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In today’s fast-paced digital landscape, businesses rely heavily on effective IT service management to ensure smooth operations. To achieve this, organizations leverage various discovery tools, such as Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) or HP Network Node Manager (NNM), to gather critical data about their IT infrastructure. However, managing multiple tools independently can lead to fragmented processes and a lack of centralized visibility. Integrating 4me with discovery tools can drastically improve IT operations. While the 4me Workflow Automator is the primary tool to handle this in most cases, using the 4me APIs can still be a great alternative for organizations that require integrations on a smaller scale. For this, GraphQL and the Import API are great options.
GraphQL
Probably the best API option to integrate 4me with a discovery tool is GraphQL, a flexible query language for APIs. GraphQL empowers developers to precisely request the data they need from the 4me platform, reducing the reliance on multiple API calls. With GraphQL, the information of a set of configuration items (and their product categories, products and relations) can be sent in a single call. GraphQL allows you to request specific data fields, minimizing the payload and reducing unnecessary data transfers. To upload information from discovery tools using GraphQL, the discoveredConfigurationItems mutation can be used.
Import API
Alongside GraphQL, 4me also provides the Import API, a powerful tool for seamless integration with external systems. With the Import API, information from discovery tools is synchronized using files. Using this approach it is necessary that a matching product record exists (that describes the configuration item’s hardware model or software application) before a new configuration item record can be registered.
As multiple discovery tools can be integrated with 4me, it is important that 4me can distinguish between them. A unique identifier should therefore be chosen for each discovery tool. The identifier of a discovery tool can be stored in the Source field of the 4me records that are generated and maintained by this tool. Examples of such identifiers could be SCCM or NNM, but longer names may be used as well. Configuration items and products should be assigned a unique Source ID to identify them. The usage of Source and Source ID is important for both the Import and the GraphQL API.
To learn more about how to upload data from discovery tools into 4me, check this in-depth article on the 4me Developer Documentation.
