ServiceNow has grown from its humble beginnings as a Ticketing Platform to grow to be a entire IT Automation and Infrastructure Platform with features like Security, Customer Support, Human Resources, and ServiceNow Webbook Integration with many famous Business Applications. With ServiceNow, a business enterprise is greater unified, cohesive, and prepared for growth, exactly like a whole, healthful organism.

Microsoft’s Power BI is a contemporary Business Intelligence tool for reading and visualizing facts for insights that can be used. Using a aggregate of Business Analytics, Data Visualization, and other great practices, electricity BI lets in firms to make choices based on hard statistics.

In February of this 12 months, Gartner announced that Microsoft’s Power BI platform become the Leader inside the “2019 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Analytics and Business Intelligence Platform.”

This weblog will educate you a way to integrate ServiceNow with Power BI. In addition, it’ll provide recommendation that can be used to live faraway from common Power BI errors.

Introducing Microsoft Power BI

Power BI is a Business Intelligence device evolved via Microsoft that can be used to generate Reports and Dashboards after studying statistics from numerous sources. It can function both independently as a laptop software and as a fully controlled web service in the Cloud. While the Power BI Desktop is to be had for no cost, the Power BI Service calls for a paid membership.

Microsoft has released Power BI Mobile for folks who need to screen facts while far from their desks. Power BI integrates efficaciously with the widespread majority of Microsoft’s enterprise answers and might also be used to feature analytical competencies to custom net apps.

Power BI uses its compatibility with popular databases from outdoor the Microsoft atmosphere to produce sincere, interactive dashboards.

Highlights of Microsoft Power BI

Power BI’s many capabilities make it stand out from competing for BI software. Some examples of those developments are as follows:

• There is a extensive type of lovely Visualization Templates to use. Reports and Dashboards, two strategies for offering data, can be as fundamental or state-of-the-art as your dataset demands.
• By the use of Power BI’s “Get Data” functionality, you may get admission to records from many one of a kind locations, formats, and types, such as nearby, cloud, unstructured, and structured documents. More and more facts resources are being uploaded on a month-to-month basis.
• In Power BI, you could refine your datasets so you can work with conceivable chunks in the beginning. You can now look at simplest the records that hobbies you in place of the whole dataset immediately.
• If you want to make your own custom dashboards, you could employ a number of graphical factors. It is viable to print and distribute the Dashboards.
• Power BI’s “Content Packs” consist of equipped-to-use sources like dashboards, records models, datasets, and embedded queries, saving you effort and time for your search for these gadgets.

Introducing ServiceNow

ServiceNow is a cloud-based totally SaaS (Software as a Service) platform that streamlines company processes while maintaining a uniform and intuitive interface for its users. Because it specializes in IT Service, Operation, and Business Management, the platform offers a comprehensive surroundings for developing, testing, and deploying packages.

Companies like Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Salesforce all leverage multi-tenant structure to serve numerous customers from a unmarried server. When the usage of ServiceNow, but, a completely unique example is created for each employee thanks to the gadget’s multi-instance architecture.

Data privateness is ensured via multi-instance design, which separates the client’s records from the machine’s middle additives just like the software server, the middleware, and the database.

Highlights of ServiceNow

• The use of automated validation tests in trying out allows the fast deployment of packages via end users. It allows preserve the point of interest at the usefulness of recent apps even as minimizing the dangers they provide.
• Predictive intelligence is an artificial intelligence and system learning machine that allows reduce down on errors and clear up times. In order to better recognize the information that belong to every class, this function robotically clusters them.
• It makes use of TF-IDF (term frequency-inverse record frequency) based class to speed up the time it takes to locate an answer to a query.
• Analytics and reporting are delicate iteratively to decorate the consumer revel in. ServiceNow lets in customers to quick and without problems assemble reports by using filing a question rather than going through the whole record builder interface.
• What’s extra, NLQ (natural language query) ranges the playing subject between technical and non-technical customers, facilitating the invention of treasured statistics.

Integrating ServiceNow With Power BI – REST APIs Method

1. Initiate the technique through creating a ServiceNow account with REST privileges:

To begin using ServiceNow Power BI, a ServiceNow user account have to be created, and then the REST position and the examine position should be assigned to the desk shape from which Power BI will retrieve the statistics.

