Procedure

Use the following steps for creating a ServiceNow Workflow to automatically create a Help Desk ticket when a Q-SYS Core goes offline:

Overview

Now that you have installed and configured the Q-SYS Reflect App for ServiceNow how do you make use of all this data? This guide will show an example on how to automatically create a help desk ticket when a Q-SYS core goes offline. There are a number of possibilities to be able to use this data to trigger other actions and workflows in ServiceNow and this just highlights one scenario. Your ServiceNow instance and configuration may differ and knowledge of ServiceNow and Workflows is required in order to make use of the data in the Q-SYS Reflect App for ServiceNow. 

Requirements

• ServiceNow Version: 
  • Yokohama Patch 7 Hot Fix 2 or later
• Required Roles:
  • ServiceNow Admin
• Setup:
  • Completed Installation and Configuration of the Q-SYS Reflect App for ServiceNow in your ServiceNow Tenant.   
    • For more details please see the How To | Install the Q-SYS Reflect App for ServiceNow and How To | Configure the Q-SYS Reflect App for ServiceNow articles.
  • At lease (1) Q-SYS core registered to your Q-SYS Reflect instance.

Setup

1. Navigate in ServiceNow to All > Process Automation > Workflow Studio.

2. Once Workflow Studio opens in a new window you will be presented with existing playbooks, flows, subflows, triggers, actions, and decision tables on your ServiceNow instance.  You can select New > Flow in the corner of that window to create a new flow. 

3. The new tab open will now ask for some information about this Flow including its name, application, and a optional description.  For this example we will fill these out with the following:
   1. Flow name: Q-SYS Core Offline
   2. Application: Global
   3. Description: A flow to automatically create IT Help Desk tickets when a Q-SYS Core goes offline.  This flow will also automatically resolve the ticket if the Q-SYS Core come back online.

4. Select Build flow button in the bottom right corner of the screen.
5. Once we have built the flow we have to choose what will trigger this flow to run.  Everything in ServiceNow is based on records and in our case we want to know when a Q-SYS core record has been created or updated with new information.  Select the + icon next to add a trigger and choose Record > Created or Updated.

6. Next we need to choose which table this flow needs to monitor.  We are going to choose the Cores table (x_qsc_q_sys_reflec_core) and have it's Run Trigger update for each unique change.  

1. Once those options have been set now select the Done button in the bottom right hand corner.

7. Now that we have setup what is triggering the Flow to run we can now configure what it needs to do.  In this example if the Q-SYS Core is offline we are going to have it create a help desk ticket.  If the Q-SYS Core is online and there is a open ticket we are going to go ahead and resolve the open ticket.
8. First we are going to add some flow logic. Under actions select the + icon next to Add an Action, Flow Logic, or Subflow.  Then choose Flow Logic > If.

8. Next we need to set the conditions we are going to check against before the rest of our action runs.  We first need to evaluate if the Q-SYS Core status message is Offline.  We do this by getting that data from the record itself in what ServiceNow calls a data pill in the right hand column or use the data pill picker. 

   Note

   For more information from ServiceNow about how to use ServiceNow data pills in workflows please refer to the ServiceNow Technical Knowledge Base.

    

9. We want this action to trigger when the Q-SYS Core status message is offline so we would add in Offline to the condition 1 statement. 
   1. Select the Done button in the bottom right hand corner.

10. Now we are going to repeat steps 8-10 for when the Q-SYS Core is online and running.

11. With our flow logic now setup we can work on creating a ticket when the Q-SYS Core is offline.

12. Select the + icon next to then under If Q-SYS Core Offline and choose the Action selection.

13. We are then going to choose the ServiceNow Core > Create Record field.

14. We then will choose the Incident table and choose what fields we want to put information into.  We can use data from our Q-SYS Cores table and put that into any field we are creating in ServiceNow.  For our example we will change the Incident State to New and put the Core Name, Core ID, and Site Name in the Short Description Field.

Incident Table Example Setup

There are many other useful pieces of data that could be included in multiple different fields for the incident to be created.  We will not go over all the specific use cases in this example.

1. Select the Done button in the bottom right hand corner. 

2. The last step is when the Q-SYS Core comes back online we want to look through all of our help desk tickets that are currently open and if there is one for this Q-SYS Core being offline we want to automatically go ahead and Resolve the ticket and make a note in its resolution field.
3. Select the + icon next to then under If Q-SYS Core Running and choose the Action selection. We are then going to choose the ServiceNow Core > Lookup Record.

3. We then want to choose the Incident table and set a couple of conditions to be true for it to return those records to us.  For our example based on how the automation creates the record we want the Short Description to contain the Core Name, Core ID, Site Name and the word Offline.
   1. Select the Done button in the button right hand corner.

4. Next we want to verify that the help desk ticket state is still new, in progress, or on hold. There are six default states for a help desk tickets in the standard ServiceNow instance, but your instance my have different options. Click the + Icon below our record look up step and add a Flow Logic If statement.

5. We will give it a friendly label and use the data pill from the record we just looked up and look at its state. We then want to see if the state is New, In Progress, or On Hold.
   1. Select the Done button in the button right hand corner.

6. Select the Done button in the button right hand corner.
7. Lastly if the help desk ticket is still in one of these states we want to resolve it and close this ticket.  To do this we are going to add one last action to update the record and update its resolution notes, state, and resolution code fields.
   1. Select the Done button in the button right hand corner.

8. Now we have completed our workflow and we can save it using the Save button in the upper right hand corner.
9. You can use the Test button in the upper right hand corner to try out this Workflow one of the records in the Cores table and see further debug information to verify the desired action has occurred.

10. In order to allow this flow to now run automatically when the Q-SYS Cores table gets new data from Q-SYS Reflect we need to activate this workflow by selecting the Activate button in the top right hand corner.

11. This example is just one of many options and workflows your can create inside of ServiceNow with the Q-SYS Reflect App for ServiceNow.  Below is a completed example of what these automated tickets would look like based on the workflow we have created.