this video is an overview of flow designer a workflow creator for the now platform that lets you automate workflows without writing any code let's look at the basics of using flow designer to build test and run flows so what is a flow it's an automated process that's triggered by an event instead of updating hundreds of records by hand a flow can update those records for you automatically to build a flow you'll need a trigger and actions you can also use flow logic to control how the actions in your flow run let's look at these components in more detail you begin building your flow by adding a trigger a trigger is what kicks off the automation in your flow flows can be triggered when changes to records are made or on a set schedule like daily weekly or monthly there are also application specific triggers like when a user submits a service catalog request or even when your instance makes a rest api call to an external system an action performs automated operations on the now platform flow designer gives you a library of actions for processes and operations like sending notifications asking for approvals or fulfilling service catalog requests you can even use actions that integrate with third-party systems by installing integration hub spokes as you add a trigger and actions to your flow you'll see the trigger in each action's output data in the data panel you can use these data pills as inputs for other actions for example if we create a task record we can use the task record output data pill as the record input in an ask for approval action lastly flow logic lets you control how and when the actions in your flow run for example the if flow logic runs an action when certain conditions are met now that we know how flow designer works let's build a flow let's create a flow to ask for a manager's approval for a service catalog item request where the price is more than one thousand dollars first let's give our flow a name here we have the option to take a guided tour of flow designer this is helpful to first-time users and offers insight on how to navigate the product as you build your flow but we'll skip it for now first let's select our trigger for our flow we'll want to choose a service catalog trigger so that our flow runs whenever a user submits a service catalog item request next let's add an action to our flow this action will send an email to the user who submitted the service catalog item request to let them know we're working on their request here we'll select send email from the data panel we'll drag and drop the requested item record data pill into the target record field then we'll navigate to the email data pill and drag it into the to field then we'll add our subject and message and we're done lastly we'll add the if flow logic and an action to ask for a manager's approval if the price of the requested item is greater than one thousand dollars let's go ahead and add the if condition to our flow from the data panel we select the data pill we want to use in this case price and drag it over to our condition builder then we'll select the greater than modifier and enter 1000 for the price of the requested item alternatively we can click here and dot walk to the proper data record next we'll add an action to ask for a manager's approval for our action we'll use ask for approval and again we'll use the requested item record data pill for the choose approval rule let's select anyone approves then we'll navigate to the manager data pill to specify that a manager must make the approval and here's our flow before we activate our flow we'll test it to make sure it'll run without any errors when the test is done we can check out the flow's execution details here we can zoom into each action in our flow to see if there are any errors and find out how to fix them we'll select activate to set our flow's state to active now the flow will run when it's triggered we can check out the history of when our flow ran by selecting executions now that you have the basics down you can start using flow designer to build test and run your own flows for more information see our product documentation knowledge base or podcast or ask a question in the servicenow community