Working with automation in Creator Studio
Summarize
Summary of Working with Automation in Creator Studio
Automation in Creator Studio simplifies and streamlines tasks for fulfillers by utilizing playbooks to assign tasks automatically based on request types. This process enhances customer experience and ensures consistency across business processes.
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Key Features
- Playbooks: Automated workflows that guide users through tasks based on triggers, allowing for efficient task management.
- Triggers: Events that initiate playbooks, such as record status changes or form submissions.
- Activities: Actions taken during a playbook, like task assignments or approval requests.
- Decisions: Conditional paths that alter workflow based on specific criteria.
- Parallel Processes: Activities that occur simultaneously, enhancing workflow efficiency.
- Board and Diagram Views: Visualization tools for managing playbooks, with Diagram view for editing decisions and Board view for rearranging activities.
Key Outcomes
By implementing automation through playbooks, customers can expect:
- Improved task assignment and fulfillment processes.
- Streamlined workflows that reduce manual interventions.
- Clear guidance for fulfillers on next steps in task completion.
- Efficient reuse of activities and decisions across different workflows.
Automation facilitates a more organized and effective approach to task management within ServiceNow, ultimately leading to enhanced operational efficiency and user satisfaction.
How do you simplify and streamline tasks for fulfillers? Use automation! For example, you can have a task assigned automatically to someone based on what type of request it is. We’ll use playbooks to accomplish adding this automation to your app.
- Use playbooks to guide agents and fulfillers through processes from start to finish, improving customer experience and the way tasks are carried out.
- Create a consistent process for your tasks or activities to be carried out.
- Consolidate business decisions and processes across the organization.
Playbooks are a set of activities that occur based on a trigger. Think of them like a set of if-then statements. If this happens, then that will happen. You can add multiple playbooks to an app if you need to.
- Activity
- Activities in a playbook complete automated tasks, such as obtaining approvals and assigning records.
- Automation
- Tasks or requests moving through a workflow without manual intervention.
- Playbook
- A set of actions based on an initiating action called a trigger.
- Record
- A task or request that needs to be acted on. All rows in ServiceNow tables are individual records. Records have different states depending on what actions have been taken.
- Trigger
- The event that starts making the playbook run.
- Workflow
- The path a record takes from creation to completion.
What is automation?
- Add activities to your automation to define the workflow’s path.
- Add decisions to create different paths, or branches, depending on the decision's outcome.
- Automatically start or trigger changes for different types of records, such as task assignments.
- Reuse activities and business decisions from other workflows you’ve already created.
- Clearly show the next steps that fulfillers must take to move to the next step of completing the record’s life cycle.
- Request approval for a task
- Assign the task to someone
- Create a new task as a next step
You can also use a placeholder activity for more complex activities that must be configured outside of Creator Studio. Configure complex activities in a different tool called Workflow Studio.
What goes into building automation?
| Concept | Description |
|---|---|
| Playbook | An automatic workflow that guides users through tasks based on record status changes. Find out more about creating playbooks in Add an automated playbook to an app in Creator Studio. |
| Trigger | The event that specifies when the playbook should start running, such as when a form is submitted or updated to a specific status. Check out Edit the trigger for a playbook in Creator Studio for more information. |
| Activity | The thing that happens during the playbook, such as assigning a task or requiring approval. Note:
If you're already familiar with optional activities in playbooks, that’s great! However, to keep automations streamlined and simple, Creator Studio doesn't support optional activities. If you need to create optional activities, you can add a placeholder activity in Creator Studio and then edit the placeholder in Workflow Studio. Learn how to add activities in Add activities to an app's playbook in Creator Studio. |
| Decision | A series of inputs, conditions, and results that create different branches, or conditional paths that users follow based on the decision's outcome. Get the scoop on adding decisions in Add a decision to an app's playbook in Creator Studio. |
| Branch | A distinct path from a decision's outcome, or what happens for each of the decision's possible choices. For more information, see Add a decision to an app's playbook in Creator Studio. |
| Parallel process | Branches for activities and stages that run in parallel to another branch of activities. Learn about parallel processes in Add a parallel process to an app's playbook in Creator Studio. |
| Connectors | Lines that connect activities and decisions in a playbook that enable you to add more activities, decisions, and parallel processes. You can drag connectors between activities to create parallel activities. |
Board and Diagram views of a playbook
Creator Studio offers two ways of working with playbooks: the Board view and the Diagram view.
This help document will primarily give instructions using the Diagram view, with alternate directions on how to complete automation tasks in the Board view.
Where do playbooks run in the ServiceNow AI Platform?
Users work on requests in the Request App Workspace on the ServiceNow AI Platform, which lists a record for each request. The playbooks run on the specified records in the app's workspace category.
Specifically, the Catalog tasks tab of the record details walks users through the activities they need to do to complete the task and close the record.