Choosing the Best ITSM Integration Tool: A Guide to Features and Integration Types

[Syed Majid Hassan -Exalate-]

When you're managing IT services across multiple platforms, like Jira Service Management and ServiceNow, you need to integrate them to create a seamless data flow. 

But with so many integration approaches and tools available, how do you choose the right ITSM integration for your organization?

Four Ways to Implement ITSM Integrations

1. Native Integrations

Native integrations come built into your ITSM platform. For example, Jira Service Management's native integration with Jira Software. These integrations offer easy setup since they're pre-configured and maintained by the vendor with reliable updates. 

However, they're limited to what the vendor provides, with minimal customization options and restricted to specific platforms. Native integrations work best for organizations wanting a quick setup between tools from the same vendor ecosystem.

2. Third-Party Integration Apps (Script-Based or Template-Based)

These are specialized tools explicitly built for connections between ITSM systems and are often more flexible than native options, with maintenance handled by specialized vendors. 

The downside is the additional cost and potential need to manage multiple integration apps for different connections. 

Template-based integration apps provide you with default, templated connectors for syncing different platforms, while script-based integration apps allow you to write and generate scripts to control the connection.

If you’re looking for plug-and-play solutions, use template integrations. If you want extra flexibility for different use cases, then a script-based integration like Exalate is the way forward.

3. iPaaS (Integration Platform as a Service)

iPaaS solutions provide cloud-based platforms to connect multiple applications. These platforms come with visual workflow builders and no-code/low-code setup, making them good for simple automations. 

However, they can become expensive with high data volumes, have limited depth for complex ITSM scenarios, and may struggle with granular field mapping. 

4. Custom Integrations

Custom integrations are built in-house using the respective system APIs. Your development team might build custom code to sync data between Jira Service Management and your internal legacy system, for instance. 

Custom integrations give you complete control and customization, can handle unique business logic, and avoid vendor lock-in. 

However, this comes at a steep technical and financial cost. The tradeoffs include requiring development resources, an ongoing maintenance burden, and having to manage error handling and security yourself. 

Essential Features to Look For in ITSM Integration Tools

• Real-time data synchronization keeps your teams updated instantly. When a critical incident gets logged, your team should see it immediately.
• Bi-directional data flow ensures changes sync both ways. If your support team updates a ticket status, that update should reflect in your project management tool automatically.
• Workflow automation eliminates repetitive tasks. Instead of manually creating tickets across systems, automation handles it based on triggers you define.
• Security and compliance protect sensitive data through encryption and adherence to regulations like GDPR.
• Scripting engines to give you the flexibility of working with custom field mappings, sync rules, and workflows to match your specific processes. 
• Scalability to ensure your integration grows with your organization, whether you're syncing 100 tickets or 10,000.
• Troubleshooting capabilities help you identify and fix sync errors quickly through diagnostic consoles and error logs.
• Multi-platform support lets you connect various ITSM systems (ServiceNow, Freshservice, Freshdesk, Zendesk) with CRMs like Salesforce.
• Reporting dashboards give visibility into your integrations, which connections are active, sync volumes, and performance metrics.

Common Use Cases for ITSM Integration

Understanding how organizations actually use ITSM integrations can help you identify which approach fits your needs best:

• Cross-team collaboration: When a bug gets reported through ServiceNow, it automatically creates a work item in Jira for the dev team to fix. Once resolved, the status updates back in ServiceNow, so support can close the ticket.
• Multi-vendor service management: You're managing services across different vendors—internal IT uses Jira Service Management, your outsourced helpdesk uses Zendesk, and a third-party provider uses Freshservice. Integrating ITSM workflows ensures all service requests flow into one system for reporting.
• Incident and problem management: When multiple incidents in ServiceNow point to the same root cause, your integration automatically creates a problem record in Jira with all related incident data attached. Your engineering team investigates the problem while support continues handling individual incidents, with both sides seeing real-time updates.
• Customer support to engineering pipeline: Customer-facing tickets in Zendesk that require product changes get automatically escalated to Azure DevOps as user stories. The integration attaches customer feedback, reproduction steps, and priority levels for full context.
• Asset and configuration management: Changes to configuration items in ServiceNow automatically update related work items in Jira. When a server gets decommissioned, all associated projects and tasks reflect this change, preventing teams from planning work on infrastructure that no longer exists.

Choosing Your Preferred ITSM Connectors

Many organizations use a combination of these approaches. You might use native integrations where available and suitable for your use case, third-party integration solutions for intricate ITSM connections, and template-based tools for simpler automations. 

The key is understanding your requirements—data volume, complexity of workflows, technical resources, and budget—then selecting the integration type that best matches those needs.

If you’re trying to get a reliable ITSM integration tool, book a free call with me to learn more.