Workflow activities reference

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  • Updated March 12, 2026
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    Summary of Workflow activities reference

    This reference provides an organized overview of the various types of workflow activities available in ServiceNow, explaining their purposes and execution contexts. Workflow activities enable automation of tasks such as running scripts, sending notifications, managing approvals, and controlling workflow paths. Understanding these activities helps you design and manage effective workflows that run under the correct user sessions depending on how the workflow is initiated.

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    Activity Categories and Their Functions

    • Approval and Rollback Activities: Manage approvals and rollbacks within workflows. Activities like Approval Action, Approval Coordinator, and Manual Approvals generate and track approval tasks. Approval activities run as the user whose actions meet the approval or rejection conditions.
    • Condition Activities: Provide branching logic based on conditions or events, such as If, Switch, Wait for Condition, and Wait for WF Event activities. These activities wait for specified conditions or events to advance the workflow.
    • Notify Activities: Manage phone calls and SMS messaging using Notify, including forwarding calls, playing audio, recording, sending SMS, and managing call queues and conferences.
    • Notification Activities: Send email or SMS notifications and create events in the event queue to notify users of workflow events.
    • Subflow Activities: Enable launching and managing subflows within a parent workflow, allowing complex workflow orchestration.
    • Task Activities: Create and modify task records such as incidents or service catalog tasks, including adding worknotes and attachments.
    • Timer Activities: Pause workflows for specified durations or SLA-based percentages, running as the System user via the scheduler.
    • Utility Activities: Control workflow execution paths and logging, including branching, joining, locking, unlocking, writing log messages, running scripts, setting record values, and handling REST/SOAP messages.
    • Orchestration Activities: If Orchestration is enabled, additional activity packs (Active Directory, PowerShell, Puppet) and templates allow creation of custom activities to extend workflow functionality.

    Practical Benefits for ServiceNow Customers

    By leveraging this comprehensive set of workflow activities, you can automate complex business processes, ensure proper approval management, integrate communications via Notify, control workflow execution paths, and extend workflows with orchestration capabilities. Understanding the execution context of each activity ensures security and accuracy in process automation. Custom activity templates provided by Orchestration further empower you to tailor workflows to your unique organizational needs.

    Workflow activity reference, organized by category.

    Each activity performs a different task, such as running a script, sending notifications, or requesting approvals.

    Workflow runs activities as the user session that starts or advances them. Workflows started from record operations will run activities as the user session that performed the record operation. Workflows started from schedules or restarted from timers run activities as the System user. Workflows started from script calls run activities as the user session that started the script.

    Approval and rollback activities

    Approval and rollback activities generate and manage approvals. Not all workflows can include approval activities. For more information, read Approval and rollback workflow activities.
    Note:
    Approval activities run as the user whose actions match the approve or reject conditions the workflow was waiting for and advances the workflow.
    Table 1. Approval and rollback activities
    Activity Description
    Approval Action workflow activity The Approval Action activity performs an approval action on the current task.
    Approval Coordinator workflow activity The Approval Coordinator activity creates an approval whose outcome depends on the outcome of one or more child activities, including one or more Approval - User, Approval - Group, and/or Manual Approval activities.
    Approval - Group workflow activity The Approval - Group activity creates approval records for each member of a specified group.
    Approval - User workflow activity The Approval - User activity creates one or more individual user approvals.
    Generate workflow activity The Generate activity immediately creates task or approval records from any task or approval activities placed after the Generate activity in the workflow path. These pre-generated tasks and approvals start when the task and approval activities are reached during flow execution. This allows a task to have a set of associated pre-generated sequential tasks or approvals, but still require them to be completed in order.
    Manual Approvals workflow activity The Manual Approvals activity watches and manages any approvals that users add manually outside of the workflow process. This activity only selects approvals that are in the Not requested state.
    Rollback To workflow activity The Rollback To activity transitions directly to the activity specified by the outgoing transition line arrow.

    Condition activities

    Condition activities provide conditional branching and logical operation functionality for workflows.
    Note:
    Condition activities run as the user whose actions match the conditions the workflow was waiting for and advances the workflow.
    Table 2. Condition activities
    Activity Description
    If workflow activity The If activity checks a condition or script to determine if a Yes or No transition should be taken.
    Switch workflow activity The Switch activity checks if the value of a passed field or variable is equivalent to one of several case values.
    Wait for condition workflow activity The Wait for condition activity causes the workflow to wait at this activity until the current record matches the specified condition.
    Wait for WF Event workflow activity The Wait for WF Event activity causes the workflow to wait at this activity until the specified event is fired.

