Connect to ServiceNow
- Phillip Hanegan
This article provides detailed instructions for connecting EmpowerID to ServiceNow, enabling automated management of user identities, roles, and access permissions within the ServiceNow platform. It includes the necessary prerequisites and configuration steps and ensures that your integration is properly configured for effective operation.
Prerequisites
To connect EmpowerID to ServiceNow, you need a ServiceNow account. You also need the following information from ServiceNow to create your Account Store:
Username - user name of the System Administrator
Password
ServiceNow Instance*
Your ServiceNow instance is part of the URL you use to log in. It is the bold portion of this example URL:
https://Â dev12345.service-now.com/navpage.do
These values authenticate EmpowerID to ServiceNow. You can also configure a Provisioning policy to automatically provision ServiceNow accounts for certain users.
When you connect EmpowerID to ServiceNow and configure your ServiceNow Account Store, the first time you run inventory, EmpowerID discovers all of the users, groups, memberships, roles, locations, companies, and user accounts in ServiceNow and creates them in the EmpowerID data warehouse. Subsequent inventory runs update any changes occurring since the LastTimeStamp value tracked by the ServiceNow connector.Â
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Procedure
Step 1 – Create a ServiceNow account store in EmpowerID
Expand Admin > Applications and Directories on the navbar, then click Account Stores and Systems.
Select the Actions tab on the Account Stores page and then click Create Account Store.
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Under System Types, search for ServiceNow.
Click the ServiceNow record to select the type and then click Submit.
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On the ServiceNow Settings page that appears, fill in the following information:
Name – Enter a name for your account store.
User Name – Enter the username for your ServiceNow System Administrator.
Password – Enter the password for your ServiceNow System Administrator.
ServiceNow Instance – Enter the instance issued by ServiceNow.
When finished, click Submit to create the account store.
EmpowerID creates the account store and the associated resource system. The next step is configuring the attribute flow between the account store and EmpowerID.
Step 2 – Configure attribute flow
EmpowerID supports the configuration of attribute synchronization rules for flowing attribute changes between directories and the EmpowerID Identity Warehouse. Attribute Flow rules are visually configured and are always relative to the relationship between an attribute in a directory and the corresponding attribute in the EmpowerID Identity Warehouse. Attribute Flow rules define the specific fields and attributes synchronized between the EmpowerID Identity Warehouse person objects and the external user accounts to which they are linked. Additionally, Attribute Flow rules can be weighted by account store. For example, if you have connected EmpowerID to an HR system as well as Active Directory, and you want any changes made to an attribute in the HR system to take priority over changes made in Active Directory or EmpowerID (while allowing changes to be made in any system), you would give a higher score for each CRUD operation originating from the HR account store and correspondingly lower scores for the Active Directory account store.
The following flow rules are available:
No Sync 🔴 – When this option is selected, no information flows between EmpowerID and the native system.
Bidirectional Flow—When this option is selected, changes made within EmpowerID update the native system and vice versa. For most attributes, this is the default setting.
Account Store Changes Only
  – When this option is selected, changes can only be made in the native system and are then passed to EmpowerID.
EmpowerID Changes OnlyÂ
 – When this option is selected, changes can only be made in EmpowerID and are then passed to the native system.
The following CRUD operations are available:
Create – This operation creates an attribute value for an existing attribute when its value is null.
Update – This operation is used to update the value of an attribute.
Delete – This operation is used to delete the value of an attribute.
From the Account Stores tab of the Account Stores and Systems page, search for the account store you just created and click the Account Store link.
Click the Attribute Flow Rules tab to view the current rules for the account store. The attributes available depend on the account store.
To change the flow for an attribute, click the Attribute Flow drop-down between the Person Attribute column and the External Directory Attribute column, and select the desired flow direction from the context menu.
Enter the new score in the appropriate field to change the score for any available CRUD operations (Create, Update, and Delete). By default, scores are weighted evenly, which means that a change to an attribute originating in one connected external directory has the same authority as a change to an attribute occurring in another connected external directory.
EmpowerID only considers scores for attribute CRUD operations when multiple account stores with the same user records are connected, such as if EmpowerID were inventorying an HR System and this account store.
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Now that the attribute flow has been set, the next steps include configuring the account store and enabling EmpowerID to inventory it.
Step 3 – Configure account store settings
On the Account Store and Resource System page, click the Account Store tab and then click the pencil icon to put the account store in edit mode.
This opens the edit page for the account store. This page allows you to specify the account proxy used to connect EmpowerID to your ServiceNow system and how you want EmpowerID to handle the user information it discovers in ServiceNow during inventory. Settings that can be edited are described in the table below.
