README.md

May 31, 2017 · View on GitHub

This project is aimed at bridging Spark and Service now via Spark bot technology.

Getting Started

Create a Development ServiceNow User to Authenticate Your Bot

Login to your ServiceNow instance.
Using the "Filter Navigator" search bar, search for "Users"
Click on the "Users" link under "User Administration"
Click on the "New" button in the top navigation bar
Create a user and specify a User ID and Password

Create the Bot

Create a bot in the Spark for Developers site. You'll receive an access token.
- Save this access token securely for future use: it will be required in order to run the bot

Setup Your Project's Environment Variables

Create a .env environment variables file in the root directory of the project.
- This file will contain all your local environment variables that get loaded by the project.

Populate your .env file with the following variables:

access_token=[bot_access_token_from_spark]
base_url=[serviceNow_instance_base_url]
secret=[your_bot_secret(any_value)]
servicenow_username=[serviceNow_user_created_above]
servicenow_password=[serviceNow_users_password_created_above]

Setup a Public Address Through ngrok

To actually get the bot up and running, a public address is required. We used ngrok in order to create a public address that can be utilized.

Install ngrok globally via npm: npm install -g ngrok
Create a public address on port 3000: ngrok http 3000
ngrok should create a session with a unique http and https forwarding address (something like: https://bb94ea5d.ngrok.io)
Add the https forwarding address to your .env file as follows:
```
public_address=[ngrok_https_forwarding_address]
```

Build and Run

Install necessary node packages: npm install
Build the docker image for the project: docker build -t cisco/servicenow-spark-bot .
Spin up the docker container: ./start.dev.sh
- NOTE: To spin up the docker container in production, run: start.sh

You should now be able to communicate with the bot from within Cisco Spark.

Bot Commands - How to Talk With Your Bot

You can ask your bot for help (@BotName help) to display the available commands within Spark:

Create

Create an Incident, Problem, or Change Request:
- incident create [short description] [category]
  - short description: sentence describing the incident
  - category: Inquiry / Help, Software, Hardware, Network, or Database
- problem create [short description]
  - short description: sentence describing the problem
- cr create [short description] [category]
  - short description: sentence describing the change request
  - category: Hardware, Software, Business Service, System Software, Applications Software, Network, Telecom, Documentation, Other, or Cloud Management

View

View the status of an Incident, Problem, or Change Request by internal ID:
- incident status sys_id
- problem status sys_id
- cr status sys_id
View the Incidents, Problems, or Change Requests that are assigned to you:
- incident assigned
- problem assigned
- cr assigned

Update

List all properties available to update on an Incident, Problem, or Change Request:
- incident update sys_id guide
- problem update sys_id guide
- cr update sys_id guide
Update a property on an Incident, Problem, or Change Request:
- incident update sys_id field=[value] or
- incident update sys_id field=[value] field2=[value2] for multiple fields
  - field: the field name you want to update
  - value: the value you want to set on the updated field
- problem update sys_id field=[value]
  - field: the field name you want to update
  - value: the value you want to set on the updated field
- cr update sys_id field=[value]
  - field: the field name you want to update
  - value: the value you want to set on the updated field
Assign yourself to an Incident, Problem, or Change Request:
- incident assign sys_id
- problem assign sys_id
- cr assign sys_id
Add yourself to the watchlist of an Incident, Problem, or Change Request:
- incident watch sys_id
- problem watch sys_id
- cr watch sys_id
Remove yourself from the watchlist of an Incident, Problem, or Change Request:
- incident remove watch sys_id
- problem remove watch sys_id
- cr remove watch sys_id

Alerting

To enable your bot to receive update alerts from ServiceNow you must add a Business Rule.

Login to your ServiceNow instance.
Using the "Filter Navigator" search bar, search for "Business Rules"
Click on the "Business Rules" link under "System Definition"
Click on the "New" button in the top navigation bar
Enter a unique name that you can use to find your Business Rule in the future
Select the table you wish to receive alerts about from the "Table" dropdown
Check the "Advanced" checkbox
In the "When to run" tab:
1. Set the "When" dropdown to "after"
2. Select the appropriate actions from the available action checkboxes (insert, update, delete, query) you want to run the trigger on
In the "Advanced" tab: 4. Enter the code that will make a request whenever a change is triggered: 1. See our examples for writing Business Rules 2. Note: You will have to update the call to setEndpoint in order to pass in the public address of your bot
Submit the Business Rule

In order to create additional functionality for the bot, you will have to create a new skill that listens to a particular message and acts accordingly. The existing skills can be found in the src/skills directory. The project is set up in a way that any skills located within this directory will be registered with the Spark bot.

Within a newly created skill, you will need to call .hears and provide a regex pattern that will match a certain message the user sends to the bot in Spark, as well as a callback that will fire when the message is received. The callback takes both the bot and the message.

In order to have the bot send a message to the user, you can use the bot's .reply(message, "custom message") function, which takes the original message and your bot's response.

To communicate with ServiceNow, you can use the service_now_client.js in order to make calls to the Table API. Using this class, you can retrieve, create, and update records within tables in ServiceNow.