5.3: Flow Designer Flashcards
What is Flow Designer?
Flow Designer is a non-technical interface for building and enabling process automation capabilities, known as flows.
Navigate to All > Process Automation > Flow Designer.
Flows automate business logic for a particular application or process such as approvals, tasks, notifications, and record operations.
Benefi ts of Using Flows
- Single environment to build and visualize business processes
- Configuration and runtime information available to create, operate, and troubleshoot flows from a single interface
- Prov ides natural -language-descript ions o f flow logic
- Promotes process automation by enabling subject matter experts to develop and share reusable actions
- Allows extending Flow Designer content by subscribing to Integration Hub or installing spokes
- Create a flow with an SLA Task trigger
Workflow Migration Considerations
Generally speaking, workflows are being deprecated. However, there are still lingering use cases. For example, Know ledge i s one area w here a workflow is still used. There are only t w o workflows for Knowledge and t hey are very rarely changed or augment ed. In situations like serv ice catalogs, where you may have hundreds of items with many associated flows, moving forward, Flow Designer flows are a preferred approach. All future investment i s being done in Flow Designer. Workflow w ill remain a support ed product , however, no additional feature improvements are planned. 267
The diagramming view offers features for working with your flow in a visual diagram. Enable the flow diagramming view of a flow to gain these benefits.
- Add and edit Flow Designer components within specific paths of a flow.
- See the branches and paths a flow can follow.
- See the relationships between Flow Designer components.
Supported flow components The flow diagramming view only displays flows with these trigger types.
- Record triggers
- Date triggers
- Inbound email
- Service Catalog
- SLA Task
The flow diagramming view only displays flows containing these flow logic types.
- Call a Workflow
- Do the following in parallel
- Dynamic Flows
- Else If
- End Flow
- For Each
- Get Flow Outputs
- If
- Set Flow Variables
- Wait for a duration of time 268
Flow Components: Triggers
can be record-based, date-based, or application-based.
* Record-based triggers run a flow after a record has been created or updated.
* Date-based triggers run a flow at the specified date and time or at scheduled intervals.
* Application-based triggers start a flow when application-specific conditions are met.
Triggers instantiate the flow and can be record-based, date-based, or application-based.
- Record-based triggers run a flow after a record has been created, updated, or deleted. When using a record-based trigger, the triggering record can be used later in the flow as input for actions.
- Date-based triggers run a flow at the specified date and time: daily, weekly, monthly, etc. The execution time can be used as an input for actions in the flow.
- Application-based triggers are added when the associated application spoke* is
- activated. In some instances, a plug-in might need to be activated as well (All > System Definition > Plugins).
*A spoke
contains Flow Designer triggers and actions dedicated to a particular application. For example, the ITSM Spoke contains actions for managing Task records such as the Create Task action. Spokes are activated when their parent application is activated.
Flow Components: Triggers and Conditions
A flow can include triggers and conditions.
Trigger: An activity that initiates the flow, such as a record created in a specified table or a scheduled job.
Conditions: Statements that determine when or how an action runs. For example, run an action only if a field is over a certain value.
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Flow Components: Actions
are operations executed by the system, such as looking up a record, updating a field value, requesting an approval, or logging a value.
In Flow Designer, under Actions
you can view the most recent and most popular actions that have been used in the last 7 days for all Flow Designer users.
Some ServiceNow Core actions include:
- Ask for Approval – create approvals on any record, including rules for an approval, rejection, or cancellation, and a due date
- Create Record – create a record on any table with configurable fields and field values
- Delete Record - delete a record on any table * Look Up Record – look up a single record on any table, confirming w het her it exists and using the information from the record in subsequent actions within the flow
- Wait for Condition - Pause the flow until the record conditions are met. For example, wait for the State to change to Pending…and many more.
NOTE: Under Not Installed Spokes
the system displays spokes available in the Servicenow Store based on compatibility with the Servicenow version and application dependency on Flow Designer. 271
Flow Components: Data
Each time you add an action to a flow, Flow Designer adds a data pill to store its results.
The Data section of the Flow Designer contains data pills that can be used in subsequent actions. To reference the data stored in the data pill, drag and drop the data pill from the Data section to the appropriate field in the flow or click on the Data Pill Picker icon.
