ServiceNow Catalog Microsoft Graph connector

With the ServiceNow Catalog Microsoft Graph connector, your organization can list service catalog items that are visible to all users or restricted with user criteria permissions within your organization. After you configure the connector and index content from ServiceNow, end users can search for those catalog items from any Microsoft Search and Microsoft 365 Copilot client.

This article is for Microsoft 365 administrators or anyone who configures, runs, and monitors a ServiceNow Catalog Microsoft Graph connector. It supplements the general instructions provided in the Set up Microsoft Graph connectors in the Microsoft 365 admin center article.

Each step in the setup process is listed below along with either a note that indicates you should follow the general setup instructions OR other instructions that apply only to the ServiceNow Catalog Microsoft Graph connector including information about Troubleshooting and Limitations.

Step 1: Add a connector in the Microsoft 365 admin center

Add the ServiceNow Catalog Microsoft Graph connector

Follow the general setup instructions.

Step 2: Name the connection

Follow the general setup instructions.

Step 3: Connection settings

To connect to your ServiceNow data, you need your organization's ServiceNow instance URL. Your organization's ServiceNow instance URL typically looks like this: "https://<your-organization-domain>.service-now.com".

Along with this URL, you'll need a service account for setting up the connection to ServiceNow and for allowing Microsoft Search and Microsoft 365 Copilot to periodically update the catalog items based on the refresh schedule. The service account needs read access to the following ServiceNow table records to successfully crawl various entities.

Feature Read access required tables Description
Index catalog items available to Everyone sc_cat_item For crawling catalog items.
Index and support user criteria permissions sc_cat_item_user_criteria_mtom Who can access this catalog item.
sc_cat_item_user_criteria_no_mtom Who can't access this catalog item.
sys_user Read the user table.
sys_user_has_role Read role information of users.
sys_user_grmember Read group membership of users.
user_criteria Read user criteria permissions.
sys_user_group Read user group segments.
sys_user_role Read user roles.
cmn_location Read location information.
cmn_department Read department information.
core_company Read company attributes.

You can create and assign a role for the service account you use to connect with Microsoft Search and Microsoft 65 Copilot. Learn how to assign role for ServiceNow accounts. Read access to the tables can be assigned on the created role. To learn about setting read access to table records, see Securing Table Records.

Note

The ServiceNow Catalog Microsoft Graph connector can index catalog items and user criteria permissions without advanced scripts. If a user criteria contains an advanced script, all the related catalog items are hidden from search results.

To authenticate and sync content from ServiceNow, choose one of three supported methods:

  • Basic authentication
  • ServiceNow OAuth (recommended)
  • Microsoft Entra ID OpenID Connect

Step 3.1: Basic authentication

Enter the username and password of the ServiceNow account with the catalog role to authenticate to your instance.

Step 3.2: ServiceNow OAuth

To use ServiceNow OAuth for authentication, a ServiceNow admin needs to provision an endpoint in your ServiceNow instance so that the Microsoft Search app and Microsoft 365 Copilot can access it. To learn more, see Create an endpoint for clients to access the instance in the ServiceNow documentation.

The following table provides guidance on how to fill out the endpoint creation form:

Field Description Recommended value
Name Unique value that identifies the application that you require OAuth access for. Microsoft Search.
Client ID A read-only, auto-generated unique ID for the application. The instance uses the client ID when it requests an access token. N/A.
Client secret With this shared secret string, the ServiceNow instance and Microsoft Search authorize communications with each other. Follow security best practices by treating the secret as a password.
Redirect URL A required callback URL that the authorization server redirects to. For M365 Enterprise: https://gcs.office.com/v1.0/admin/oauth/callback,
For M365 Government: https://gcsgcc.office.com/v1.0/admin/oauth/callback.
Logo URL A URL that contains the image for the application logo. N/A.
Active Select the check box to make the application registry active. Set to active.
Refresh token lifespan The number of seconds that a refresh token is valid. By default, refresh tokens expire in 100 days (8,640,000 seconds). 31,536,000 (one year).
Access token lifespan The number of seconds that an access token is valid. 43,200 (12 hours).

