Flow Designer

  • Release version: Yokohama
  • Updated January 30, 2025
  • 2 minutes to read
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    Summary of Flow Designer

    Flow Designer is a ServiceNow AI Platform feature that provides a consolidated, no-code environment to automate processes such as approvals, tasks, notifications, and record operations using natural language. It is the recommended tool for developing new process flows, preferred over legacy workflows and business rules in most cases.

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    Key Features

    • Natural Language Automation: Enables process owners to design and automate workflows without coding.
    • Integration with IntegrationHub: Supports building integrations via scoped applications (spokes) for seamless connectivity to external systems.
    • Reusable and Clear Design: Supports modular flows and sub-flows to promote reuse and clarity in process automation.
    • Scoped Actions: Encourages creating actions within application scopes for better access control and reuse across applications.
    • Error Handling: Provides best practices including the use of Script Includes for centralized error management and validation of integration outputs.

    Best Practices for ServiceNow Customers

    • Choosing Flow Designer over Business Rules: Use Flow Designer unless specific business logic requires strict execution order or immediate database interaction within the same thread.
    • Design Principles: Focus flows on a single purpose, design for reusability (e.g., approvals as reusable sub-flows), and maintain clarity in language and layout.
    • Data Handling: Pass only necessary information to flows using records instead of SysIDs, avoid large data blobs, and use template objects for static and dynamic inputs.
    • Action Development: Create actions under the appropriate application scope, set access to “Accessible from all scopes” for reuse, protect actions as read-only to prevent unauthorized edits, and define specific input types with mandatory settings and default values for choice inputs.
    • IntegrationHub Usage: Create one spoke per integration system, group actions by system within spokes, use connection aliases for flexibility and versioning, and utilize features like “Save as Attachment” to streamline response handling.
    • Error Handling Strategy: Implement a Script Include to manage error messages comprehensively, validate integration outputs before use, and fail early if required inputs are missing to avoid unnecessary calls.

    Training Resources

    ServiceNow provides self-paced training modules for both Flow Designer and IntegrationHub to help customers quickly gain proficiency in building and managing automated flows and integrations.

    Flow Designer is a ServiceNow AI Platform feature that enables rich process automation capabilities in a consolidated design environment. Flow Designer enables process owners to use natural language to automate approvals, tasks, notifications, and record operations without having to code.

    Flow Designer and IntegrationHub

    For any new process flow requirements, ServiceNow recommends using Flow Designer over the legacy workflow for almost all circumstances.

    Flow Designer and Business Rules

    You should use Flow Designer instead of Business Rules unless:

    • Business logic needs to run in a specific sequence with other Business Rules. For example, new business logic needs to run after one Business Rule but before another.
    • Logic needs to execute immediately before or after writing to the database in the same thread.
    • The logic only calls a Script Include.

    When designing a flow, follow these design principles:

    • Single Purpose: Each flow should have a singular goal.
    • Reusability: Design with reusable sub-flows in mind (approval is a great example).
    • Clarity: The language and layout of a flow should make each action’s purpose clear.

    Start with a white board design of a business flow. Then build the flow action by action to align with the process. More than one flow may be required for a for a single process to keep to the design principles.

    Use the following practices when working with Flow Designer:

    • Use records, not SysIDs. Provide a guided experience with inline documentation.
    • Learn how to use template objects to work with both static and dynamic inputs.
    • Avoid passing around blobs of data unless absolutely necessary.
    • Only pass information to a flow that the flow is going to use.

    Use the following practices when working with Flow Designer Actions:

    • Always create actions under the scope of the application’s spoke, if applicable.
    • Set access to Accessible from all scopes in actions to be able to reuse actions across other apps and scopes in the future.
    • Set Protection to Read-only to avoid any unwanted edits to the actions by users.
    • Make sure inputs have a specific type.
    • Ensure that Mandatory is selected where required.
    • If using a choice input type, use a default value.

    Use the following practices when working with IntegrationHub:

    • Create one spoke per integration system. Only put actions for a single system in a spoke.
    • When creating the scoped app for the spoke, use a version naming convention that makes sense.
    • Use a connection alias instead of an inline connection. The Base URL will be automatically extracted.
    • Use connection attributes under the Alias to pass the version in a REST step giving future flexibility for versioning in the resource path.
    • Use Save as Attachment to save the content in the response instead of creating another step to save the data.
    • If the Alias is dynamic, make Alias one of the inputs and use the data pill to provide the Alias.

    Use the following practices in Flow Designer and IntegrationHub for Error Handling:

    • Create a Script Include to handle errors.
    • Write short and understandable error messages.
    • Incorporate all of the possible error messages the API returns.
    • Ensure that the outputs from the integration step are validated before using them.
    • Fail Early: If the inputs are not available, do not call the integration.

    Self-Paced Training: Flow Designer

    Self-Paced Training: IntegrationHub