Account Store Settings | |
|---|---|
Setting | Description |
General Settings | |
IT Environment Type | Allows you to specify the type of environment in which you are creating the account store. |
Account Store Type | Allows to specify a type to help identify the purpose of the account store you are creating. Default is the most common usage. |
Option 1 Specify an Account Proxy | Allows you to change the credentials for the account that EmpowerID uses to connect to and manage the account store. |
Option 2 Select a Vaulted Credential as Account Proxy | Allows you to use a credential that you have vaulted in EmpowerID as the account that EmpowerID uses to connect to and manage the account store. |
Inventoried Directory Server | Allows you to select a connected server as the directory server for the account store. |
Authentication and Password Settings | |
Allow Password Sync | Enables or disables the synchronization of password changes to user accounts in the domain based on password changes for the owning person object or another account owned by the person. This setting does not prevent password changes by users running the reset user account password workflows. |
Queue Password Changes | Specifies whether EmpowerID sends password changes to the Account Password Reset Inbox for batch processing. |
Password Manager Policy for Accounts without Person | Specifies the Password Manager Policy to be used for user accounts not joined to an EmpowerID Person. |
Provisioning Settings | |
Allow Person Provisioning (Joiner Source) | Specifies whether EmpowerID Persons can be provisioned from user accounts in the account store. |
Allow Attribute Flow | Specifies whether attribute changes should flow between EmpowerID and the account store. |
Allow Provisioning (By RET) | Allows or disallows the Resource Entitlement (RET) Inbox process to auto-provision accounts for this domain for users who receive RET policy-assigned user accounts, but have not yet had them provisioned. |
Allow Deprovisioning (By RET) | Allows or disallows the Resource Entitlement Inbox process to auto de-provision accounts for this domain for users who still have RET policy-assigned user accounts, but no longer receive a policy that grants them a user account in the domain. De-provisioning only occurs if the de-provision action on the Resource Entitlement policy is set to De-Provision. |
Max Accounts per Person | This specifies the maximum number of user accounts from this domain that an EmpowerID Person can have linked to them. This prevents the possibility of a runaway error caused by a wrongly configured Join rule. It is recommended that this value be set to 1 unless users will have more than 1 account and you wish them to be joined to the same person. |
Business Role Settings | |
Allow Business Role and Location Re-Evaluation | Specifies whether the account store allows Business Role and Location re-evaluation. |
Business Role and Location Re-Evaluation Order | This is an optional policy setting that can be used by provisioning workflows to determine which Account Store has priority when determining the roles and locations that should be assigned to a person. Account Stores with a higher value take precedence. |
Inventory Auto Provision OUs as IT System Locations | Specifies whether OUs in the external system are added as IT System locations in EmpowerID. If true, the OUs appear under the All IT Systems location node. |
Inventory Auto Provision External Roles as Business Roles | Specifies whether EmpowerID automatically provisions external role as Business Roles. This is useful for role-mapping where indicated. |
Default Person Business Role | Specifies the default EmpowerID Business Role to be assigned to each EmpowerID Person provisioned from the user accounts in the account store. |
Default Person Location (leave blank to use account container) | Specifies the default EmpowerID Location to be assigned to each EmpowerID Person provisioned from the user accounts in the account store. |
Group Settings | |
Allow Account Creation on Membership Request | Specifies whether EmpowerID creates user accounts in the account store when an EmpowerID Person without one requests membership within a group belonging to the account store. |
Recertify All Group Changes as Detected | Specifies whether detected group changes should trigger recertification. |
SetGroup of Groups to Monitor for Real-Time Recertification | Â |
Directory Clean Up Enabled | |
Directory Clean Up Enabled | Specifies whether the SubmitAccountTermination permanent workflow should claim the account store for processing account terminations. When enabled, accounts in the account store that meet the qualifications to be marked for deletion are moved into a special OU within the external directory, disabled and finally deleted after going through an automated approval process. This process involves setting a number of system settings in EmpowerID and requires multiple approvals by designated personnel before an account is finally removed from the account store. |
Report Only Mode (No Changes) | When enabled, a report of what the Directory Clean Up process would do is written to the log. The process itself is ignored and all accounts are set to Termination Pending, |
Special Use Settings | |
Automatically Join Account to a Person on Inventory (Skip Account Inbox) | Specifies whether EmpowerID should attempt to join user accounts in the account store to an existing EmpowerID Person during the inventory process. When enabled, the Account Inbox is bypassed. |
Automatically Create a Person on Inventory (Skip Account Inbox) | Specifies whether EmpowerID should create new EmpowerID Persons from the user accounts discovered in the account store during the inventory process. When enabled, the Account Inbox is bypassed. |
Queue Password Changes on Failure | Specifies whether EmpowerID should send password changes to the Account Password Reset Inbox only when the change fails. |
Inventory Settings | |
Inventory Enabled | Allows EmpowerID to inventory the user information in the account store. |
Inventory Schedule Interval | Specifies the time span that occurs before EmpowerID performs a complete inventory of the account store. The default value is 10 minutes. |
Membership Settings | |
Enable Group Membership Reconciliation | Allows EmpowerID to manage the membership of the account store’s groups, adding and removing user to and from groups based on policy-based assignment rules. |
Membership Schedule Interval | Specifies the time span that occurs before EmpowerID runs the Group Membership Reconciliation job. The default value is 10 minutes. |
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Edit the account store as needed and click Save to save your changes.
Next, enable the Account Inbox permanent workflow to allow the Account Inbox to provision or join the user accounts in ServiceNow to EmpowerID Persons, as demonstrated below.
Step 4 – Enable the Account Inbox Permanent Workflow
Expand Infrastructure Admin > EmpowerID Server and Settings on the navbar and select Permanent Workflows.
Click the Display Name link for Account Inbox on the Permanent Workflows page.
On the Permanent Workflow Details page that appears, click the pencil icon to put the workflow in edit mode.
Check Enabled.
Click Save to save your changes.
Next Steps
About the EmpowerID Orchestration Pack for ServiceNow
Deploy the Orchestration Pack to ServiceNow
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