Automic Workload Automation

We are working on integrating UC4 v12.1 with our ServiceNow instance using the ServiceNow Action Pack from the Automic marketplace.  As part of that integration, we're attempting to create an incident ticket every time there is an ABEND via some logic in the post-processing tab.

By manually triggering the incident ticket creation object, we are able to send over some of the static information (assignment group, priority, category, etc.) that we've configured, but we're having a problem capturing some of the job-specific data.  Ideally, we'd send over the dynamic job name, run ID, and job report (along with the other static data) for each ticket.

I had planned to store the job name, run ID, and job report in variables and pass them to the object that creates the ticket, but my UC4 scripting knowledge is very limited and I've been struggling with the whole process.  Is there a function that I can use to capture that data, pass it over to the object that creates the ticket, and then activate it?

Wow, there are a lot of different ways to attack this.

I have never looked at this action pack.  We interface to our servicenow by sending it an SMTP email. But it seems to me the action pack should prescribe a particular way to solve this so you shouldn't have to re-invent the wheel(?)

Jobs also have a "Definition for ENDED_OK" feature on their Runtime tab.  This is where you tell it what object to launch in the event that the RC<>0 at end of job.  The product then automatically passes a whole lot of the desired failure alert information to that launched object.  In my V11.2.1 system, the model CALL/EMAIL object automatically formats this information into an email.

I wound up engineering our own object that is launched from the runtime tab that does quite a few things;

Based upon which team the job belongs to, looks up who is oncall this week and sends them;

*** a text

*** an email

*** a voice phone call

*** It also posts an alert to a special slack channel.

*** it also opens an servicenow via email

Thank you, Peter!  I'll take a look at what we can do in the Runtime tab.

Hi Pete, 

I would just like to ask if you have some sort of documentation as to how you implemented the integration with ServiceNow via sending of SMTP email. We are planning to integrate with ServiceNow in the near future so any guidance will be of great help. Thanks in advance!

Google turned up this informational page that I think might be what you need.   I personally only worked on the UC4 part of it so I was not involved in the ServiceNow part of it.  But apparently the product has an "inbound email actions" facility.  

https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/london-servicenow-platform/page/administer/notification/concept/c_InboundEmailActions.html

I've been thinking that we should upgrade our ServiceNow integration to call a ServiceNow API instead of depending upon SMTP email.   In the case of a network crisis, SMTP email can become unavailable and it would fail to reach ServiceNow.  (UC4 could call the API via PowerShell)

So you should look into calling a ServiceNow API to open an incident as a preferable solution to sending an email.

We have ours set up that when a job abends, it issues a call notification and also runs a webservice job on generation that creates an incident ticket in ServiceNow through a SOAP call.  It has an additional process that sends the reports to the Incident ticket in ServiceNow using email.  We then provide that incident ticket number in the call notification which alerts our operators.