ServiceNow

ServiceNow is a cloud platform that provides service management software as a service.

Features

NOTE: To be able to capture deleted records, your ServiceNow Service Account must have Read permission for the sys_audit_delete table in ServiceNow. The _fivetran_deleted column will not appear in a destination table until Fivetran sees the first deleted record for that table in the ServiceNow sys_audit_delete table.

IMPORTANT: You don't have to include the sys_audit_delete table for the capture deletes feature to work. Including this table only slows up the sync due to the large size of this table.

Supported deployment models

We support the SaaS and Hybrid deployment models for the connector.

NOTE: You must have an Enterprise or Business Critical plan to use the Hybrid Deployment model.

Setup guide

Follow our step-by-step ServiceNow setup guide to connect ServiceNow with your destination using Fivetran connectors.

Initial sync

When a new account is first connected, Fivetran will sync every table present in the instance for which read permission was granted. We import each table in full before moving onto the next table. Depending on the number and size of tables to be imported, initial sync can take a while.

Historical sync time frame

You can configure the Historical sync time frame when setting up your connection to speed up both the initial sync and subsequent re-syncs. Historical sync time frame limits the amount of data synced for all tables. You can modify the Historical sync time frame at any time. If you change it to an earlier date, we perform a full historical sync, syncing data back to that new date. If you set it to a later date, we do not delete any existing data. Instead, we apply the new time frame only to subsequent re-syncs.

Schema information

ServiceNow schema follows Fivetran's standard API schema rules.

Schema

Fivetran currently supports all tables as well as any custom tables present in your ServiceNow account and the schema diagrams illustrating how tables relate to one another.

Schema notes

ServiceNow uses the Class Table Inheritance pattern. Most of the tables are children/leafs of the Task or CMDB_CI table. Join on the sys_id field of the child table to recover the complete record.

Updating data

Fivetran will use one of the following strategies to update the tables that you included in your sync:

Incremental

Tables that have a sys_updated_on or sys_created_on column are updated incrementally.

To ensure data integrity, avoid using ServiceNow's XML import and export feature to transfer data. This method bypasses change-tracking fields such as sys_updated_on and sys_created_on, preventing us from detecting and syncing incremental updates.

Reimport

Some tables do not have the necessary columns to be updated incrementally. They must be reimported in full to update. In order to speed up overall updates, the frequency with which we update these reimport tables is based on how fast we can ingest them from ServiceNow. This speed is entirely dependent on ServiceNow performance.

Tables that take longer than 3 seconds to import get marked as not recommended on the dashboard and include a message on how frequently Fivetran will sync them. They will be excluded from the sync by default as they degrade performance. However, customers can choose to include them.

Excluded tables

Fivetran cannot update a table which does not contain a sys_id column using one of the strategies above and is excluded from the sync. They will be marked on the dashboard. Customers cannot optionally include them in the sync.

Syncing empty tables and columns

Fivetran can sync empty tables and columns for your ServiceNow connector. For more information, see our Features documentation.

To sync empty tables and columns, ensure your ServiceNow Service Account can access the tables you want to sync. See our ServiceNow prerequisites for more information. We support the following data types for empty ServiceNow columns:

• BOOLEAN
• BREAKDOWN_ELEMENT
• CHOICE
• COLLECTION
• COLOR
• CONDITION_STRING
• CONDITIONS
• CURRENCY
• DATA_STRUCTURE
• DOMAIN_PATH
• DECIMAL
• DUE_DATE
• FIELD_NAME
• FLOAT
• GLIDE_DATE
• GLIDE_DATE_TIME
• GLIDE_DURATION
• GLIDE_TIME
• HASH
• HTML
• INTEGER
• IP_ADDRESS
• JOURNAL
• JOURNAL_INPUT
• JOURNAL_LIST
• PERCENT_COMPLETE
• PH_NUMBER
• PRICE
• SUGGESTION
• SYS_CLASS_NAME
• STRING_FULL_UTF8
• TABLE_NAME
• TRANSLATED_HTML
• TRANSLATED_TEXT
• URL
• WIKI_TEXT
• WORKFLOW

Syncing reference types

Query response for reference types reference, domain_id, and document_id contains values for "link" and "value". Fivetran adds these values to columns with _LINK and _VALUE postfixes.

Get display value

Fivetran doesn't support syncing the display value for the reference types. You can obtain these values using the JOIN TABLES operation in your destination. You can find the reference table name in ServiceNow UI or as the _LINK column value following the /table/<table_name> format. Then, you can use the value from the _VALUE column to join the reference table on the sys_id column.