HashiCorp is excited to announce a new update to the ServiceNow Service Catalog plugin for Terraform: the integration of a native approval workflow. This new capability adds a critical layer of governance to your self-service infrastructure provisioning, ensuring that requests are reviewed and authorized before any resources are created.
This release represents another step forward in our effort to streamline processes and promote broader Terraform adoption within organizations that have stringent governance and compliance requirements. These enhancements empower customers to not only securely connect external applications to ServiceNow but also to provision resources with Terraform in a more controlled and secure way.
»Approval workflow integration
The latest version of the ServiceNow Service Catalog for Terraform (2.9) introduces a streamlined solution for adding an approval gate to your infrastructure requests. Previously, customers who needed an approval process had to build their own custom solutions, which could be complex to maintain.
With the new approval workflow integration, you can configure your Service Catalog items to require approval before any infrastructure is provisioned. When a user requests an item with an approval workflow, a Terraform plan-only run is generated and sent to the designated approver. The approver can review the plan to see exactly what infrastructure changes are being proposed before making a decision.
The requested ticket for the approver to review in ServiceNow.
If the approver accepts the request, a Terraform apply run is initiated to provision the infrastructure. If the request is rejected, the run is discarded, and no changes are made. This ensures that only approved infrastructure changes are applied, providing a crucial control point in your provisioning process.
This two-part solution provides two new catalog items to get you started:
- Provisioning with an approval workflow: This automatically creates a speculative plan and waits for approval before initiating a Terraform apply run in a new workspace.
- Updating with an approval workflow: This updates an existing workspace by generating a speculative plan and waiting for approval before triggering a Terraform apply run.
»Key benefits
The addition of a native approval workflow to the ServiceNow Service Catalog for Terraform provides two main benefits:
- Enhanced governance and security: By adding a formal approval step to your infrastructure provisioning process, you can ensure that all requests are reviewed and authorized by the appropriate personnel. This helps to enforce your organization's policies, control costs, and maintain a secure and compliant infrastructure.
- Reduced risk and increased stability: The native approval workflow eliminates the need for custom-built, and often fragile, approval solutions. This reduces the maintenance burden on your team and minimizes the risk of failures or unintended consequences.
»Connect your ServiceNow instance to HCP Terraform
Integrating your ServiceNow instance with HCP Terraform is simple thanks to robust APIs that enable smooth data exchange and workflow automation between the two platforms. For more details and to learn about all of our enhancements in the latest release, please review the Service Catalog configuration documentation.
If you are currently using Terraform Community Edition or are completely new to Terraform, try HCP Terraform for free today.
