SNOW – the first accredited interface between SAP Solution Manager and ServiceNow

The implementation of multiple ITSM control tools in the IT arena has become commonplace for many organisations, by and large because specialised teams favour their own particular breed of toolset. This is no different in the world of SAP; Solution Manager has become the ‘go-to’ ITSM toolset for many customer CoE teams as it allows an insight and integration into the SAP suite of applications that simply cannot be matched by any other tool on the market. Yet these benefits can come at a price…in this scenario of multiple ITSM applications, data and updates need to be duplicated to provide overall transparency across all applications, enterprise wide; and typically (although it doesn’t have to be the case) it is usually the non-SAP application that provides the interface to the end-user.

With Solution Manger 7.2, SAP went the extra mile to make the toolset ‘open’. It became more accessible to users through redefined and user-friendly interfaces, but also through increasing the integration possibilities to other tools. This, coupled with the ongoing improvement of technology has provided the opportunity for developers to work on bespoke interfaces to simplify ITSM business processes via specific Application Program Interfaces (APIs) that provide seamless communication.

Step forward Concorn, our preferred partner company in the States, who have been working busily in the background to create the first SAP accredited adapter to integrate both SAP Solution Manager 7.2 and ServiceNow – aptly called SNOW.  Rapid ERP are the UK’s only implementation partner for the adapter and we are pleased to see that this solution has closed a gap that many customers have been looking for; providing a user-friendly interface between the two systems, it is fully capable of keeping both Change Management and Incident Management processes consistent and as simple as possible, whilst allowing the different user groups to use their tool of choice without the need for duplication of data.

The interface has been designed to support different processes on SAP Solution Manager:

Change Management:

• Full traceability and visibility bi-direction status update and document control of both, ServiceNow and SAP Solution Manager throughout the Change Lifecycle
• Drilldown and navigation from ServiceNow to SAP Solution Manager and vice-versa
• Best practice change flows, which can be customised to adapt complex landscapes
• Creation of a ChaRM Change Document, such as Normal, Urgent, Standard or Admin Changes via a ServiceNow Change Request document
• Change Managers can work with ServiceNow tickets (for Change Approvals etc), SAP experts can work via Solution Manager (for Transport Creation and Logistics).

Incident Management:

• Create ServiceNow support tickets directly from SAP user UI (via a fully automated SAP Solution Manager connection)
• The extremely helpful User Context and supporting technical information (e.g. transaction codes, error messages, etc) previously only available via Solution Manager are now passed on to the ServiceNow ticket automatically

Application Operations:

• Creation of ServiceNow tickets from SAP Solution Manager Application Monitoring – Alert Inbox i.e. this allows the automatically generated monitoring alerts to create fully detailed Incidents within ServiceNow
• User context and supporting technical information is passed on to the ServiceNow ticket automatically
• Drilldown and navigation from ServiceNow to SAP Solution Manager

The result is a seamless interface between SAP Solution Manager and ServiceNow that allows on one side, a better management to control SAP specific changes and progress the associated transport requests, and on the other side, the interaction with other functionalities to create ServiceNow incident tickets using a simple button.  Additionally, statuses between tickets are updated in real time via the synchronisation mechanism designed on this solution.

In addition to the seamless integration, we should mention that one of the most interesting features of this interface is delivered via the in-built reporting capabilities of ServiceNow. This has been extended to use the custom fields available via the adapter; for example we can report on various attributes of the Change Request ticket such as, Change Cycle, Change Document ID, Change Type, Status, etc… to track information about ChaRM. This will simplify the way that Business users can keep traceability of SAP Changes and help them to identify those documents that need further support to be progressed all without them needing to have their own account/access to Solution Manager.

In summary this interface offers multiple benefits:

• Simplifies the overall ITSM and SAP Change Management business processes
• Allows the contextual and technical information captured via Solution Manager to be visible within ServiceNow
• Prevents the need for manual duplication of information between ServiceNow and Solution Manager
• Provides a bi-directional solution for Change Documents (ChaRM) and the Change Request (ServiceNow), allowing each user community to use their tool of choice with no loss of functionality

Do you want to know more about how the SNOW interface can improve your business process? Are you interested in understanding how we at Rapid ERP have solved integration challenges to other ITSM toolsets (such as ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus)? Feel free to contact us now for a no hassle conversation.