ServiceNow and Azure DevOps are quite popular in organizations today. These tools help manage service requests, automate workflows and organize development projects and tasks. All these things are important for digital transformation. However, very often ServiceNow and Azure DevOps are both used by a company, but in different departments. They need to interact, but if the two tools are not integrated you are missing out on important automation benefits that can give you a great competitive advantage.
We have prepared this detailed integration guide for you, to see what benefits you can reap from integrating ServiceNow and Azure DevOps and what would be the best approach in your particular use case. Let’s dive in.
About ServiceNow
ServiceNow is a cloud-based platform for IT Service Management (ITSM) which helps enterprises automate IT operations. It helps businesses improve their efficiency by workflow automation and better operations control.
The software enables organizations to replace routine work tasks with smart and automated workflows. This boosts both – employee and customer satisfaction. Employees can collaborate more efficiently and work from anywhere they want. Customers get fast and precise responses and resolutions.
ServiceNow combines machine learning with workflows, which streamline change management and digital transformation, creating a modern, connected organization. The platform helps teams become more agile, and businesses become flexible and scalable.
About Azure DevOps
Azure DevOps is a Microsoft product and was formerly known as Visual Studio Team Service (VSTS). It helps developers improve the way they plan, build and deliver software. Azure DevOps provides a solid platform for tracking projects, tasks and solutions and helps turn ideas into apps.
It is perfect for building your software product from beginning to end. Azure DevOps can help every developer to plan projects using agile tools, manage code using Git, test the application, and deploy code using a CI/CD system.
Currently it consists of 5 different services that can be used together or separately:
- Azure Boards - agile tools to plan, track, and discuss work across teams.
- Azure Repos - unlimited free repositories to build, test, and deploy with CI/CD that works with any language, platform, and cloud.
- Azure Pipelines - better code with pull requests and advanced file management.
- Azure Test Plans - manual and exploratory testing tools.
- Azure Artifacts – a tool to create, host, and share packages within teams, and add artifacts to CI/CD pipelines.
The above set of services integrate and fit perfectly together, but can also be used separately, depending on the needs of your team and organization.
Why integrate them?
ServiceNow is one of the most popular tools for ITSM used by enterprises. With it companies manage issues and alerts related to their software. Azure DevOps is utilized by the DevOps teams across businesses not just to plan and schedule projects, but also to handle problems that the service desk team sends them.
Different teams, such as the service desk and development teams, often need to collaborate to solve issues. When issues are addressed quickly this keeps customers happy. The alignment of your teams is crucial for the success of your business, and to achieve and maintain it, you need a seamless data flow between the systems you are using. If your service desk team is using ServiceNow and your development team is using Azure DevOps, the easiest way to achieve that is by integrating the two tools.
Deployed separately in the organization’s IT infrastructure, Azure DevOps and ServiceNow contribute to high-end management, result-driven actions, and high levels of consumer satisfaction. However, when Azure DevOps and ServiceNow are aligned, this significantly boosts the organizations’ overall performance – from sped-up product rollout to organized and optimized workflows.
Furthermore, when the two tools are working together as a part of the organizations’ IT kit, the result is better decision making, transparency of processes, and control over crucial problems.
Common use cases
The ServiceNow Azure DevOps integration is quite common in large organizations and there is a number of different use cases it might be used for. You can sync incidents, change requests, service requests, issues and more. Here is one of the most popular use cases when integrating ServiceNow and Azure DevOps.
The service desk team receives a new incident in their ServiceNow queue. They investigate the issue and find out that the problem is in result of a software bug and they need to forward it to the DevOps team.
When the two tools are integrated, no one would need to open Azure DevOps and manually log the issue. The incident would automatically be picked up from ServiceNow and logged as a new issue in Azure DevOps. It is also great if the integration software you are using supports updates in both directions.
The service desk team and the developer working on the issue communicate effortlessly, thanks to the integration. The communication doesn’t require any additional tools: it simply takes place in the comments. A good integration platform would instantly synchronize all log files, traces, or other attachments. This simplifies root cause analysis and change request management. Because of it, you can easily eliminate communication bottlenecks.
Once the developer fixes the issue, thanks to the integration the incident in ServiceNow is automatically updated. The end customer then receives a notification that their problem is now resolved.
Choosing the right integration tool
There are plenty of tools available on the market that can integrate ServiceNow and Azure DevOps. They vary in functionalities, price, and use cases they cover.
Choosing the best integration tool for your specific scenario can sometimes be challenging. Many companies consider developing a tool internally, as this seems cheaper and sure to meet their specific requirements. However, there are often unpleasant surprises. Many customers soon realize that it is actually more expensive to build an integration internally, and it requires a lot of time to set up, test and maintain. In the end, often times, the internal tool might not meet all of the requirements and is almost never scalable enough for the future use cases the company wants to cover.
For more details you can check our article 5 things to consider when deciding whether to choose internal integrations or an out-of-the-box product.
