hello and welcome to the service Ducks podcast I hum co-host James downs and I'm Rush here and we're here to chat about all things servicenow everyday life as a servicenow consultant new features implementation successes and perhaps more entertaining when it doesn't go quite so well [Applause] and welcome back to another episode of the service Ducks podcast James talk to me what have you been up to give us a Lowdown how's your week been have you um talking to any more ex man united Defenders like me unfortunately not no it peaked Dennis Irwin to be honest with you so um that was the peak yeah yeah it's there might be more coming up in the new year but we'll we'll soon see um my week fairly quiet to be quite honest with you um as always well I say that's always the way in the run-up to Christmas it's usually quite busy why haven't you been out to any pantos you must have been to a panto no my problem is I got my second child is um only 14 months so she would be an absolute nightmare at the panto it's uh isn't it for screaming kid screaming behind you no we'd rather not distressed to be honest I'm good um but no just usual will lead up to Christmas um a few um oh we'll tell you what I did do something very exciting is that we had uh Gone on the Polar Express so for those who have watched the film Tom Hanks um yeah so up in um Norfolk right okay um there was a nice favorite football team that what Norfolk no no chance am I allowed to yeah so that was really good we we went to this um quite derelict train station and uh there was quite a few actors so literally hundreds of people turning up to board this train um where you know the usual uh songs and dances happen up and down your kind of carriage so yeah we've got a table and they serve your hot chocolate as per the film this is pretty cool it's really good yeah and of course Santa comes in and you're essentially traveling down a couple of train stops and back again so um you know there's elves that come on board singing and dancing and great for the kids and they get a little bell afterwards so those who watch a film that know the reason why it's all right I was gonna say that's a bit stingy yeah there was an actual present they don't get a present and it's like 30 40 quid in here don't get present what you get a bell that's the whole point isn't it I don't know it's quite entertaining to be fair yeah you've just reminded me we weren't on a Santa visit at the weekend as well it's got to be done yeah um that wasn't as elaborate as that though it was uh all right that wasn't allowed it is what have I been doing this week um that what note were they've been lots of stuff yeah whether you want to know about it it's a different thing I'll tell you what I've done actually non-work related so I I can't remember what I told you but I was doing this they call it a six-pack challenge so I'm into my running right as one of my things has been since lockdown yeah and I did this six-pack challenge is basically you pay and you get six runs to do and it's all around the local area but you turn up you kind of turn up you don't really well you do know the route but you turn up and then you've got audio cues where you're going so you're kind of running through a forest and you'll say turn left all right okay yep you have to keep stopping to go oh am I going on the right yeah yeah look at the map like but um but yeah it's good fun actually it was freezing cold so you've done your first one of those sure actually excuse me yeah that was number two and it's good because you're out on your own with your own thoughts and you just get to see the surroundings like it takes you places that you perhaps never been to before does it give you enough kind of like pre-warning before the actual turn like Infinity oh yeah it's a bit like a set now 50 yards turn left or do you get there you stop and you're like which way are we going ah nope I'm going no wait I don't think I run fast enough to overshoot you know what I mean I'm not like some racing car that spreads past the Turning um no it gives you advanced warning it'll tell you like in 50 meters you're going left or right or whatever but yeah it's good fun that's my non-related um non-related non-work related thing the other thing I've been doing um which is quite interesting this week is I've been messing around with predictive intelligence okay slightly ironic given it's me but uh I've been messing around with that um the classification framework specifically so looking at um attributes on a certain record and what field can we set yeah and I gotta be honest it's frustrated me a bit this week because it seemingly it just works based on that one record right so if you've got a lot of of attributes on that one record you can say I'm gonna predict that another attribute that I want to set on the same record is X but I want to go to another record right so I want to say I don't know the attributes on the incident are XYZ therefore set another field which is on a linked record maybe a problem maybe a change right yeah and you can get at that by um database views um but yeah I was playing around with database views and it wouldn't work for me maybe I need to play a bit longer but yeah that's been um I like things like that yeah rating but how many records did you have to train for that or to make it useful accurate um I don't know about 190 000 I think yeah yeah I had more um yeah you're right actually when it was training on the database view it just kept erroring um and I kind of figured out there's that many joins and they both you may not like it so I took a different tact yeah um and I'm getting something back so it's good it's good it's always good when you're frustrated and then you overcome the hurdle yeah yeah it'd be interesting to know afterwards like what the value of doing things that way as opposed to assignment rules or you know whatever kind of rules to set Fields yeah yeah I think it's it's definitely podcast worthy to talk about predictive intelligence and I can share my good topic experience and learnings from it as well um which would be quite useful so yeah I've been playing with