[Music] in this video we'll cover some planning to do before building an integration we'll look at the questions to answer so you're ready to get started these questions serve as a framework have them ready or reference them here when you become involved with a new or existing integration okay we've been asked to import or export some data to a third party system now what asking questions to better understand what it is you're being asked to do the answers to these questions will drive the rest of the implementation is this an import to servicenow or an export from servicenow understanding which direction information is flowing is critical many of the following questions are specific to whether servicenow is receiving information or sending it which system is initiating this conversation is it a push or a pull anytime information is traded between two systems one of the systems started the exchange with a request it's important to understand which system is starting this for example servicenow starts by requesting another system for information to import data from a third party customer table on the other hand the third party system may start the conversation by using a servicenow api to post an update to that customer table either way the end result is the same service now gets data imported but the actions taken are completely different can the integration be done asynchronously in the background or synchronously while you wait most integrations can be done async for example sending a batch of compliance records to your governance agency every month there's no user impact and the integration may take 15 minutes and nobody wants to wait for that however if you need real-time data like reading from a temperature sensor to place on a form or to do some other logic it's best to understand how long that request and response takes so you know what the user experience will be like if they have to wait are you doing this integration once or on a regular basis an example of a one-time integration is importing a legacy spreadsheet and then maintaining that data in servicenow going forward however many integrations to third-party systems require regular updates for example new users are provisioned in your active directory server you'll want those reflected in your servicenow user table automatically does the data need to be updated in real time or batched at periodic intervals at first this may sound like the question about asynchronous versus synchronous but not necessarily when you need to make updates will the systems be required to update immediately or can they wait to group together several updates at once for example all medical equipment updated in the last 24 hours in some instances real-time updates may not be available so check if this is supported by the third-party software if you choose periodic updates are there times that work better for the integration depending on the volume of data exchanged there may be performance impacts it may be better to run the import or export at off peak hours or spread them over the course of the day be sure to factor this into your integration plan is this a unidirectional or bi-directional exchange will both systems need to be kept informed of changes by the other or is one considered to be the provider or source of authority and the other a consumer if you need a bidirectional integration will the information be mapped the same on both ends oftentimes you'll find that data needs to be modified transformed or otherwise mapped between the systems since the fields and formats are different it's best to answer these questions early to understand the level of effort involved for example you may have to change the date formats or map a user field to a customer field is there a source of authority on the data in a bi-directional integration you may need to define which system has the final say if something becomes out of sync for example the hr system is the source of authority even though the now platform receives information from the hr system and sends it updates what common formats and protocols are available between both systems for example excel csv json or xml for protocols you might have http or ftp or even jdbc knowing these answers gives you insight to how your integration will be built do you need to exchange all the information every time or can we do incremental updates is that even possible let's say you run a movie review app and you have a million records in your database that you imported from the internet site each night the internet site has 25 to 100 new movies you don't need to import a million records each night if less than point zero zero zero one percent of the records have changed this saves time and processing on both systems but you need to understand if the incremental exchange is possible first are there tools already built or do we need to create our own before rushing out and building your own integration first check if something is already available this gets back to the age-old discussion of buy versus build if there is something available is it good enough to address your needs check the service now store regularly as new integrations are being added monthly if it's not currently available is servicenow working on something that can address your needs it's often more cost effective in the long run to buy rather than build you need to understand this so management can plan accordingly what level of error reporting or retry do you need if there's an issue with the integration such as a remote systems not responding or you expected 50 records and you only receive 48 what should be done in such cases is a report sufficient should an incident be created is it even important or just part of the process knowing this can save a lot of questions later do you understand the amount of data that is required to exchange and how long will it take if you're trying to exchange 10 gigabytes of data and it takes 4 hours and the requirement needs an hourly refresh you're going to run into some problems we'll discuss potential performance pitfalls and best practices as we go through the rest of the series are there any data retention policies some organizations have policies regarding how long data can be stored on system and what happens to it at the end of that period this may require you to look at other platform capabilities like table rotation and archiving in other situations you may not be able to store the data at all but still need to access it virtually this might be a good use case for something like remote tables which i'll talk about later knowing these policies can avoid compliance and governance issues what security credentials are required for your integration is this a publicly available open api you're trying to access or grant access to do you need credentials to access the data or the other way around does a third party system need servicenow credentials to get information from your instance and does the account have access to what it needs for example proper roles and acls what type of credentials are required login and password oauth jwt an api key there are several options know what you can and cannot support these are some of the most common questions i've run into when doing integrations there may be others that you encounter as you create your integrations and i encourage you to make a note of them and share them on the community so you can expand your experience and help others i hope that by reviewing these questions with the person or people you're trying to exchange information with you have a clearer picture of the integration requirements and scope i invite you to take a look at a couple of assets on the now create site links are provided in the description for this video if you like you can also go to nowlearning.servicedashnow.com now create use the search box to search for assets and type integrations and download the assets integration planning template and integrations workshop presentations these are great resources to reference with example use cases after reviewing the questions here and the resource material we should have a pretty good idea of how to architect and build our integration so let's continue with the next video