For instance, the state of affairs while you want to drag data from the trade request table. You can log in with the username Power. Now you have to expand the scope of get right of entry to with the aid of including the sn_change_read and snc_platform_rest_api roles.

You need to recognize that the sn trade study technique can only be accessed if the Change Management plugin has been mounted (com.Snc.Itsm.Roles.Exchange management).

2. Get your REST Endpoint from the ServiceNow REST API Explorer.

The ServiceNow REST API EXPLORER is a handy and easy method of acquiring a REST Endpoint URI, that can then be used to reap statistics the use of Power BI. To accomplish this successfully, please confer with the tips supplied below.

• Use the REST API Explorer to make a desk alteration request. A form of exchange alternatives are available. Please refer to the subsequent screenshot for in addition details.
• For sysparm_display_value, set it to “real.” This will come up with get admission to to the price shown within the reference/alternative fields.
• Put real in sysparm_exclude_reference_link. If you specify false, Power BI will offer you with the API connection for the reference information even though you do now not want them. When this is the case, you’ll have a good deal extra problems inside Power BI.
• It will show up as a link classified “Record” in PowerIn Power BI, and uploading the real cost/transformed information into PowerBi could be challenging or not possible. Power BI will display “Error” for any reference fields which can be left clean.
• You can specify which Power BI fields you want in a list called sysparm_fields. Keep it to a minimum if in any respect viable.
• For sysparm_limit, your options are both 1 or 2. Both one and ten are feasible. Any arbitrary fee can be entered and edited later.

Identify the vacation spot. If you scroll down, you’ll see numerous code snippets in several one-of-a-kind languages. Learn from anybody’s destination and make it your very own.

3. In Power BI, go to the Source menu and select Web Data.

It is required that you have a Power BI computing device installed to your laptop. Step of ServiceNow Power BI integration is to link the facts supply. In Power BI, click the menu item categorized “Get records” to get right of entry to the collection tool. Select the Internet, and then link.

In the URL fields, paste the ServiceNow URI you retrieved inside the previous steps. In the Accept header of your HTTP request, type “application/json.” Simply choose the OK option.

4. Set up the ServiceNow endpoint in Power BI.

When you try to get admission to blanketed cloth and then click on OK, the device will activate you for affirmation. Select “basic” and then “log in with ServiceNow.” Press the connect button to set up a connection.

Connect will take you to a new page. If you have ServiceNow and Power BI set up, you have to see the following window.

No files have been discovered on this location. To lead them to tabular, you’ll want to do some modifications. The choice to “Into table” is positioned inside the pinnacle left nook of the display, as proven inside the screenshot above. A name-and-cost table will pop up while you click on “Into table.”

• Select the list hyperlink below “Value” to view a comprehensive listing. All the facts can be proven in a unmarried column.
• Just hit “To Table” again. It will open in a brand new window or tab. Please whole the fields under.
• Choose “none” for the “Select or input delimiter” alternative, and “Add to very last column” for “How to Deal with Extra Columns.” Simply pick out the OK option.

Clicking OK will divide the information into columns, as established within the following screenshot.

There is an extend icon within the column 1 heading, so you understand that column 1 have to be extended, however column 2 may be neglected. The mouse must be used there. In the following window, you could pick the columns which you want to show.

If you go to the REST API in ServiceNow, you may get a complete listing of all the fields you’ve set up. To disable this feature, deselect “Use authentic column name as a prefix.”

Challenges with REST-primarily based ServiceNow-Power-BI Connections

• Determine in case you are sending out a number of information in exports. Fifty thousand information are the restriction, and it takes approximately two mins to retrieve them.
• The exporting of statistics in massive portions is possible. When you export facts from ServiceNow, the “REST Table API Request Timeout” transaction quota rule, that is presently set to 60 seconds, wishes to be improved.
• Stop looking to fill in each discipline; consciousness on filling in as few as feasible.
• You cannot agenda incremental data updates in Power BI. As a result, you’ll should constantly update all of your statistics. Power BI does now not support incremental records updates while using an internet-based information source.
• When configuring the REST endpoint, you must ensure that sysparm exclude_reference_link is about to actual, as stated formerly.

Conclusion

In this blog, we discussed the fundamentals of ServiceNow Power BI Integration as well as the important thing functions of each of these IT structures. We wish you apprehend and appreciate our efforts. Continue to observe us for greater strong pointers and in-intensity records blogs!