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ServiceNow Governance

Dedicated Pr <-> Change Request Sync intos ServiceNow

The ServiceNow governance controller allows a pull request to be synchronized with a ServiceNow change request, so enterprises can implement GitOps flexibly without sacrificing their auditing and governance posture built around the ServiceNow ecosystem. Before implementing, it's worth just looking through the docs on PR governance briefly to familiarize yourself with the model.

Info:

For this to work, it's assumed you have an SCM webhook configured to provide Plural with an event stream for pull request/merge requests from you SCM provider. We support all major SCM providers, and they're easy to set up at Self Service -> SCM Management. Most SCM providers also have ways to limit the scope of webhook events to individual repository sets in case it cannot be implemented organization-wide.

Defining a PrGovernance CRD

The Governance CRD utilizing SericeNow is relatively straightforward, here's an example:

yaml
apiVersion: deployments.plural.sh/v1alpha1
kind: PrGovernance
metadata:
  name: snow
spec:
  type: SERVICE_NOW
  connectionRef:
    name: governance # reference to the ScmConnection that is used for Pr approval
  configuration:
    serviceNow:
      url: https://instance.service-now.com
      username: my-user
      passwordSecretKeyRef:
        name: snow-creds
        key: password
      secretNamespace: infra # wherever the `snow-creds` secret lives

      # supports the ITIL4 change models, eg Standard, Normal, Emergency
      changeModel: Standard
      
      # any specific attributes you want to include in the change request, we'll auto-infer the required fields (description, short description, backout plan, test plan, implementation plan from the pull request itself if not provided)
      attributes:
        description: some description

From there, to tie it to a pull request, you'll need:

  1. To ensure there's a SCM webhook for the repository pointing to Plural (this can be created in Self Service -> SCM Management in you Plural Console instance)
  2. Add the Plural governance: snow tag to your PR description so that we'll identify it as requiring governance.

ServiceNow Controller Implementation

The ServiceNow controller will do the following once it is tied to a PR:

  1. Create a new ServiceNow change request using the REST API, filling in any blank fields by inspecting the PR and generating them with AI if not provided (this is overrideable and meant to minimize required, brittle implementation).
  2. Wait for the change to be moved to the 'Scheduled' (or later) state in ServiceNow, and approve the pull request, and move the change to Implement state from there.
  3. Once the PR is merged, the change is moved to Close state, and marked successful with reason that the pull request is merged.
  4. If the PR is ever closed, the change request is moved to Cancelled state.
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