In this video, we’ll look at…
…what is a pre-publish subflow, when do you need one, and how do you define and configure
it? You can skip to these topics from the YouTube
description for this video. In Catalog Builder, catalog items are published
right away by default when the owner of the catalog item clicks submit. But you may want items to be reviewed before
they’re published. Let’s look at an example. Catalog Builder allows Beth, our catalog administrator,
to scale catalog development and speed up time to deployment…. …by delegating catalog item building tasks
to business owners within different business units, or BUs. But Beth was hearing from some managers that
they wanted her to review the items before they were published to catch typos, incorrect
descriptions, or other issues. So, Beth asks the System Administrator to
require her approval of each catalog item before they’re published. By defining and configuring a pre-publish
subflow, you can control who will review catalog items, and define what happens if the item
is rejected. Now let’s see how to define and configure
a pre-publish subflow. In our example, the subflow will submit a
request for approval from the catalog administrator when a catalog item is submitted. You can set up your subflow with any additional
steps that may be needed before the item is published, such as sending a notification
to the catalog item owner when the item is rejected or approved. Logged in as System Administrator, we access
Flow Designer to copy the template for the Catalog Builder item review subflow. Here are the inputs and outputs for this flow. The input is the catalog item. The output is the state of the catalog item,
which is the result of the pre-publish flow determining whether the submission should
continue. In our example, we want the reviewer to reference
the catalog item during the review. So while we have the sys_id of the catalog
item, we also need its record reference, which we can get using a Look Up Record action. We select the Catalog Item table and add a
condition that the sys_id of the record matches the submitted catalog item. In our example, we also want to give the reviewers
a handy URL so they can preview the item with a single click. In this demo, the administrator has set up
a flow action that generates the URL in Catalog Builder. Note that this action isn’t part of the
base system and is only provided here as an example. We’ll use this action now to get the preview
URL. For the next step, we’re going to submit
a catalog item request for reviewing and publishing catalog items. Let’s take a quick look at this catalog
item. Note that it’s used as an example in our
demo and isn’t part of the base system. You can create similar items based on your
use case. This item requires the reference to the catalog
item and its URL as input variables. Our example catalog item’s simple flow includes
an approval and a task which need to be completed before the item is published. In your specific use case, you could include
any other steps required before an item is published. Back in our subflow, we select Review and
publish catalog items for the first catalog item field. For the second catalog item field, we use
the Lookup Record step’s output to provide the reference to the submitted item. Next, we provide the preview URL of the item
by using the output of the Generate Catalog Builder URL step. Finally, we need to specify who this is requested
for—the catalog item owner. Now we need to add an action to wait for the
requested item to be inactive, meaning the approver has approved or rejected the request. First, we select the requested item, … …then we set the condition that active is
false. Now we need to add flow logic to direct the
flow when the catalog item is approved, or rejected. We set a condition that if the requested item
state is closed complete, … …then we set the state of the subflow to
completed. Now we add flow logic to end the flow. Finally, let’s add an Else statement. If the item isn’t approved, we set the State
of the subflow to Failed. This will ensure that the item isn’t published
and goes back to the draft state. Note that you could add an action here to
send a notification to the catalog item owner that the item was rejected. And we add flow logic to end the flow when
it fails. Because we’ve already assigned the subflow
outputs within the if statement, we delete this step at the end. Now let’s save the flow, publish it, and
copy its sys_id from the URL. We’ll use the sys_id to set the property
specifying the subflow that needs to be used when publishing a catalog item. The first time you set up a pre-publish subflow,
you need to create the item review flow property. In the System Properties list, we create the
new property, and paste the sys_id into the Valuce field. Now whenever a catalog item owner submits
a catalog item, the flow will be triggered. Let’s test out our subflow. We’re logged in as Adela, who made a change
to this catalog item, and we submit it. When we return to our dashboard, we can see
that the item is In Review. Now let’s log in as Beth to review the approval
request in Agent Workspace. And here’s the request. Under variables, we can see the catalog item
name, and the link to preview it. The item looks good, so let’s approve it. After the approverin this case, the catalog
administratorapproves the request, the catalog item’s state changes to published. If the approver rejects the request, the item
along with its changes goes back to the Draft state, but the changes are not reflected in
the published item. For more information, see our product documentation,
knowledge base, or podcast. Or ask a question in the ServiceNow Community.