Enter the client ID and client secret to connect to your instance. After connecting, use a ServiceNow account credential to authenticate permission to crawl. The account should at least have catalog role. Refer to the table at the beginning of step 3: connection settings for providing read access to more ServiceNow table records and index user criteria permissions.

Step 3.3: Microsoft Entra ID OpenID Connect

To use Microsoft Entra ID OpenID Connect for authentication, follow the steps below.

Step 3.3.1: Register a new application in Microsoft Entra ID

To learn about registering a new application in Microsoft Entra ID, see Register an application. Select single tenant organizational directory. Redirect URI isn't needed. After registration, note down the Application (client) ID and Directory (tenant) ID.

Step 3.3.2: Create a client secret

To learn about creating a client secret, see Creating a client secret. Take a note of client secret.

Step 3.3.3: Retrieve Service Principal Object Identifier

Follow the steps to retrieve the service principal object identifier

  1. Run PowerShell.

  2. Install Azure PowerShell using the following command.

    Install-Module -Name Az -AllowClobber -Scope CurrentUser
    
  3. Connect to Azure.

    Connect-AzAccount
    
  4. Get Service Principal Object Identifier.

    Get-AzADServicePrincipal -ApplicationId "Application-ID"
    

    Replace "Application-ID" with the Application (client) ID (without quotes) of the application you registered in step 3.a. Note the value of the ID object from PowerShell output. It's the Service Principal ID.

Now you have all the information required from the Azure portal. A quick summary of the information is given in the table below.

Property Description
Directory ID (tenant ID) Unique ID of the Microsoft Entra tenant, from step 3.a.
Application ID (client ID) Unique ID of the application registered in step 3.a.
Client secret The secret key of the application (from step 3.b). Treat it like a password.
Service principal ID An identity for the application running as a service. (from step 3.c)

Step 3.3.4: Register your ServiceNow application

The ServiceNow instance needs the following configuration:

  1. Register a new OAuth OIDC entity. To learn, see Create an OAuth OIDC provider.

  2. The following table provides guidance on how to fill out the OIDC provider registration form

Field Description Recommended value
Name A unique name that identifies the OAuth OIDC entity. Microsoft Entra ID
Client ID The client ID of the application registered in the third-party OAuth OIDC server. The instance uses the client ID when requesting an access token. Application (client) ID from step 3.a
Client secret The client secret of the application registered in the third-party OAuth OIDC server. Client secret from step 3.b

All other values can be default.

  1. In the OIDC provider registration form, you need to add a new OIDC provider configuration. Select the search icon against OAuth OIDC Provider Configuration field to open the records of OIDC configurations. Select New.

  2. The following table provides guidance on how to fill out OIDC provider configuration form

    Field Recommended value
    OIDC Provider Microsoft Entra ID
    OIDC Metadata URL The URL must be in the form https://login.microsoftonline.com/<tenandId">/.well-known/openid-configuration
    Replace "tenantID" with Directory (tenant) ID from step 3.a.
    OIDC Configuration Cache Life Span 120
    Application Global
    User Claim sub
    User Field User ID
    Enable JTI claim verification Disabled
  3. Select Submit and Update the OAuth OIDC Entity form.

Step 3.3.5: Create a ServiceNow account

Refer the instructions to create a ServiceNow account, create a user in ServiceNow.

The following table provides guidance on how to fill out the ServiceNow user account registration

Field Recommended value
User ID Service Principal ID from step 3.c
Web service access only Checked

All other values can be left to default.

Step 3.3.6: Enable catalog role for the ServiceNow account

Access the ServiceNow account you created with ServiceNow Principal ID as User ID and assign the catalog role. Instructions for assigning a role to a ServiceNow account can be found here, assign a role to a user. Refer to the table in the beginning of step 3: connection settings for providing read access to more ServiceNow table records and index user criteria permissions.

