Playbook life cycle
Summarize
Summary of Playbook Life Cycle
The playbook life cycle is a visual representation of the stages and activities involved in managing cases within ServiceNow. It helps agents understand their current position in the playbook and provides guidance on completing tasks, including dependencies between stages. Administrators can configure how activities are displayed for better clarity.
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Key Features
- Stages and Activities: Each stage consists of multiple activities, with visual indicators for completion status, allowing agents to quickly assess progress.
- Playbook Actions Menu: Agents can perform various actions at both the playbook and activity levels, such as expanding/collapsing stages and requesting information from customers.
- Navigation: Agents can navigate between stages and activities based on their assigned roles, with the ability to see only the activities relevant to them.
- Keyboard Navigation: Keyboard shortcuts facilitate quick navigation, enhancing usability.
- Filtering: Agents can filter activities based on assigned users and activity states to streamline their workflow.
- Visibility Configuration: Admins can customize which stages and activities are visible, ensuring agents can focus on relevant tasks.
Key Outcomes
By effectively utilizing the playbook life cycle, ServiceNow customers can improve case management efficiency, ensure better task tracking, and enhance collaboration between agents. The ability to configure visibility and use filtering options allows for a more tailored experience, ultimately leading to quicker resolution of cases and improved service delivery.
The playbook life cycle displays either the stages or the stages and activities included in the playbook, depending on the configured activity view. Use the playbook life cycle to gain an overview of the work to be completed for a given type of case.
The playbook life cycle provides the context as to where an agent is within the playbook, including information for each stage and activity and any dependencies between stages. For stages with multiple activities, the playbook life cycle provides step-by-step guidance for completing the stage. Administrators can configure the visibility of activities within the lifecycle.
The stages and activities in a playbook life cycle are configured using Process Automation Designer (PAD). Each playbook stage is mapped to a PAD lane and each playbook activity is mapped to a PAD activity. For more information, see Process Automation Designer lanes and activities.
Playbook stages
- An icon or progress indicator that shows if the stage is complete, in process, or pending.
- Chevrons for expanding and collapsing the stage.
- A header that includes the stage name.
- A subheader that shows the stage status:
- For completed stages, the subheader shows Complete.
- For the current stage, the subheader includes counters that show the number of activities remaining and the number of prioritized activities.
Playbook activities
- The activities in the stage.
- Icons and progress indicators that show if an activity is complete, in process, or pending.
- Indicators that denote prioritized activities.
Playbook actions
The Playbook Actions menu in the playbook header includes actions that agents can perform
at the playbook level and the activity level. Click the Playbook Actions icon (
) to access this menu.
- Expand All Stages: Expands all of the stages in the playbook.
- Collapse All Stages: Collapses all of the stages in the playbook.
- Request Info: Displays a pop-up window that the agent can use to communicate with the customer and request information about a case or case task. This action also saves the details to the case or case task activity stream. Using this action changes the state of the case or case task to Awaiting Info and pauses the SLAs and any timers.
- Info Received: Returns the case or case task to the previous state and restarts the SLAs and any timers.
Activity-level actions can vary depending on the type of activity and in which stage it appears. For example, actions are available to accept cases, create related cases, create case tasks, and propose solutions.
Navigating playbook stages and activities
Agents can use the playbook life cycle to navigate between stages and activities as assigned roles or activity security configurations permit. For example, activities such as case tasks can be assigned to different users. A user with the case task agent role can only see the case tasks that are assigned to them.
When an agent opens a playbook, it opens to the current stage and highlights the current activity. For stages with multiple activities, the current activity is the first available activity. An available activity is an activity that has a state other than Complete.
- Complete
- Open
- Pending (when the visibility of pending stages and activities is enabled)
Using keyboard navigation in a playbook
- Tab key: Use the Tab key to initiate navigation and move between stages, activities, and the playbook work area.
- Arrow keys: Use the left, right, up, and down arrow keys to navigate the fields on a playbook activity card.
- Enter key: Press the Enter key to select buttons on a playbook activity card.
Filtering playbook activities
- To filter playbook activities, select the filter icon (
) at the top of the playbook and select one or more of the following:- The assigned user
- The activity state
- To clear the filter, select the filter icon again and remove the selections.
Collapsing the playbook life-cycle panel
Collapse and expand the life-cycle panel in CSM Configurable Workspace by using the left and right chevrons on the panel divider. Collapsing the navigation panel provides agents with more space for content in the playbook work area.
Configuring stage and activity visibility
- Showing or hiding stages and activities that are pending.
- Showing or hiding stages and activities where a user does not have access.
The administrator configures these settings in the Playbook Experience record. For more information, see Configure playbook stage and activity visibility.