that um this week but we're not here to talk about predictive intelligence we're not this week get ready for it we're here to talk about the flow or not to flow they've probably found that out from the title of the podcast [Laughter] drum rolls or sudden reveals were uh yeah I tried to I tried to say it in a dramatic way you kind of ruined it for me yeah but the flow or not to flow um what does that actually mean well um obviously kicks off because I'm already talking but it's it's something that I know you and I have discussed before and it's it's come up many many times we've had flow designer for a couple of years now it's not a new thing anymore um they keep adding new features to it we all know that and we know that I'm going to call it Legacy flow it's kind of something that's there kind of sniffing about um but it's come out of favor you know all the new trainings is on Flow and Flow Design yeah but flow shouldn't be seen as a direct replacement for workflow nope but the question is in what instances do you do you use flow what decisions do you make to use flow over something perhaps such as a scheduled job or a business rule or even dare I say you know we know flow and integration Hub you've got spokes so yeah that are doing like uh web services rest calls yeah or even what decisions you make to say well I'll use flow for my rest calls over well I'm going to call kind of Legacy rest apis that you can create using script yep so there's the tagline to flow or not to flow and I think what are your thoughts yeah so my first thoughts around flow are you're right it's been around for a little while I think when it came out in Kingston it was um you know it it created this kind of those on team flow on those on team workflow are we coming back to like the Ronaldo Messi I think we are um you know the old school Pro coders um again it's another it's another one of those isn't it pro code no code who's what what team are you on um those who are very old school are very used to workflow the way it's used and the benefits of using it and it's UI and those I've been speaking to some of our our grads recently who have only known flow designer so those who have come on to servicenow and not even touched workflow yeah so just on that right just on that and I've come across that before so the teachings is and you've just you've just clarified it there is flow designer all the way right and they don't tend to look at workflow in training courses yeah however you're a new person you've looked new person you're new to the industry you've learned flow you don't know anything about workflow and yet you're expected to administer or debug things that are using Legacy workflow right yes that's a common situation yeah very common I'd say probably I don't I don't know what the split would be but if I was to guess I would say you know you're going to find more workflow compared to flows for the likes of catalog flows or change yeah I think I think you're right at the minute yeah at the minute I think that's going to change probably in the next year or so I would say it would probably slop to the other side um but yeah no it was interesting to hear just about how they've struggled with the UI of workflow in comparison to flow whereas where I come from were just just using workflow majority of the time until at least London or Madrid um my thing was that their way around that I was able to pick up um flow a lot quicker um it was logical to me I a lot a lot of what I do in my day-to-day basis is ideal in lists and seeing things in that kind of list sort of view in my mind logically I could understand things better rather than a big spaghetti diagram um so I know it was good getting different perspectives um from that and I think to address the question of to flow or not to flow is understanding like you say or it can and can't do is going to suggest so where things where you're going to come up with issues in flow designer where in workflow or in a simple script for example you can do things ten times quicker and it's ten times easier to read and to maintain yeah there's still those challenges it's not going to answer everything um but there is clear signs where it does do things a lot better okay so let me put you on the spot yep if you've been given a scenario to I can't think of one I will we can edit this bit out while I think what's your what's your default right do you as a as an architect do you go straight for flow and then work backwards and say well I can't achieve what I want to using flow therefore I'm gonna I'm gonna revert back to either Legacy workflow or scripting or do you go for scripting and say well can I shoehorn this into a flow what what's your thought process um good good fantastic question and I know my default my default opinion is to start with flow start will flow because as you've already touched on in a fantastic point in that anything new and upcoming is going to start is going to go into flow designer you're not going to get any improvements and enhancements in workflow um flow designer does majority of what happens in workflow anyway um it's the future flow designer is the future that's where everything's going um only if you can't achieve something in flow designer do you then have a look at these other um other tools but I will caveat that with well with an it depends because if we're talking about workflows you know a process flow of maybe through catalog change whatever else incident then absolutely um but in your design thinking and your planning and things like that if it's a business or we're talking about something completely different from you know what a workflow can do if we're talking about business rules you might want to think about that before you start doing trying to do it in flow because I think majority of the people through you know insert an update business rules and scripts um your starting point is a business rule not in flow so then this is where you're kind of expanding what flow designer can really do um to do the same thing what you're used to doing in business rules yeah so there are examples where it depends but if you see