Handling the external events using Telecommunications API notification

  • Release version: Yokohama
  • Updated January 30, 2025
  • 2 minutes to read
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    Summary of Handling the external events using Telecommunications API notification

    The Telecommunications API notification feature, part of the Telecommunications Alarm Management Open API application, enables ServiceNow customers to receive and respond promptly to external events occurring in their network systems. It supports event-driven architectures such as Publisher/Subscriber (Pub/Sub), Hermes, and Kafka Stream Connect, allowing efficient broadcasting and handling of notifications without point-to-point connections.

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    This capability integrates with ServiceNow’s Event Management application to create events from incoming notifications and provides consolidated dashboards for service-impact visibility.

    Key Features

    • Event Reception: Receive incoming notifications from subscribed external network systems through scalable event-driven models.
    • Topic-based Subscription: Organize incoming notifications into topics. Customers can selectively subscribe to topics relevant to their needs, filtering the events they receive.
    • Flexible Architecture: Cloud customers can choose between Pub/Sub, Hermes, or Kafka Stream Connect, while on-premise customers use Kafka or Pub/Sub models.
    • Workflow Configuration: Supports creating topics, subscribing to them, activating API endpoints, and providing callback URLs to external systems for seamless notification handling.
    • Integration with Event Management: Automatically triggers event creation workflows upon receiving notifications to facilitate incident management and operational response.
    • User Roles: Provides predefined roles to control access to API notification data tables, enabling secure administration of topics and subscriptions.

    Practical Implementation Steps

    • Create Topics: Define topics manually or import from external systems to categorize incoming events.
    • Subscribe to Topics: Select topics to receive notifications relevant to your environment and generate callback URLs for external system integration.
    • Activate Endpoints: Enable the Telecommunications Alarm Management Open API endpoint in ServiceNow Workflow Studio to start receiving notifications.
    • Event Creation: Use the default alarm event notification workflow to automatically generate events in Event Management when notifications arrive.

    Benefits for ServiceNow Customers

    • Streamlines handling of external network events within ServiceNow’s AI Platform for faster incident response.
    • Eliminates complex point-to-point integrations through standardized, event-driven communication models.
    • Allows customers to tailor notification subscriptions to their operational priorities, reducing noise and focusing on critical events.
    • Enhances visibility of network service-impact events with consolidated dashboards in Event Management.
    • Supports secure and manageable access through role-based permissions, ensuring appropriate control over notification configurations.

    Use the Telecommunications API notification to receive the external events that occurring in the customer network system so that you can promptly respond to them in the ServiceNow AI Platform.

    Introduction to Telecommunications API notification

    Telecommunications API notification is a feature available in the Telecommunications Alarm Management Open API application. The Telecommunications API notification enables ServiceNow to receive the incoming notifications that occurring in the external network system and responds to them in a timely manner. It enables the broadcasting of events to the external systems through platform capabilities by eliminating the need for point to point connections.

    Telecommunications API notification receives incoming notifications from the external systems that are subscribed on your network. When the notifications are received from the external system, you can create the events for the responses by using the Event Management application. Based on the collected information, the Event Management provides dashboards showing a consolidated view of all service-impact events.

    Telecommunications API notification data model

    The following diagram shows the components in the data model for the Telecommunications API notification.

    Figure 1. API notification data model
    Infographic showing the components in the Telecommunications API notification data model. For the description, see the following texts.
    The Telecommunications API notification enables ServiceNow to receive incoming notifications through the event-driven architectures such as the Publisher/Subscriber (Pub/Sub) subscription model, Hermes, and Kafka Stream Connect. While cloud customers have the flexibility to select between both architectures, on-premise customers are limited to using their own Kafka or Pub/Sub subscription model.

    In the Pub/Sub model, incoming notifications are categorized into topics. You use ServiceNow to publish the incoming notifications to these topics, and subscribers (customers) have the flexibility to select the topics to which they want to subscribe. This process enables subscribers to select only those messages that align with their interests. For example, if there are 10 topics for incoming messages from the external system, a customer can opt to subscribe to two of them based on their requirement. Consequently, when notifications are received from the external system, events are generated specifically for the two topics to which the customer has subscribed.

    Modeling the Telecommunications API notification workflow

    The following steps help to configure the Telecommunications API notification in the ServiceNow instance.

    1. Create a topic: You can create topics either by manually typing the external message details or automatically collecting the available topics from the external system.
    2. Create a topic subscription: You subscribe to the available topics for incoming notifications from the external system, based on the customer preference. Additionally, you generate the callback URL and register the subscription.
    3. Activate the endpoint of the Telecommunications Alarm Management Open API connection: To receive responses from the external system, activate the subscribed endpoints of the Telecommunications Alarm Management Open API connection in the Workflow Studio.
    4. Provide the callback URL to the external system for receiving notifications. Customer can also reuse the callback URL. When requests from TMF 688 hit the Callback URL, it initiates the Default Alarm Event Notification Trigger flow to create an event.

      To learn more about the functions to handle Event Notification Management Open API requests that are triggered by external trigger definitions to create, update, and delete events, see Event Notification Management Open API and TMFTopicEventAPIUtilOOB - Scoped.

    This workflow creates an event in the Event Management application. To learn more about using Event Management, see Event Management.