fail user mapping. Number of user mapping failures can be accessed in identity stats area in connection detail window. Log of failed user mappings can be downloaded from Error tab.
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