standard I'd say Integrations yes absolutely start with flow if it's uh workflow driven uh logic then yes start with flow only when it becomes too complex are you starting to think about using workflow in those examples right that that is a good summary um that is the only thing I would I would challenge slightly is that I agree with if it's an integration your de facto is go to flow yeah and there are there's obviously license implications [Music] we're not qualified well honestly anyway uh that I think you're correct I think if it's processing logic so um process automation type logic yep again I think flow designer as you go to if it's things such as um you were talking about your business rule is a schedule or a scheduled job is your alternative again I think you're right I think the de facto is flow designer and I'm going to challenge that because and I had a scenario this week actually where I wanted to run a scheduled job now let me rephrase I wanted to do some processing based on a schedule right yep so I went straight to flow designer because you can trigger it based on a schedule yeah and it has to do it had to do a few lookups and checks there's about three or four different lookups and then uh send out an email it was an approval reminder thing right but I've got to be honest there was times when I was going through that in my head I know I'm going to consider myself a pro coder for the purpose of this conversation right but in my head I know whilst I was doing it I can do this faster in a scheduled job I can script it quicker because I have more control over variable types I have more control over um what I put inside those variables I can debug it faster I find Flow Design sometimes takes a while to load um I do like the the execution so you can debug Flow Design I do like that but I find because I can move quite quick it's it it lags for me and in my head I was thinking I'm doing multiple um maybe there's a better way of doing this but I would do multiple kind of uh look at data record lookups in Flow Design when I'm thinking well it's script I'd just output that to an array and then iterate through the array I wouldn't do I wouldn't do nested while Loops do you see what I mean the end result is I've pursued the flow designer and I I continued with it but I will say I think it took me twice as long yes but then also the back of my head and I'm talking you through my thought process also at the back of my head I think it's something you said before is that doing it in flow designer it's short-term paying for long-term gain because while I'm doing it I am thinking this is and I mentioned this on another podcast that my daughter can understand photo design she can come in and say oh why are you using um scratch that's what it was called I couldn't remember last time the product the application they use at school is scratch ah yep she could kind of follow it a logical format so when you say it's the future I think you're right that you know all through my head I'm thinking oh this is taking twice as long but yep I have to remember and we have to remember as technical bods is that it's not just for us it's for it's for people that it's for the stuff we're going to leave behind people to administer yes exactly and that's almost more valuable than yeah leaving them with some a heap of code to try and sift through if you think if you're thinking in the future of the people who are administrating the servicenow platform are potentially going to be no coders or low coders yeah potentially um then 100 is the right way to go even though it's going to look a bit silly in these kind of Loops I'm sure service now will come up with ways to make it um a bit more um logical in the in the flow for them sort of complex you know nesting query scenarios I'm sure they will find ways to make that a bit easier yeah that's another thing you think because some of the guidance or at least definitely what I've heard is if it's complex logic yeah maybe think think not flow designer right yeah so and this is another podcast in its own right but what do we Define as complex logic at what point you go oh this is complex have you already gone too far um do I mean how do you make that distinction in your design project can your nan understand it yeah yeah yeah exactly yeah is any script at this point advised against do you know what I mean um or it depends if the customer that you're working with um actually has a good support mechanism where they do have Pro coders and people who understand that and they prefer that method then you'd have to take that into consideration not just you know yeah that low code no code to try and Panda to people who are more you know essentially business users yeah that that is a good point the the project you're working on all the customer that you're working for may have that architectural standard that says hey everything well they might say we don't want anything in Flow Design I can't think why they'd ever say that yep but equally they might say everything has to be and and I've been in this situation before is everything has to be in flow designer and if it's not you need to bring it in front of the technical architecture board yeah yep um or to have some kind of review I'm an architect to explain why why you can't be in there yeah which I think is a fantastic takeaway of this is defining that in the architecture standards so you know what rules you're working to yes I'm sure there's going to be a general rule of thumb which is sounds like it's going to be flow designer first um I think you and I are both agreeing on that that the intention is you go into going to the um to the requirements thinking flow designer first now why can't I do info design yeah it is a simple tagline yeah um I did a little bit of research in term terms of you've researched this time I know a little that's cheating is it he's cheated I wanted to get like an official line from servicenow essentially about one of the cases when you should use flow designer and essentially their line is this hang on are you going to read this off the screen I'm going to read this off my screen