Passing input parameters to JSON template to POST catalog request

[Sasidhar1234]

Hi Team,

Greetings!!!

Our requirement is to use vRA Catalog from SNOW using REST APIs. We are not using ITSM plugin as we need more customization.

We have decided to write a single vRO workflow and give as an endpoint to SNOW for REST API consumption.

Here is my plan:

1. Selecting Catalog Item --> 2. Passing the inputs of SNOW to JSON --> 3. POST to request the catalog --> 4. Send the status back to SNOW

I am able to print the catalog template as per step 1 based on Blueprint, location and OS type  inputs, next I wanted to pass the values of custom propeties to JSON file output,

Please help me passing the inputs of SNOW to JSON. Appreciate your help..ManishPatil​jasnyder​GrantOrchardVMware​

Regards,

Sasidhar

[daphnissov]

Before going ahead and rolling your own custom code (which is a lot of technical debt), I'd recommend you at least look into the SovLabs ServiceNow Connector. It has way more capabilities of the free ITSM plug-in and is also fully supported. I've encountered this SovLabs connector more often than the ITSM one and it does a nice job.

[Sasidhar1234]

Thanks for your help. Our customer is not OK to go with plug-in or SovLabs connector.

Please help me sharing any docs fulfilling my requirement.

[qc4vmware]

We do nearly the same process in our environment.  I'm not a SNOW admin so I'm not sure what all is involved in packaging up the request in JSON format but our admins did it for me with little to no effort.  We get a blob with a all the information entered in the form and all of the id's we need to update the tasks from vRO/vRA.  Considering how far you've made it so far I have to believe there is someone on your team that can help do this.  Our ingress workflow that ServiceNow calls just has a string variable they populate with stringified JSON.

Paul.

[Sasidhar1234 · Accepted solution]

I have tested SNOW integration with a XaaS blueprint which modifies the compute resources of a VM out of certain conditions. All we provided to SNOW team is a vRO endpoint with Workflow ID. They have consumed REST APIs to use the input parameters like Hostname/CPU/Memory/Request ID. The integration is Ok and we could see the requests appearing successful from SNOW.

For Machine provisioning, even we are planning to use stringified JSON. Please let me know some example code you used to map the SNOW inputs to JSON request.

[sovlabs_sam]

Disclaimer: I work for SovLabs.

Are you able to share why the SovLabs plugin is not suitable for your customer?  Does it not fulfil the requirements or is it the issue of complexities/cost involved in bringing in new software?

As daphnissov has suggested, it's often preferred to reduce the maintenance burden associated with custom code such as this type of integration.

[Sasidhar1234]

Hi,

We haven't tested the plugin to see whether it fulfills the requirements or not as there is no vRA 7.x test instance and our customer don't want to use it on Production without testing. In fact, cost might be another reason for denying the proposal. I will reach out to you in case of any change in customer's decision.