I've been exploring the new Flow Templates capabilities in San Diego and like the idea of making automations available to non-admin or citizen developers. I think this concept of making workflows re-usable and easy to implement by non-administrators is a game changer, especially for organizations with a never-ending backlog and long wait times for business process automation.

The product documentation shows screenshots of two potential use cases: change approvals and catalog requests.

I was trying to think of another example where Flow Templates would be useful so I could better explain it to customers. I came up with the following use case where a workflow could be templatized for re-use.

• A flow that escalates an incident to a specific assignment group by posting a message to Microsoft Teams. If the incident is critical (priority=1) then it also creates a dedicated Teams channel, posts a message there and sends an SMS to the assignment group manager.

My first thought was different assignment groups may want to use the same flow but make modifications specific to their team. Then I expanded that to non-IT groups that may want a similar escalation process for their cases, requests or other task records.

With Flow Template Builder and App Engine Studio, an administrator can make the template available for re-use and configure it in such a way to prompt the "re-user" for assignment group details, alternative conditions, etc.

Below are three videos that show this scenario in action.

1. Saving the flow as a template
2. Configuring the flow template to solicit user input
3. Using the flow template as an automation in App Engine Studio