hello and welcome to surfice now's low code capability Deep dive in this nine-part series we're going to take a look at the various aspects of the service now platform that Empower creators of all skill levels with the ability to rapidly build highquality scalable and easy to govern apps in this nine-part series we're going to take a look at the various aspects of the service now platform that Empower creators of all skill levels with the ability to rapidly build highquality scalable and easy to govern apps in this application and data connectivity section I will describe how service now integrates with external systems the topics covered include API creation authentication management and monitoring data input and transformation and data virtualization RPA bot management and our connectors for popular llms such as open AI Gemini Lama and more this section begins with one of the foundations of integration in service now connections and credentials connections and credentials is centralized on the service now platform to allow platform administrators to create and distribute credentials to developers without exposing passwords and secret Keys credentials can then be used by developers in accurated way which reduces the risk of misconfiguration which can cause security issues this approach allows Loco developers to enhance their applications workflows and automations with external data in a safe and secure way without having to involve Pro coders workflow Studio integrates workflow and integration authoring configuring and monitoring into a single experience playbooks flows actions data streams and decisions can all be created from a single development environment operational data is available to platform administrators and process owners such as flow execution metrics including errors and long running flows on the Integrations tab all installed out of the box and custom creat connections and their statuses is shown so that administrators can configure them for use in applications and workflows there are numerous outof the-box integration spokes which allow service now to connect to external systems these spokes are authored by vendors themselves or in collaboration with service now the service now store hosts these spokes which can be easily installed into customers instances often spokes only require a credential and connection to be defined before they begin used in workflows this minimal setup approach means that low code developers can leverage Integrations without being exposed to the complexity of developing one themselves developers need only understand the inputs required and how to use the output data to enhance their workflows where and out of the box integration for a system is not available custom actions can be created setting up an action is a low code experience by defining inputs outputs and wiring them up to steps using data pills configuring integration steps is simplified by selecting existing connections and credentials and even importing API specifications through open API documentation this example shows an integration with the stripe payments platform to create a payment intent the connection and credential has already been set up by by my platform administrator and the rest API operations have been imported using Stripes open API spec when I select the payment intent operation it automatically creates inputs and outputs based on the API query parameters and return object once published this action is ready to be used in my flow and other developers benefit from not having to Define this integration again and can reuse this action in their flows too data streams are special actions which automatically handle pagination and query limits when requesting large lists of data from apis in this data stream I am requesting a list of all payments made to my stripe account data streams need three additional variables configured on top of normal actions the page size determines how many results to return each time the get next page determines if we've reached the end of the stream and an optional parameter for the page we're currently requesting once configured data streams can be used in flow but are most commonly used for regular importing of data into service now there are a number of different ways to import data into service now by using integration Hub Imports this process is streamlined as developers leverage integration Spokes and transform mapping to bring data into service now let's take a look at the connection to retrieve tenant information from an Azure SQL database this import leverages a custom data stream connection to my company's tenant database retrieve Fields can be seen here on the right hand side which are then mapped to fields in my custom property management application table data can be transformed before insertion and coales against existing contact information to ensure no duplicate records are created Imports can then be scheduled to run and execution results are logged for debugging or audit purposes scripted rest apis are one way developers can create custom inbound endpoints scripted rest apis give external systems access into service now resources such as custom application data and workflows here is an example of a scripted rest API actions parameters responses and resource paths can all be configured with no code the API response is scripted by using service now impel scripting apis to query and collate or mutate data or execute workflows default authentication is handled by the platform and can be customized and API analytics are collected automatically without any additional setup a low code alternative to the scripted rest API is the table API the table API can be used to access data in any service now table including custom tables created by developers authentication is required and security respects existing table access controls pagination is standard and the output response can be formatted in Json or XML the interface see here is rest API Explorer here developers can find API documentation and example code samples for every rest API on the platform apis created for custom applications are also included and documentation created automatically for the developer an open API specification is available for download so that developers and external systems can learn how to use the apis so far I've been showing Integrations into external systems running over the open internet if customers want to connect service now to internal resources behind firewalls or on premise local networks they can do so by installing a mid server on a local machine the mid server is a client agent which queries service now for work both inbound and outbound Integrations can run through a mid server connecting service now to offline customer resources remote tables are a form of data virtualization that presents external data as native service now tables remote tables differ from data Imports because results are temporarily stored in system memory as opposed to persisted in a table remote tables present just like any other data with Native lists and forms and can be queried using the standard platform condition Builder or scripting apis Erp canvas simplifies connecting service now to erps so that low code developers can build powerful applications and workflows enriched with Erp data Erp canvas leverages remote tables for an OnDemand lookups and extraction tables for persisting and updating Erp records in service now the Erp canvas displays a list of Erp models their Erp Source tables fields and how the Erp tables are joined remote table Integrations and extraction table transforms are automatically configured from these models the Erp systems tab shows connection Health back to the Erp system developers can build automations directly by including Erp canvas tables in their workflows this is an example of a scheduled flow checking when stock counts were last updated and raising a request if they haven't been updated in the last 4 weeks service now provides a common generative AI controller for use with several different AI platforms such as Azure open AI Google AI Studio open Ai and IBM what's next the generative AI controller presents AI capabilities in playbooks virtual agent scripts and workflows sentiment analysis summarization generic content and generic prompting skills can all be used by locode developers here is an example of a simple yet powerful use of the summarization skill I have created a flow which summarizes the description of an incident and updates the short description field the generic prompt can be used to create one-hot prompts for example this flow instructs the AI to act as a scrum master and generate acceptance criteria from a story description thanks for watching and join us for part five of our series as we explore application testing