Service Desk Integration

Best Practices for Service Desk Integrations

This guide outlines best practices for synchronizing and managing Service Desk processes. These guidelines aim to streamline workflows, reduce errors, and enhance efficiency.

General Best Practices for Mappers

• Keep mappers small: A mapper should only perform a single function.
• Limit mappings per mapper: Use a maximum of 5–10 mappings.
• Use naming conventions: Ensure names are short but descriptive.
• Use switch plugins: Manage routing effectively.
• Group mappers by functionality: Create logical, functional components.
• Control sequence with next hop mappings: Define clear process steps.
• Next hop mappings: Used to control the sequence.
• Use clear, descriptive names (e.g., incident2freshdesk) for easy identification.
• Keep the From and To message types consistent with schema definitions.
• Use filters to target only relevant messages and reduce unnecessary processing.
• Add meaningful version descriptions to improve maintainability and team collaboration.

Message Flow Overview

Process Flow for Service Desk Integration

Service Desk Updates to 1Gateway

• Use Webhook or Polling methods to send the data to 1Gateway.
• The workflow should remain consistent for most service desks; only the input changes.

Query Additional Information

• Retrieve:
  • Comments
  • Notes
  • Attachments
  • Headers
  • ID mappings
• Filter out:
  • Unwanted data
  • Duplicates
  • Confidential or unshared information (e.g., internal ticket updates)

Normalize and Publish Data

• Standardize data for processing.
• Update sync status based on processed feedback.

Filtering

• Source: Filter out data you don’t want to forward.
• Target: Filter out data you are not interested in.

Synchronization Steps

Input Processing

1. Receive Service Desk Update
   • Process updates from the queue.
2. Query Service Desk for Additional Information
   • Comments / notes
   • Attachments
3. Header Processing
   • ID map storage, ticket ID
   • Transaction, record, partner, etc.
4. Filter Data
   Exclude:
   • Own comments
   • Unwanted data
   • Duplicate entries
   • Private information
5. Normalization
6. Publish
7. Process Feedback

Output Processing

1. Remote update received from queue
2. ID Map – decide on insert or update
3. (Optional) Query service desk – retrieve current ticket state
   • Comments / notes
   • Attachments
4. Filter out unwanted data
   • Own comments
   • Duplicates
   • Unwanted information
5. Denormalize
6. Run REST calls to update the service desk
7. Generate and send feedback