welcome to implementing integrations with ServiceNow part of our best practices series in this video you'll learn what an integration is and how it can deliver value to your organization you'll learn how you can prepare to implement integrations with ServiceNow and you'll leave this video armed with a list of actions you should take before your next integration project let's start by defining integration an integration is a data exchange between two or more systems integrations are essential to implementing digital workflows and creating seamless user experiences ServiceNow integrations support three use cases process integrations move data across systems to facilitate a process like sending ServiceNow records to JIRA to support development process UI integrations present public web information within the now platform such as displaying weather forecasts data integrations enable data sharing such as viewing demographic HR data like titles or managers within the platform the rest of this video focuses on the steps you should take to prepare for your next integration project to make it more efficient let's dig in the most critical preparation step is defining your goals for the integration what is the business outcome that you are trying to achieve and what value will the integration deliver determine what workflows you want to deliver via integration and what data must be exchanged across systems to support your in goal for integrating for example if your goal is to speed up software provisioning consider what processes and data are needed for approvals and provisioning software the second step is identifying who needs to be involved you need the right stakeholders for two reasons first to define the integration needs for the business and second to support the design and implementation of the integration your core team will include system admins integration experts in your org ei reps certified partners and ServiceNow teams however integration efforts often overlook other key players like process owners and platform team members who are critical to the success of the process owners should work with technical teams to bring the right context and to help them inform design decisions they ultimately validate the usefulness of an integration additionally during design and implementation do not overlook stakeholders like data architects security and subject matter experts as they provide a critical perspective to managing technical risks appropriately the third step is to research integrations technologies start by understanding the various ServiceNow technologies their use cases and pros and cons for example consider the benefits of using a REST API over soap JDBC or LDAP for specific use cases or whether you can use web services which generally offer more flexibility it's important to consult your EA and security teams to figure out which technologies might work best at your organization doing your homework early on will fast-track your configuration we recommend you start by looking into integration options available on the ServiceNow store and integration hub you can find information on these and service now's product Docs the last step is to gather technical details start with network requirements and determine how systems will talk to each other list all the systems and scope understand the options to connect these systems and flush out any security needs next understand data format and quality how it will be packaged and if any transformation is required lastly think about when you will need data to be shared across systems do you need data to be synced in real time or can it be updated in batches will you need to transmit full files or just change only files involving the right players we discussed before will make it easier to gather all these details there are three insights we want you to remember from this video first think critically about what you need to accomplish via integration consider how work should flow post integration and what data will be needed to facilitate it second streamline your implementation by involving the right players early and don't forget about process and security owners third you can save a lot of time by gathering high level technical requirements before kicking off your implementation so what should you do next first take time to review the resources we have on the customer Success Center these materials will give you more details on how to implement ServiceNow integrations then as you think about your next integration project identify key stakeholders and gather technical details ahead of the implementation kickoff for more information or advice contact your service now team thank you for watching