Automating minor IT tasks within the datacenter is always something admins are looking to do. After all, it can help to free up their time and focus on bigger strategic initiatives. While IT service management (ITSM) tools exists to help facilitate automation, ITSM automation capabilities can be time consuming to set up and hard to maintain.
The good news? Citrix’s ITSM Adapter for ServiceNow provides an easy way to integrate ServiceNow capabilities with Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops to help make your Citrix deployment more efficient and your Citrix admin’s life much easier. In this blog post, I’ll focus on how to automate your Citrix resources management via the Citrix ITSM Adapter service.
The diagram below shows how Citrix resources communicate with ServiceNow in a typical customer’s environment, from the viewpoint of three major roles: the Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops admin, IT service operators (normally in the same group of IT), and the end user. With the Citrix ITSM Adapter service, it’s easy to have your Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops deployment equipped with ITSM automation and accelerate the experience of both end users and admins.
Citrix Admins: Setting Up ServiceNow Integration
Setting up your Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops environment to integrate with ServiceNow is simple. The important part is setting up and installing the “Citrix IT Service Management Connector” and establishing that connection to your Citrix Cloud account. It just takes four clicks, shown in the image below, to install the ITSM Adapter plugin.
After the Citrix ITSM connector is installed, complete the configuration to establish the connection to your Citrix Cloud account with the six clicks shown as below:
Please note, the ClientID and Secret you will need to input into the popup dialog are proxy credentials generated from Citrix Cloud. You can get that from Citrix Cloud via access “Identity and Access Management” → “API Access” → “Create Client”.
If you are a Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service customer, after these two steps, your configuration work is done. You can start work in your ServiceNow instance immediately. Request resource and automatically complete the operation, and after approval you can immediately work in your ServiceNow instance.
For on-prem Citrix customers, you will need to log in to Citrix Cloud and add your Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops on-prem sites to Citrix Workspace first. Detailed instructions are available here. After adding on-prem sites to Citrix Workspace, the management will be the same as for Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops service customers.
Request Citrix related IT support from ServiceNow
Any employee from your organization can request Citrix-related IT support from the existing ServiceNow UI. After logging in to the ServiceNow UI, search Citrix. The three most frequent Citrix resource requests are displayed as below.
There are two types of services the ITSM Adapter can provide:
- Self-service request
- Services need approval to go
“Reset a session” is the only self-service request currently available. The employee can fill in the details accordingly to complete the request. The request is completed in a couple of seconds, and the employee can resume working with Citrix virtual resources. Requests that need approval will be completed immediately after a Citrix admin or managers provides approval.
IT Admin to approve/reject the request
For requests that require approval, admins simply log in to their ServiceNow instance with their admin account, jump to Citrix IT Service Management Connecter, and click “Request.” Admins have a view of all requests waiting for approval
The image below shows what this would look like. Simply click on the item on the list, which will lead you through to the process to complete the needed input before you update. After you update the request, ITSM Service running on Citrix Cloud will help you automatically complete the request based on your decision.
Starting your ITSM journey with Citrix is easy and will give your IT admins more time to focus on the work that really matters. Learn more about Citrix’s ITSM Adapter for ServiceNow.
