Skip to main content

IT Service Management

The aim of integration with IT Service Management (ITSM) systems is to correlate change events, that occur within the IT environment, with those that were planned and approved in the ITSM system. Change Management is a quintessential component of any service management strategy. Change Management is the process of implementing changes relative to an authorized work order that incorporates a release, build, test, schedule, and deployment plan.

By integrating Netwrix Change Tracker with ITSM systems, organizations can address Change Management while eliminating the change noise. This way, unplanned change alerts become a prioritized list of potentially malicious events to be reviewed and remediated.

The Sync Service​

The Gen 7 Sync Service synchronizes Change Requests (CR’s, RFC’s, etc) into Change Tracker from one of several supported ITSM systems. These CRs take the form of a Planned Change once imported into Change Tracker.

Change Tracker will attempt to link existing Devices and Groups to a Planned Change where similar names are found to Configuration Items (CMDB items) in the ITSM system. See the Planned Changes Tab topic for additional information.

The service works by periodically polling the source ITSM system for Change Requests which have been modified since the most recent poll. A new Planned Change is created in Change Tracker if a new CR has been added to the source system; modifications to an existing CR will be used to update the corresponding Planned Change. In either case, any events which fall within the scope of the Planned Change will be reassessed.

Change events will not be linked to a planned change until the RFC has been approved in the ITSM. For this reason, RFCs should be created and approved before any changes are made, otherwise they will appear as unplanned. Retrospectively approving an RFC will cause the change events to be reassessed and marked as planned in Change Tracker, but the alerts would already have been sent.

Supported ITSM Platforms​

  • BMC Remedy Service Management
  • Cherwell Service Management
  • ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus
  • Samanage Service Platform
  • ServiceNow ServiceManagement
  • SunView ChangeGear
  • OpenText Service Management

ServiceNow Features​

The following features are currently exclusive to the ServiceNow integration.

Device Discovery

Instead of maintaining a list of all your servers, desktops and switches in ServiceNow and Change Tracker, it is possible to synchronize configuration items from ServiceNow to Change Tracker as devices. Not only does this give you a single place to maintain that list (ServiceNow), it also speeds up initial setup of Change Tracker.

When devices are created via Device Discovery from ServiceNow, the configuration items from RFCs are matched to devices in Change Tracker on their ServiceNow Id, ensuring a perfect match.

Synchronization of the AssignedTo field

Typically the Sync Service will create a planned change in Change Tracker that includes the following fields from the ITSM: Id, planned start date, planned end date and configuration item. For ServiceNow the AssignedTo field can be synchronized to planned changes. If change events are recording who made the change, then a planned change ruleset can be created that will ensure that change events are only marked as planned when they match an planned change on date, device, and user.

RFC Task Synchronization

In ServiceNow it is possible to add tasks for different people to an RFC. If the Sync Service detects an RFC with tasks it will create a planned change for each task. If the planned start date, planned end date, configuration item or assigned to fields are empty on the task then the matching values at the parent RFC level will be used.

Raising Incidents

To close the loop of change management someone who can act must be alerted of unplanned changes so they can be investigated and resolved appropriately. A great option for unplanned change alerts is to raise an incident in ServiceNow which will alert the owner of the matching configuration item and provide a work flow to resolve the situation.