Activity definitions
Summarize
Summary of Activity Definitions
Activity definitions are crucial for outlining how activities within your playbook acquire necessary data during execution. They provide default configurations and values, ensuring activities run smoothly when triggered. You can access these definitions via the Activity Definitions section in Process Automation Administration.
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Key Features
- Basic Fields: Each definition includes a label, table name, application scope, and an optional description.
- Automation Plan: Specifies the Flow Designer flow or action and needed inputs, with visibility options for activity inputs based on user roles.
- Activity Experience: Defines how an activity renders as a card in a Playbook, including the experience type and associated record data.
- Dynamic Mapping: Use the data pill picker to link associated records dynamically, ensuring that relevant data is displayed at runtime.
- Action Assignment: Allows the addition of Playbook actions that can perform various tasks displayed as buttons in the Playbook card.
- Design Considerations: Recommendations to avoid unintended flow triggers and to set default input values for efficiency.
Key Outcomes
By leveraging activity definitions, ServiceNow customers can create efficient and user-friendly playbooks. This functionality minimizes setup complexity, enhances user experience, and allows for tailored automation experiences. Proper configuration of activity definitions leads to smoother operations and improved workflow management within the ServiceNow platform.
Activity definitions describe how the activities in your playbook get the data that they need when your playbook runs.
Activity definitions provide default configurations and values for your activities so that they can run properly when your playbook is triggered. Each activity definition contains some basic configuration details, as well as an automation plan and activity experience.
The Activity Definition [sys_pd_activity_definition] table lists the definitions for the activities that you can add to a playbook in Workflow Studio. To access these activity definitions, navigate to .
Fields
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
| Label | Name of the activity to display to users in Workflow Studio. |
| Table | Name of the table whose records the activity can access as inputs. Typically, this table is either the Task [task] or Global [global] table. |
| Application | Application scope that the activity can run in. |
| Accessible From | Options include:
|
| Description | Optional description for the activity. |
Automation plan
- The Flow Designer flow or action, which drives the activity's automation
- The activity's inputs, which are the data that the activity needs to run yourplaybook
Activity designers can configure the visibility of each activity input.
- Include in standard modal
- Hides the input from the properties panel. Playbook designers can only see the input from the standard modal when they select the Show advanced properties option.
- Include in standard modal and configuration panel
- Displays the input in the properties panel. Playbook designers can also see the input from the standard modal when they select the Show advanced properties option.
- Admin visibility only
- Hides the input from users who do not have the admin or pd_admin roles.
Activity experience
- Experience type
- An experience type defines the data, or properties, that describe how the activity renders as a playbook card at runtime. For example, a Record experience type tells the system that the activity can display a title, tagline, description, footer, and service level agreement (SLA) information in the Playbook card when your activated playbook runs. For more information, see UI Layouts.
- Associated record
- The associated record defines the record whose data can render within a Playbook card at runtime. The associated record is dynamic, which means that it changes frequently as the playbook progresses. Because of this dynamic nature, you may want to use the data pill picker (
) to map the associated record to output record data within the underlying subflow or action specified in the automation plan. - Data to render in the Playbook card
- You can specify the data to render in the Playbook card in the sections under the Associated Record section. To add dynamic data to fields that render in this user-facing view, use the data pill picker () next to a data field and navigate, or dot-walk, to the appropriate data pill. The data pill should point to data within the subflow or action specified in the activity definition's automation plan.Note:An activity experience contains many sections where you can specify the data to appear within the Playbook card. These sections vary depending on the experience type that you select. For example, a Record experience type has Details, Form, Attachments, and Features sections, while a Knowledge experience type has Knowledge, Details, and Features sections. For more information, see UI Layouts.
- Actions to render in the Playbook card
You can specify the Playbook actions that you want to render in an activity's Playbook card using the Playbook Experience Action Assignment Map related list. A Playbook action displays as a button in the Playbook card's footer. Playbook actions can run server scripts, dispatch client actions, or render UI components. For more information, see Custom Playbook actions.
To add a Playbook action to your activity definition, select New in the Playbook Experience Action Assignment Map related list. Then, choose a Playbook action from the Action Assignment list. Next, choose a Playbook user experience that you want the Playbook action to appear in from the Playbook Experience list, and then click Submit.
Design considerations
- Avoid calling triggered Flow Designer flows in an activity's automation plan
- To prevent unintentionally running a flow outside of Playbooks, you can use only subflows or actions in activity automation plans. Alternatively, you can set the flow's trigger to only run if not already running. For more information, see Flow Designer trigger types.
- Specify default input values in your activity definitions
- Preconfiguring default input values for your activity definitions reduces the time and complexity needed for a playbook owner to create a playbook.