    Notify activities

    Notify workflow activities manage calls and SMS messages in Notify.

    Table 3. Notify activities
    Activity Description
    Forward call workflow activity The Forward Call activity forwards a Notify call to an E.164-compliant phone number.
    Input workflow activity The Input activity creates a phone menu by presenting a list of options on a Notify call.
    Hangup workflow activity The Hangup activity disconnects an active Notify phone call.
    Play workflow activity The Play activity plays a sound file on a Notify call.
    Record workflow activity The Record workflow activity records audio from a user on a Notify call.
    Reject workflow The Reject workflow activity rejects an incoming Notify call.
    Say workflow activity The say workflow activity allows you to play a message, using text to speech, on a Notify call.
    Forward to notify client workflow activity The forward to notify client workflow activity connects a phone call to a Notify WebRTC client.
    Call workflow activity The Call activity makes outbound phone calls using a Notify workflow. This workflow activity can be added to any table.
    Join conference call workflow activity The Join Conference Call activity connects an incoming or outgoing call to a Notify conference call.
    Send SMS workflow activity The send SMS workflow activity to send short text messages using Notify to users' phones. This workflow activity can be added to any table.
    Queue workflow activity The Queue activity places an active Notify call in a queue.

    Notification activities

    Notification workflow activities notify users of events that occur during the workflow.

    Table 4. Notification activities
    Activity Description
    Create Event workflow activity The Create Event activity adds an event to the event queue, but does not immediately fire the event.
    Notification workflow activity The Notification activity sends an email or SMS message to specified users or groups.

    Subflow activities

    Subflow activities run and manage workflows from a parent workflow.

    Table 5. Subflow activities
    Activity Description
    Parallel Flow Launcher workflow activity The Parallel Flow Launcher activity launches multiple subflows in parallel.

    Task activities

    Task activities create and modify workflow tasks.
    Note:
    Task activities run as the user whose actions complete the task the workflow was waiting for and advances the workflow.
    Table 6. Task activities
    Activity Description
    Add Worknote workflow activity The Add Worknote activity adds text to the Worknotes field of the current incident record.
    Attachment Note workflow activity The Attachment Note activity adds an attachment to the current record.
    Catalog Task workflow activity The Catalog Task activity creates a service catalog task record.
    Create Task workflow activity The Create Task activity generates a record on any of the tables that extend Task [task].

    Timer activities

    Timer activities pause workflows for set periods of time.
    Note:
    Timer activities run as the System user because the system scheduler advances the workflow.
    Table 7. Timer activities
    Activity Description
    SLA Percentage Timer workflow activity The SLA Percentage Timer activity pauses the workflow for a duration equal to a percentage of an SLA.
    Timer workflow activity The Timer activity pauses the workflow for a specified period of time.

    Utility activities

    Utility activities provide controls over the path of the workflow, and other useful tools.

    Table 8. Utility activities
    Activity Description
    Branch workflow activity The Branch activity splits the workflow into multiple transition paths from a single activity.
    Join workflow activity The Join activity unites multiple execution paths into one transition.
    Lock workflow activity The Lock activity prevents other instances of this workflow from continuing past this activity until the lock is released.
    Log Message workflow activity The Log Message activity writes a message to the workflow log.
    Log Trace Message workflow activity The Log Trace Message activity writes a trace message to the workflow log.
    REST Message legacy workflow activity The legacy REST Message activity enables an administrator to override the REST endpoint or supply the variables configured in the REST Message module.
    Return Value workflow activity The Return Value activity returns a value to a parent workflow, when run from a subflow.
    Run Script workflow activity The Run Script activity runs the specified script in the scope of the workflow version.
    Set Values workflow activity The Set Values activity sets values on the current record when the workflow quiesces or ends.
    SOAP Message legacy workflow activity The legacy SOAP Message activity uses SOAP messages defined in the System Web Services plugin and can call the messages using a MID Server.
    Turnstile workflow activity The Turnstile activity limits how many times a workflow can pass through the same point.
    Unlock workflow activity The Unlock activity releases a lock that was previously placed by the Lock activity.

    Activities provided with Orchestration

    The following activities are included with Orchestration.
    • Active Directory activity pack
    • Orchestration activities
    • PowerShell activities
    • Puppet activities

    Templates provided for creating custom activities

    If Orchestration is active on your system, users with the proper roles can create custom activities using the ServiceNow Orchestration activity designer. For information about the templates Orchestration provides for creating custom activities that you can upload to the ServiceNow Store, see Orchestration custom activity templates