Here are some of things that our clients have shared are most important for them in an integration tool:
- Fitting complex and specific use cases – it should support complex integrations and mapping of specific fields
- Enabling democratization (no code/low code) – even non-technical employees should be able to work with it
- Secure – security is something no company would want to compromise with
- Easy to use – a short learning curve and speed of implementation save precious time
- Maintenance – fast and reliable support is crucial
- Regular updates – maintaining the latest versions of the integrated systems
Fitting into the use case requirements is the most important thing to consider, as companies have unique scenarios and goals. Take these into consideration when looking for an integration solution.
In this guide, we will be looking at ZigiWave’s ZigiOps integration platform, as it among the most flexible tools and matches all the requirements listed above.
What is ZigiOps and how to integrate ServiceNow and Azure DevOps in 5 minutes
ZigiOps is ZigiWave’s no-code integration platform. It is simple, yet powerful and supports complex use case scenarios, without the need for any API or coding knowledge. ZigiOps makes integrations easier and accessible for everyone by providing out-of-the-box templates that can be customized and scaled with the advanced filtering and field mapping options.
With ZigiOps you can configure a ServiceNow Azure DevOps integration in minutes and instantly synchronize all log files, traces, or other attachments. It lets you choose which fields get transferred and updated from one system to another.
ZigiOps is vendor-certified, and it automatically adapts to new versions. So if you upgrade to a newer version of ServiceNow or Azure DevOps, you won’t need to make any modifications to the integration. Increasing requirements and complexity of the integrations are no problem for ZigiOps.
Last but not least, the ZigiOps support team is available and ready to answer any questions.
So, let’s take a quick tour and see how to integrate ServiceNow and Azure DevOps via ZigiOps connector.
Step-by-step guide - ServiceNow - Azure DevOps integration with ZigiOps
For a quick tour, you can check out this video, which sums up the entire integration setup. For more details, continue reading this article. The integration setup is easy and will take no longer than 5 minutes.
If you already have a specific ServiceNow – Azure DevOps use case and would like to see how ZigiOps can resolve it – schedule a 45-minute demo. We can start your free trial or PoC immediately after the demo.
Step 1:
ZigiOps comes with on-premises and iPaaS versions, but the setup and launch of integrations are the same. For the purposes of this example, we will use the on-prem version.
The installation process is straightforward and takes no more than 10-15 minutes. For a full overview on how to install ZigiOps, check here.
Once installed, it’s time to log-in to ZigiOps.
When you log in, you will then see the dashboard, which showcases your active licenses, integrations, and operations data.
To add the systems you want to integrate (in this case ServiceNow and Azure DevOps), go to the Connected Systems menu. Once you choose the systems, you need to connect to them. This is very easy. You will only need your instance URLs and admin details. You do not need to make any changes to your ServiceNow or Azure systems themselves.
For example, for ServiceNow you need to fill in these three fields:
- ServiceNow system URL
- Username
- Password
After filling them, ZigiOps automatically checks your connection with ServiceNow and lets you know it’s successful.
Then you do the same for Azure DevOps.
Configuring the integration with ZigiOps is as easy as ABC.
From the Configurator menu, click the button “Add New iIntegration”, and from the available templates just choose the one for “ServiceNow incidents to Azure DevOps issues”. Once you load it, you can define which system will be first and which - second (the destination). For this example, let’s take an incident from ServiceNow and create a new ticket in Azure DevOps based on the information from ServiceNow.
In this case, our first system is ServiceNow, and our destination – is Azure DevOps.
ZigiOps comes with a library of ready-to-use integration templates. They are all customizable, yet you can always start an integration from scratch.
Next, we’ll go through the list of available operations and select the one we want the system to execute.
We would like to create a ticket in Azure, triggered by an incident from ServiceNow’s system. If there are any changes in ServiceNow, we would also want them to be present in Azure DevOps’s system and vice versa.
All the above is achievable via a simple action, which does not require much effort and does not take much time. From the Correlation menu, we can define the logic that will show ZigiOps how to synchronize and keep both systems updated after the initial transfer of information.
We must define the trigger type. It can be either trigger or pulling. For the latter, ZigiOps offers a customizable template.
There is also a field mapping feature that defines how the collected data is reported to the destination system.
Once you are ready with the triggers, click the “Save” button, to save your integration.
After that, you are ready to test how your new integration works. Go to ServiceNow and create an incident.ZigiOps will pick it up and transfer all the relevant data and fields you have defined in your field mapping. Once the developers mark the issue as resolved, ZigiOps will automatically close the incident in ServiceNow.
Final thoughts
Nowadays, enterprises struggle with obstacles such as automation of repetitive tasks, fast resolution of critical issues, synchronization of remotely working employees, and keeping pace with the competition. To tackle these, organizations often utilize more than one software. Azure DevOps and ServiceNow are perhaps the most popular tools which enterprises use to cope with incident management and DevOps pipelines. The two systems have built a solid reputation as the “first choice” for companies of various sizes and industries.
When ServiceNow and Azure DevOps are preferred by your teams and each team wants to continue using the software they are used to, an integration between the two tools can solve many issues. A smart integration platform will help you improve cross-team collaboration, resolve customer inquiries faster than ever and eliminate silos.
The right integration tool will enable you to scale your overall performance and become more flexible and adaptable. This will allow you to keep pace with the competition and the ever-growing client demands.
Choose smart integration - try ZigiOps. Schedule a demo now and start your free PoC.