POSTS

Jamf Cloud SN

April 4, 2019

ServiceNow Asset Integration with Jamf Cloud:

I wanted to start using the ServiceNow Asset Module. I need an easy way to update computer assets from other sources into ServiceNow.

One option was to do a CVS import when we buy new equipment. This method would not be to bad. As we could just create a with the new information and import it in to ServiceNow.

I thought I could come up with a better idea. I did not want to have to manually add anything into ServiceNow.

My idea was to use a REST outbound call form ServiceNow into our JAMF Cloud instance to retrieve the asset data.

The plan was to run this job nightly so the Asset data at worst would be a day out of sync.

We enroll all of our Mac’s in Jamf before they are deployed. This way they SN will be updated when new assets are enrolled in jamf.

5 Main Steps of the integration (each link goes into details for each step)

1: Create a Staging table to load the data

2: Create an outbound rest message to retrieve data from Jamf

3: Parse the data and post it to a staging table

4: Transform the data then place into the Asset Table.

5:Set Script to Run on a Schedule

1: Create a Staging Table in ServiceNow:

We need to create a table in ServiceNow where we can store this data before we add it in to Asset. We could directly add data to Hardware Asset table. But we are going to do the Import Set Route instead.

Go to the tables page found under System Definition and click Tables

Then click the blue New button in the upperhand corner. Name the table anything you want but right down the name we will need it later for our script.

Now with the table made we can start creating our REST message. Outbound REST Message

We need to create an outbound REST Call from ServiceNow to Jamf. This will allow us to get the data we need.

JAMF has a simple premade default report we can call via the API. If you need more information about the assets refer to JAMF documentation.

For the basic info you can hit the predefined url of:

https://yourjamfurl. jamfcloud.com/JSSResource/computers

This will return basic data about each computer in JSON format.

You will need to put in a Username and Password of JAMF user to access this page.

To set this up in SN go to outbound rest connections.

Create a new REST Call and put in the above URL. Create a basic Auth profile and set the call to that.

For HTTP Headers we want JSON so set the following:

Name: accept Value: application/json
Method will be set as GET
Here is a example:

2: Parsing Data and Transform Table:

Now we have the Data in a rest message encoding in JSON. We need to parse the data and then post it to the staging table.

The first step is to get the code to make the outbound REST call. This is pretty simple. Go to our outbound rest command and click the link “Preview Script Usage”

This JavaScript code will be created that creates the REST call to the requested endpoint.

You will most likely will need to add more code to this. A link to my script can be found at the bottom of the page. I will walk you through the basic steps.

First use the boilerplate code to store the REST data in an object.

It will look something like this

 var responseBody = response.getBody();

ResponseBody is the variable holding the REST response data. This is what we want to Parse.

For JSON data in SN we will need to parse the results. We can use SN built in JSONParser. Just call it in your code that simple.

For JAMF data we will need to parse it first then make it back into a string and then parse it again.

I think this is due to JAMF response not be 100% JSON complaint. ( Big shout out to @parwood on SN Dev’s Slack, he figured this out and shared it with me).

You will want to load the data into an array and the loop through it.

Something like this:

var parser = new JSONParser();
var parsedData = parser.parse(responseBody);
var len = parsedData.computers.length;
gs.print(len);
for (var i = 0; i < len; i++) {
var obj = parsedData.computers[i];
var obj2 = JSON.stringify(obj);
var parsedSecond = JSON.parse(obj2);

Now we have the data parsed and sorted in the object of parsedSecond we can post the data to the staging table

To post the data to the staging table we will need to create a new Gliderecord and post the data we want to it. This will bring the data into the staging table.

An example is below. You can see the fields on the staging table which start with restGR. are being set to fields found in the rest message. Match up the ones you want.

var restGR = new GlideRecord(‘u_name of your staging table); //Important
restGR.initialize()
restGR.u_make = parsedSecond.make;
restGR.u_model = parsedSecond.model;
restGR.u_serial_number = parsedSecond.serial_number;
restGR.u_username = parsedSecond.username;
restGR.sys_import_set = ‘sysid’; //Important
restGR.insert();

Important! Make sure to create a empty import set on the important table you have created. Then grab the sysid of that import set and do the following:

restGR.sys_import_set = ‘sysiof object’; //Important

This will load all the data into the import set on the staging table.

Now you will be able to transform the data from the staging table to hardware asset table

var r = new sn_ws.RESTMessageV2(‘JAMF’, ‘Default GET’);
var response = r.execute();
var responseBody = response.getBody();
var httpStatus = response.getStatusCode();
var parser = new JSONParser();
var parsedData = parser.parse(responseBody);
var len = parsedData.computers.length;
gs.print(len);
for (var i = 0; i < len; i++) {
  var obj = parsedData.computers[i];
  var obj2 = JSON.stringify(obj);
  var parsedSecond = JSON.parse(obj2);
  var restGR = new GlideRecord(‘name of created  staging table); //Important
  restGR.initialize();
  restGR.u_make = parsedSecond.make;
  restGR.u_model = parsedSecond.model;
  restGR.u_serial_number = parsedSecond.serial_number;
  restGR.u_username = parsedSecond.username;
  restGR.sys_import_set = ‘sysid of importset’; //Important
  restGR.insert();
}

3: Transforming the data to hardware table:

Now that you have the data you want on your staging table it is now time to create a transform map under System Import Sets. This will take the data from the staging table and add it to hardware table.

It is pretty simple. Create a transform map for the staging table you created. You can use the auto matching fields and then point which field matches to what. User to username etc.

Set the source table as the staging table you created. The target table for computer assets is the following:

alm_hardware *Important make sure to pick a unique field like serial number and set that coalesce. This will prevent the same asset being created over and over again.

I wanted to set all the objects to model of Computer as this job is just for Macs.

To do this I need to create a script in the Field Map. Model Category does not exist for the JAMF data. So you create a new map, with script set as the source field and the Target field as model_category.

return “sysid of computer in hardware”; // return the value to be put into the target field

Now when the outbound REST script is run the data will be transformed and then placed in hardware asset table. And now all the computer objects show up in Asset in ServiceNow.

4: Running Data Import on a Schedule

The last step is to create scheduled job so we do not have to run this manually. I set mine to run once a day. So I know that the data in ServiceNow at most can only be one day difference with JAMF.

This is very easy to do.

Go to Scheduled Jobs and click new. Then pick “Scheduled Script Execution”

Set it to run Daily. You can set the time you want it run. Default is midnight.

And that is it. Your job will run once a day and update the Asset table. You can also go to the job itself and run it on demand as well.

In the future I want to added some webhook actions from JAMF. This way if something is update before