ServiceNow

Overview

ServiceNow is an IT service management (ITSM) platform used to record, track, and manage enterprise-level IT processes in one centralized system.

The Datadog-ServiceNow integration bridges observability and IT service management, enabling seamless collaboration between operations and service teams. This bi-directional integration consists of the following key components:

Note: The Datadog ServiceNow integration supports ServiceNow releases that are not listed as end of life.

Setup

Click the links above to view setup guides for each component. For each integration, begin by configuring the ServiceNow tile.

Configure the ServiceNow tile in Datadog

Configuration for all ServiceNow integrations starts with entering your ServiceNow instance details into Datadog. This configuration enables the integration to support the following features:

• IT Operations Management (ITOM) and IT Service Management (ITSM)
• CMDB Enrichment
• Collection of ServiceNow Performance Monitoring metrics and logs
• Change request event forwarding

To configure a new instance, follow these steps:

1. In Datadog, navigate to the ServiceNow integration tile on the Integrations page.
2. Click Add New Instance.
3. Choose an authentication method. See the tabs below for details:
   • Use OAuth 2.0 Client Credentials (recommended).
   • Use basic authentication (legacy).
4. Add the instance name, which is the subdomain of your ServiceNow domain: <INSTANCE_NAME>.service-now.com. If your ServiceNow instance uses a custom domain, reach out to Datadog Support. You enter this field within the Authentication section after selecting a method.
5. Select the type of performance metrics and logs you want to receive:
   • ITSM
   • ITAM
   • CMDB Health
   • Security Incident Response
   • Vulnerability Response

👁 servicenow integration new instance

Create a ServiceNow Account with correct permissions for Datadog

To use the integration, create a ServiceNow user (for example, with username datadog or datadog_integration) and assign the user the following roles:

• x_datad_datadog.user and
• import_set_loader and
• import_transformer

To enable Bits AI access, the same user account also needs the itil role, which grants read access to incidents, change requests, and CMDB configuration items via the REST API.

For knowledge article access, the itil role is necessary but not sufficient — the account must also be included in the Can Read user criteria on each knowledge base you want Bits to access. To configure this, open the knowledge base in ServiceNow, navigate to the Can Read related list, and add the Datadog integration user or a group it belongs to.

ServiceNow performance logs and metrics

To receive logs and metrics about your instance performance, configure ServiceNow metric settings using a user account that has the following roles and plugins installed:

Tip: You can create a dedicated limited user in ServiceNow for Datadog.

Forward change request events to Datadog

The ServiceNow integration supports forwarding ServiceNow change request events to Datadog. This allows you to correlate change activity in ServiceNow with metrics, logs, and traces inside Event Management Explorer.

When a change request is created, updated, or deleted in ServiceNow, a business rule can send an event payload to the Datadog Events API. It can add tags with ServiceNow metadata (such as change number, CI, state, and priority) to these events to appear in the Event Management explorer.

1. In Datadog, on the ServiceNow integration tile, go to Configure > Change Request Events.
2. Follow the instructions on the page to select or create a Datadog API key, securely store it in ServiceNow as a system property, and create a ServiceNow business rule with the script Datadog provides.

Enable Bits AI access

1. On the ServiceNow integration tile, navigate to the “Bits AI” section for your instance.
2. Select the Enable account access toggle to grant Bits AI SRE access to your ServiceNow instance.
3. Optionally, use the fine-grained toggles to limit Bits AI SRE to the ServiceNow data relevant to your environment:
   • Access incidents
   • Access knowledge articles
   • Access change requests
   • Access items in CMDB
4. Ensure the ServiceNow user account has read access to each data type you’ve enabled. See Create a ServiceNow Account with correct permissions for Datadog for the required roles.
5. Click Update.
6. In Bits.md, fill in the Third-Party Integration Context snippet to help Bits make better use of this instance’s data during investigations.

Data Collected

Metrics

Privacy policy

Datadog collects Business Service, Assignment Group, email, name, sysID, and username to populate corresponding fields in ServiceNow. Processing of any personal data collected by Datadog in connection with this integration is subject to Datadog’s privacy policy.

Support

Need additional help? Contact Datadog support.

Further Reading

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