The Vendor SyncOp is used to specify how Vendor objects are synchronized between IRM and ServiceNow. All ServiceNow Company objects (in the "core_company" CI class), that have a Vendor specified are associated with IRM Vendor objects.
Note: In ServiceNow, some entries within the "core_company" CI class are both a Vendor and a Manufacturer, whereas others are considered only a Manufacturer, not a Vendor.
To successfully synchronize any changes within the Vendor objects between IRM and ServiceNow, the prerequisite is a configured Vendor SyncOp within the SyncOp Manager. Below is a screenshot example of a pre-configured Vendor SyncOp and several syncronization results listed in the SuncOp Manager:
Synchronization process
The Synchronization operation starts with a click on the ‘Play’ (Sync) button for the Vendor SyncOp.
Next, a Proxy object is is created for each ServiceNow Vendor for which a Proxy does not already exist
this Proxy contains the ID of the ServiceNow Vendor.
If an IRM Proxy can be correlated to an IRM Vendor, then the ID of the correlated IRM Category is also stored in the Proxy object and the Proxy is said to be correlated.
Otherwise, the Proxy is uncorrelated, which is to say that it knows about some ServiceNow object but does not have a matching IRM object.
After the synchronization completes, the SyncOp is placed in the Completed Lifecycle Stage, which means that the SNIS has correlated what Proxies it could and is now waiting for the user to review and edit the correlations. In case of Vendors, the SNIS sets the next Stage automatically (Completed -> Accepted).
IMPORTANT: Vendors are not supported by ServiceNow CMDB Groups, so IRM does not create Grouping objects for Vendors.
Correlation process
The user should now use the tools within the Viewer to ensure that each ServiceNow Vendor is correlated to an IRM Vendor. The following methods are available to the user to manually correlate the 2 sets of records:
Manually Map existing ServiceNow Vendor to an existing IRM Vendor record
Create the missing IRM Vendor in IRM from the existing ServiceNow Vendor record
Create the missing ServiceNow Vendor from the existing IRM Vendor record.
To review, change as needed, and finally accept the results, click the Sync Details action button (the eye button). A new dialog opens, displaying the list of all ServiceNow Vendor Proxies in the left-side columns and all IRM Vendors Categories in the right-side columns.
For those Proxies that are successfully correlated, the matching IRM object is shown on the same row.
Unmatched objects appear on a row by themselves, as can be seen in the screenshot example below:
The user now has the task of reviewing all mappings and do the mapping itself in case of any unmatched (or incorrectly matched) ServiceNow Proxy. While this process can be tedious due to differences in the spellings of Vendor names in both systems, the set of Vendor in both IRM and ServiceNow are relatively stable, which makes this process somewhat time-consuming only for the first time.
From here, the user can proceed with the mapping options, similar as for the Manufacturers (please refer to that section for more details about the dialog details).
