User guide

Easy Dataload for ServiceNow

After you have downloaded the add-on a new button will be shown in the Excel ribbon. You can start the add-on by clicking the Easy Dataload for ServiceNow button.
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The add-on is a sidebar that can be expanded to be bigger, by default it will be quite small. Then the next steps are following:

  1. Click on the Admin Login
  2. Create a new account for your organization
  3. Click Sign-up tab

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  4. After this the add-on is now registered for your organization and all the configurations are linked to this Admin account
You should now see a Easy Dataload sidebar in your Excel.
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You can configure all your ServiceNow instances by clicking the blue tool icon.
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The information needed for the configuration is following:

  1. URL – The full URL for you ServiceNow installation and this instance needs to be accessible from the Internet, because the calls come from https://api.easydataload.com service.
  2. Description that will give some indication on what type of instance this is used for. For example TEST/DEV/PROD for x Customer or use
  3. Authentication (Optional), if your organization does not use Oauth for login. If this is the case then you need to create a Oauth profile for your ServiceNow instance. The guide is HERE

The Instance key is used for giving permission to the users when they configure this add-on. So you just need to configure the instances once and then let users know the instance key to use for each environment.

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Admin will configure the company instances and then give the Instance key for users. Then users can click the blue tool icon to login to the ServiceNow instance using their own Username and Password or Oauth, which then redirects to the organizations login page.
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User will be asked to give User name and Password, these will be stored locally to the Excel cache for each user.
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I case your users are using Oauth then they need to allow our tool to handle Oauth authentication token to your ServiceNow API. This is then stored for future logins locally to the Excel cache.

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This is a view of the My reports that the Admin has published to users. Only admin user can create and modify reports. Users can only run reports and then update the data back to ServiceNow.
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So when the Admin clicks on Build report then he will be directed to the table list.
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Admin needs to have permission to following tables in ServiceNow

  1. sys_db_object
  2. sys_dictionary

These permissions are usually not enabled for normal users. That is why admin users need to build the reports for this Excel add-on.

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When creating reports the Admin selects the fields that the users ask or need for reporting or updating data for their work. The selected attributes will then appear in the Excel table.

If you want to update data in ServiceNow then you need to select also the sys_id attribute.

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Excel table columns show when the Admin selects the attributes for the report.

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The selected attributes will appear the following way and these can be unselected by clicking on them, then they will disappear from the Excel table.
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The query can be copied from the ServiceNow UI table view.
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The following picture shows that the query can be copied from the breadcrump by right-clicking it.

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Keeping performance optimal you should set meaningful results which the query should return. Usually this is 50-200 in active reports. Having too large row amount can slowdown ServiceNow significantly. Then click on Confirm, when you are finished.
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When clicking Get data the excel will be populated and then Push changes will update the same data back to ServiceNow, so it will update all rows that are shown in the excel sheet. So update can be fairly heavy. Best practice would be to remove the rows from the excel sheet that you do not want to update. Update operation needs the sys_id column. If sys_id is missing then the update will do Insert so a new record.
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