An Orchestration process can cross all management disciplines and interact with hosted services and all types of infrastructure elements. These capabilities provide a powerful system for managing IT and Business processes quickly and reliably.

Orchestrated solutions aide collaboration among teams by providing reusable data and versioning for both the workflows and the activities within them. Subject matter experts can create activities that are reusable to numerous workflow developers. When an activity requires a change, developers can see the downstream implication of the change immediately by knowing which workflows use the activity. Well-designed orchestrations never fail and apply human tasks to address errors as they arise.

Orchestration tools

Systems that Orchestration can automate

Orchestration can automate tasks such as employee onboarding, user access rights, server management, managed file transfers, and Security Operations Orchestration activities . For example, you might use the Active Directory and Exchange activities provided in the base Orchestration system to set up network accounts and mailboxes for new employees.

If Orchestration does not provide the activities you need for an integration, create the necessary activities using the templates in the Orchestration Activity Designer. The external systems that Orchestration can automate for:

• Any system exposing web services (SOAP, REST)
• Any system accessible from the command line (such as a UNIX system accessible through SSH, a Windows system enabled for PowerShell remoting or WMI)
• Numerous proprietary services: Windows Active Directory, Microsoft Exchange mail servers, InfoBlox, and F5 Networks.
  Note: For a full list of Activity Pack service offerings, see Orchestration Core Activity Packs.
• Any filesystem accessible by SFTP
• Any database with a compliant JDBC driver
• Additional Activity Packs are also available with other ServiceNow products, such as Security Operations

Orchestration workflow

When an Orchestration activity starts within a workflow, Orchestration launches a probe and writes a probe record to the ECC Queue. The workflow pauses as the MID Server picks up the request and executes the probe. When the probe reports back, the workflow resumes as the results are analyzed. The workflow can exit or continue at this point.

Orchestration video tutorial

Watch the introductory video for Orchestration.