this episode is brought to you by sacon which is on my list of apps with the most potential for game-changing savings talk to your organization's mobility manager and they'll tell you the nightmare of managing multiple carriers per country each with their own offerings contracts and integrations sake sakon abstracts and manages this for you eliminating the swivel chair mobility management work and giving you asset and configuration data you can trust sakon is mobility managed check the description below hey everyone welcome back to another servicenow toolbox my name is robert fedoric it is so good to have you here now you've already seen me demonstrate how you can replace inbound email actions completely with flow designer check up here for a link to that video now there was a time where i thought maybe you could do the same thing with scheduled jobs as well but reality is a little bit more complicated than i thought so let's put schedule jobs and flow designer in the ring together for some more combat round one scheduling when fights how do flow designers schedule jobs compare when determining when to run schedule jobs can run daily weekly monthly periodically once and on demand flow designer can run daily weekly monthly once and repeatedly with repeatedly having the same interface as periodically from the scheduled jobs but before we say they're the same schedule job allows you to pick a specific time zone and flow designer does not advantage schedule jobs schedule job also has the scripted condition which adds a ton of nuance for deciding when you want this thing to run sure you can argue that you can wrap your flow designer in a giant if statement but even then you're using condition builder and not a raw script handy but not as much nuance since you get the time zone option and the scripted condition when it comes to scheduling schedule jobs wins round two scheduling reports flights schedule jobs has its own dedicated interface when you want to schedule a report it asks for things like the users and groups you want to receive it the subject line whether or not you want to zip the file contents and many other parts of information we'd expect when we're trying to email something to someone flow designer does not since flow designer has no answer for scheduled job in this round schedule jobs wins round three scheduling the creation of a record fight schedule jobs can be configured to create a record and one of the added benefits is that you can use a template in this creation flow designer does not have this ability doesn't mean it can't come close though you can always use the create record flow action and fill in the field the fields manually that you would have done with a template now what i like about flow designer is that it can create any type of record not just those that you've built templates for and you have more nuance about how you populate those fields since you can drag information from any of the other flow designer activities and you could do this without being a pro code developer another advantage for flow designer is that you can update records instead of create them or even delete them since flow designer can create any type of record and at least simulate the template functionality and update or delete records to boot when it comes to scheduled record creation flow designer wins round four scheduled scripting now i'd say scheduled scripting is the biggest use case for scheduled jobs as we'd expect scheduled jobs has a scripting interface but what does flow designer give you access to everything and the glorious part is you don't need to be a pro code developer in order to build cool flows on a scheduled basis now you might be arguing yeah but if i need pro code development then isn't it better that i have the script interface on schedule jobs but the thing is you can create custom actions that execute script in flow design you apply the same pro code benefits except now the action is reusable so when it comes to scheduled scripting flow designer wins by a long shot route 5 error handling fight with scheduled jobs you're gonna have to rely on traditional script-based troubleshooting techniques such as log statements info warn error messages as well as log points in order to figure out what's going on in the script however flow designer has a couple unique advantages here first is the error handling option which allows you to take actions if the flow itself fails as of san diego you also have the tri-flow logic with tri-flow logic you have a path that you wish to execute and an alternative path if that top path doesn't execute and it continues running the flow afterwards this is super beneficial because in scheduled jobs if that script fails the whole thing fails and if i don't have log statements i don't know why it failed with flow designer i can execute a whole different flow if the first part of the flow doesn't work on top of that with the test function and being able to see all this stuff at runtime it's just a more exquisite interface for figuring out if this thing is going to work at all before i even publish it so when it comes to error handling by a long shot round six integration fights now it's no secret that the future is gonna be more integrated in the past we'd have to build all the integration components throughout the different modules in servicenow and then call them via script in our scheduled job flow designer on the other hand has distinct advantages due to integration hub integration hub has a large and growing library of integrations you can simply drag and drop onto the flow so you don't necessarily have to be a pro code developer in order to utilize them they don't need to know how the sausages are made in the sausage factory this makes your building of flows more accessible to a wider range of users plus because of those fail-over capabilities we saw in round five with the tri-flow logic that means when it comes to integrations flow designer wins now let's take it to the judge's scorecards so we see if you need to schedule a report scheduled jobs is still the dominant feature when it comes to scheduling schedule jobs has a slight advantage with the use of that scripted condition and the time zone picker but in all other areas flow designer completely dominates which is why flow designer is where i go first if i need to do something on a scheduled basis hope this provided you with some wisdom and remember i'm still willing to pay for help in generating content for this playlist thanks again and we'll see you on the next one if you're a servicenow expert looking for better opportunities but maybe your resume or linkedin profile isn't doing you justice reach out to me via linkedin or the email pictured here as i offer both career coaching and recruitment services and if you're a servicenow customer or partner you heard that right robert fedoric now does servicenow recruiting with a 1 500 subscriber youtube channel and mailing list and thousands of linkedin followers let's make sure your open positions get first go with the prodigious pool of servicenow resources reach out via the emailed picture here