Use Application ID as Client ID (from step 3.a), and Client secret (from step 3.b) in the admin center configuration assistant to authenticate to your ServiceNow instance using Microsoft Entra ID OpenID Connect.

Step 4: Select properties and filter data

In this step, you can add or remove available properties from your ServiceNow data source. Microsoft 365 has already selected a few properties by default.

The list of properties that you select here, can impact how can you filter, search, and view your results in Microsoft 365 Copilot.

Source property Label Description
AccessUrl url The target URL of the item in the data source.
Authors authors Name of people who participated/collaborated on the item in the data source.
IconUrl iconUrl Icon url that represents the article’s category or type.
Name title The title of the item that you want to be shown in search and other experiences.
SysCreatedBy createdBy Name of the person who created the item in the data source.
SysCreatedOn createdDateTime Date and time that the item was created in the data source.
SysUpdatedBy lastModifiedBy Name of the person who most recently edited the item in the data source.
SysUpdatedOn lastModifiedDateTime Date and time the item was last modified in the data source.

With a ServiceNow query string, you can specify conditions for syncing articles. It's like a Where clause in a SQL Select statement. For example, you can choose to index only items that are active. To learn about creating your own query string, see Generate an encoded query string using a filter.

Use the preview results button to verify the sample values of the selected properties and query filter.

Step 5: Manage search permissions

The ServiceNow connector supports search permissions visible to Everyone or Only people with access to this data source. Indexed data appears in the search results and is visible to all users in the organization or users who have access to them via user criteria permission respectively. If a catalog item isn't enabled with a user criteria, it appears in the search results of everyone in the organization.

The connector supports default user criteria permissions without advanced scripts. When the connector encounters a user criteria with the advanced script, all data using that user criteria won't appear in search results.

If you choose Only people with access to this data source, you need to further choose whether your ServiceNow instance has Microsoft Entra ID provisioned users or non-Azure AD users.

To identify which option is suitable for your organization:

  1. Choose the Microsoft Entra ID option if the email ID of ServiceNow users is same as the UserPrincipalName (UPN) of users in Microsoft Entra ID.
  2. Choose the non-Azure AD option if the email ID of ServiceNow users is different from the UserPrincipalName (UPN) of users in Microsoft Entra ID.

Note

  • If you choose Microsoft Entra ID as the type of identity source, the connector maps the email IDs of users obtained from ServiceNow directly to the UPN property from Microsoft Entra ID.
  • If you chose "non-Azure AD" for the identity type see Map your non-Azure AD Identities for instructions on mapping the identities. You can use this option to provide the mapping regular expression from email ID to UPN.

Step 6: Assign property labels

Follow the general setup instructions.

Step 7: Manage schema

Follow the general setup instructions.

Step 8: Choose refresh settings

Follow the general setup instructions.

Note

For identities, only the full crawl schedule is applied.

Step 9: Review Connection

Follow the general setup instructions.

After publishing the connection, you need to customize the search results page. To learn about customizing search results, see Customize the search results page.

Limitations

ServiceNow Catalog Microsoft Graph connector has the following limitations in its latest release:

  • Only people with access to this data source feature under Manage search permissions step processes only user criteria permissions. Any other type of access permissions won't be applied in the search results.
  • User criteria permissions configured at the catalog category aren't supported.
  • User criteria with advanced scripts aren't supported in the current version. Any catalog items with such an access restriction are indexed with deny everyone access that is, they won't appear in search results to any user until we support them.

Troubleshooting

After publishing your connection, and customizing the results page, you can review the status under the Data sources tab in the admin center. To learn how to make updates and deletions, see Manage your connector. You can find troubleshooting steps for commonly seen issues here.

If you have any other issues or want to provide feedback, write to us aka.ms/TalkToGraphConnectors.