Overview

A leading financial institution specializing in providing loans and financial services to agricultural businesses, needed a reliable integration solution between ServiceNow and Azure DevOps (ADO). This integration was essential for streamlining their incident management process. When incidents are opened in ServiceNow, a corresponding work item type (WIT) in Azure DevOps needed to be created and kept synchronized in real-time. Only teams in ADO that chose to "opt-in" would participate in this integration, ensuring flexibility in the approach.So they turned to ZigiOps to solve the challenge of connecting these systems seamlessly.

Challenges Faced

The key challenges were:

• Dual system entry: Incidents had to be manually entered in both ServiceNow and Azure DevOps. This process was inefficient and error-prone, often leading to discrepancies between the two platforms.

• Team-based participation: Not all Azure DevOps teams needed to sync with ServiceNow. The solution had to allow only “opt-in” teams to receive incident work items from ServiceNow.

• Complex mapping: The assignment groups, team names, and area paths in ServiceNow and Azure DevOps didn’t align, complicating the integration.

• User roles and multi-team assignments: Azure DevOps users could belong to multiple teams, meaning the system needed to handle role-based mappings effectively.

• Real-time synchronization: Any updates to incidents in either system—such as comments, attachments, or changes in state or assignments—needed to be instantly reflected in the other system to prevent miscommunications.

The Integration Challenge

The core of the integration challenge lay in ensuring smooth and accurate data flow between two different platforms: ServiceNow (a widely used IT service management tool) and Azure DevOps (a platform for managing software development lifecycle). The goal was to prevent double data entry, maintain consistency between incidents and work items, and align the processes for various teams across multiple projects within ADO.

Key requirements included:

• Mapping custom fields and workflows between ServiceNow incidents and ADO work items (WIT).

• Ensuring that only the ADO teams that opted in to participate would have their incidents synced.

• Creating a new WIT called “Incidents” in ADO for this specific integration.

• Managing multi-team configurations where assignment groups in ServiceNow, team names in ADO, and area paths varied.

Why Choose ZigiOps?

The client selected ZigiOps for several reasons:

• Out-of-the-box integrations: ZigiOps offered a pre-built integration for ServiceNow and ADO, reducing setup time and complexity.

• Flexibility and customization: ZigiOps provided the flexibility to handle American AgCredit’s unique needs, such as team opt-ins and custom field mappings.

• Bi-directional synchronization: ZigiOps could ensure real-time, two-way synchronization between ServiceNow incidents and Azure work items, including states, comments, attachments, and assignments.

• No coding required: With ZigiOps, the integration could be set up through configuration, minimizing the need for complex scripting or development efforts.

• Scalability: ZigiOps supported multiple teams, organizations, and projects, making it the ideal solution for a company like them with its multi-team structure in Azure DevOps.

The Integration Case

ZigiOps was used to establish a seamless integration between ServiceNow and Azure DevOps. The integration was set up in the following way:

• Opt-in configuration: The integration was customized so that only teams in ADO that opted in would receive incidents from ServiceNow. This was achieved through a filtering mechanism based on the assignment group and ADO team structure.

• New Work Item Type (WIT): A new work item type called “Incidents” was created in Azure DevOps to ensure clarity and organization. These work items were specifically linked to the incidents created in ServiceNow.

• Field Mapping: ZigiOps allowed comprehensive field mapping between ServiceNow incidents and ADO work items. Fields such as incident description, severity, priority, and assignments were synced, ensuring consistency across platforms.

• Real-time bi-directional sync: Any changes in either system (ServiceNow or ADO) were reflected in the other system in real-time. This included not only the basic incident details but also comments, state changes, and attachments.

• Multi-team support: ZigiOps handled the complexity of users being part of multiple ADO teams and synced incidents based on the specific team area path. This ensured that the right teams in ADO received the correct incidents from ServiceNow.

The Benefits of Using ZigiOps

The benefits of implementing ZigiOps included:

• Increased efficiency: By eliminating the need for manual data entry across two systems, the client significantly reduced the time and effort required to manage incidents.

• Data consistency: With real-time, bi-directional synchronization, discrepancies between incidents in ServiceNow and work items in ADO were completely eliminated, resulting in improved accuracy and communication between teams.

• Customization and flexibility: The ability to configure the integration to suit the specific needs of each ADO team, particularly the “opt-in” feature, allowed for a tailored approach that supported their organizational complexity.

• Improved collaboration: Since both ServiceNow and ADO were kept in sync, developers and IT operations could collaborate more effectively. The visibility into incidents across systems allowed for quicker resolutions and a more cohesive workflow.

• Scalability: As the company grows and adds more teams or projects in Azure DevOps, ZigiOps can easily scale to meet their expanding needs, making it a future-proof solution.

Conclusion

The ZigiOps integration bridged the gap between ServiceNow and Azure DevOps, solving the challenges of manual data entry, inconsistent records, and team coordination. By offering a flexible, scalable, and fully automated solution, ZigiOps enabled seamless collaboration across IT and development teams, leading to more efficient incident resolution and better overall productivity.