# Best Practice for Handling Approval Delays in Ansible–ServiceNow Integration?

**URL:** <https://forum.ansible.com/t/best-practice-for-handling-approval-delays-in-ansible-servicenow-integration/43799>\
**Category:** Get Help\
**Tags:** servicenow\
**Created:** [July 9, 2025, 1:02pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/best-practice-for-handling-approval-delays-in-ansible-servicenow-integration/43799 "2025-07-09T13:02:32Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![benof](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bcef8e/32.png) [@benof](https://forum.ansible.com/u/benof)\
**Post date:** [July 9, 2025, 1:02pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/best-practice-for-handling-approval-delays-in-ansible-servicenow-integration/43799/1 "2025-07-09T13:02:33Z")

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Hello

We have integrated Ansible with ServiceNow to automate infrastructure provisioning & change requests but one recurring issue is how to handle approval delays gracefully. 🙂 When a playbook triggers a ServiceNow change request that requires managerial / CAB approval; it often stalls the workflow. Right now; we pause the job manually / retry later but that’s not scalable in a busy DevOps pipeline. 😇

We are looking for ways to design the workflow to wait intelligently for approval perhaps using polling, webhooks / custom middleware that checks the ticket status & resumes the playbook only when it’s approved. 🤔Has anyone implemented this with success? 🤔Ideally; we would like to avoid complex hacks or custom scripts unless absolutely necessary. I have checked [RedHat Ansible integration with ServiceNow - ServiceNow Community](https://www.servicenow.com/community/developer-forum/redhat-ansible-integration-with-servicenow/td-p/2931918) guide related to this.

This led us to review documentation on ITSM automation & while testing ideas I also came across a guide explaining [What is Servicenow](https://www.igmguru.com/blog/what-is-servicenow), which helped reframe how we think about workflow dependencies. 😇 If anyone has a reference architecture; example playbook / even tips for timeout handling we would love to learn from your approach.

Thank you !! 🙂

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**Author:** ![mikemorency](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/ansible/user_avatar/forum.ansible.com/mikemorency/32/2672_2.png) [@mikemorency](https://forum.ansible.com/u/mikemorency)\
**Post date:** [July 11, 2025, 1:43pm UTC](https://forum.ansible.com/t/best-practice-for-handling-approval-delays-in-ansible-servicenow-integration/43799/2 "2025-07-11T13:43:03Z")

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Hi. Bit of a disclaimer, I have never actually used ServiceNow as part of my job, but I am a maintainer on the ServiceNow collection ATM.

Would you be able to break the process up, for example  
Step 1: playbook triggers a ServiceNow change request that requires managerial / CAB approval, then ends  
Step 2: Manager/CAB approves, and ServiceNow uses a callback/webhook to trigger the next playbook

Another idea would be to have a job that runs every X minutes, hours, whatever and uses the [change\_request\_info](https://galaxy.ansible.com/ui/repo/published/servicenow/itsm/content/module/change_request_info/) module to check for tickets that have exited the approval stage. Then that job could kick off the next job(s), depending on what tickets are ready