Exploring Flow recommendations

  • Release version: Yokohama
  • Updated August 7, 2025
  • 2 minutes to read
  • Summarize
    Summarized using AI
    This content was generated using new OpenAI-powered functionality. Results are provided on an as is basis and are not guaranteed to be accurate or complete.

    Summary of Exploring Flow recommendations

    ServiceNow’s Flow recommendations feature, introduced in the Yokohama release, assists users in building workflows by providing AI-generated suggestions for the next component to add. These recommendations are based on the current position within the flow and the names of preceding flow components, helping to streamline flow creation and enhance productivity within Workflow Studio.

    Show full answer Show less

    Key Features

    • AI-Generated Suggestions: The system offers one to five recommended next steps, including actions, flow logic, and subflows available within ServiceNow. Recommendations do not include custom user-generated components or actions from ServiceNow Store spokes.
    • Generative AI Model Training: The underlying AI model is pre-trained on internal ServiceNow flows to identify relevant flow components based on prior context, improving the relevance of suggestions.
    • Display and Control: Recommendations appear automatically in both diagramming and text views of Workflow Studio, specifically at the flow’s last node. Users can disable these suggestions on a per-flow basis via the "Show recommendations" flow preference setting.
    • AI Limitations and Responsibility: As the feature leverages evolving AI and machine learning technologies, outputs may not always be accurate or complete. ServiceNow advises customers to rigorously test recommendations, maintain human oversight, and avoid sole reliance on AI for critical decisions, especially in sensitive domains such as healthcare, finance, or security.

    Practical Benefits for ServiceNow Customers

    This feature accelerates workflow development by providing context-sensitive next-step components, reducing manual search and guesswork. It helps maintain consistency and leverages best practices learned from existing flows. However, customers should balance convenience with careful validation to ensure flow accuracy and appropriateness for their business needs.

    Select the next component in your flow from a list of AI-generated recommendations. The system generates recommendations based on the current position in the flow and the flow component names listed before.

    Figure 1. Example flow recommendations
    Five sample Flow recommendations for an empty flow

    The model uses the name of the flow components that come before to generate one to five recommendations for the next step of the flow. If there are no recommendations listed, then there are no flow components that meet the required relevance threshold.

    The system can only recommend actions, flow logic, and subflows that are available from ServiceNow. Recommendations can’t include user-generated flow components such as custom actions, nor can recommendations include actions from ServiceNow Store spokes.

    Generative AI model training

    This Generative AI large language model was pre-trained with internal ServiceNow flows to learn flow creation patterns. The goal was to understand what flow components are most relevant for a certain position in a flow given the content before.

    Flow preference

    Figure 2. Flow preferences
    Flow preference to show recommendations

    By default, Workflow Studio shows flow recommendations as you build a flow. You can hide these recommendations on a flow by flow basis by turning off the Show recommendations flow preference. See User preferences for flows for more information.

    Recommendations in diagramming view

    Workflow Studio shows recommendations from the flow diagramming view while you're editing a flow. In diagramming view, the last node of the flow always shows a list of recommendations. This experience matches the behavior of the text view, which also always shows a list of recommendations at the end of the flow.