on this other screen that you hit yourself I've got a quote quoted and I quote if you are creating something new start with flow designer however there are a few cases you will need to use workflow so this is a whole flow designer versus world so they're still telling you to use workflow so that is interesting so I thought sorry I thought they'd said I thought as part of the Trade union they're now saying do not use well I don't think they're saying okay yeah I'm sure they're encouraging against but they think I think they're still saying that there is still some scenarios where it is better to use workflow okay sunset at it and you know they there's still a lot of their applications who do use workflows still you're allowed to use Legacy workflow yeah and the reasons that they mentioned to you workflow is things like um exactly what we mentioned around if the process requires complicated or scripted logic where it can be written in workflow and actually it's suggesting it can be written in workflow and called from a flow which I'm not so sure about [Music] it's weird that is weird just just two points on this is yeah one we needed to bother talking so much on this podcast you could have read that you could just read this yeah but it's good to get the opinions out before we're shut down I wasn't cheating though so there's that point um yep but the other one is that's use flow designer to create your flow the other way around use yeah use workflow to call a flow so just for anyone that that doesn't know this already you can call flows via a script and that's where it gets really interesting you can trigger a flow subflow or action via a script so scripts include or business rule or something but obviously that transpires you can do it for a workflow that's an interesting concept yeah it was an odd one I've not tried I wouldn't I wouldn't even advise doing that oh one of the things I always used to do is if I did any scripting in a workflow I would create a script include and do all the scripting inside the script include so a workflow activity would call that and yeah I'd have all the logic content in there so absolutely I can see it working but my God that's an architectural nightmare in it oh absolutely yeah yeah having this kind of hybrid nah that's a quote on their website yeah um or on their dock side or something clarify just in case they come after me yeah we'll do I'll uh I'll link it to the to the episode put the link in the description um below and actually while whilst on that if anyone's got any thoughts on on what they do in terms of what decisions they make or what steps they make um in order to determine whether to go down flow designer or just normal scripting by that we mean business rules script includes workflows whatever um send us an email because it's um it's all interesting we can we can talk about them at a later date and share share everyone's thoughts yeah and in terms of usability I did something interesting as well is I um more prep I set up a survey are you prepping for this I know I'm just way too organized for this now um basically I wanted to understand from um different developers in our practice what tool did I prefer to live for a flow do they prefer workflow obviously these people are of different levels of um you know experience with service now that we started recently and who are political Developers and the different things I wanted to kind of check against is things like um what do you prefer for locating an existing flow or the general usability or look and feel Spectators you're too organized for this okay I'm gonna need to step my game up would you like to know the results the results James um that majority this is a survey right this is a survey I set up only today I'll I'll I'll stress that if something I set up today in the last few hours I was not that organized then no well yeah compared to normal um but for majority of these kind of attributes such as locating an existing flow General usability speed and creating flow logic like if else and for each and like the you know the complex logic and using current context which I found weird all preferred workflow compared to flow really and the three um sorry two attributes which are preferring flow designer was troubleshooting executions which I agree I think it is yeah I agree pretty good debug yeah to debug debugging flow is better yep as long as he got the property turned on yeah yes oh yes um as well as uh creating triggers so um you know obviously triggers are much easier in in flow they're very similar I'd say but that was very overarchingly I think that's just because the top of the screen workflow yeah yeah yeah triggers are there kind of in your face you can't yeah it's a little interesting though general you know very high level questions about usability and UI really but um yeah workflow came out and top and that survey was across a mix of people with different experience yep um and all three of them said I'm only joking I've got more than three really people how many people ish so that was 15 responses I have service now this didn't have that yeah so the override writing is people prefer people for workflow and that that was gonna so my last question unconscious of time here and and whether people are turned off or not but um one of my questions right is it sounds like people still will prefer workflow there's a couple of things they like about flow what frustrates you about workflow but better than that what can they do to make it better what would make you tick flow for all of those questions that you've asked me that's a question for you by the way another question for the listeners oh it is for the listeners as well if it you know that's absolutely valid question if they want to drop us a line using the email absolutely tell us but yeah for me what's yours what would make me tick all of them I think the biggest thing for me and we've kind of touched on it already is um to be honest with you when I filled this out I feel the majority of these as going towards flow designer um a lot of things are equal things like looking for existing flows um I actually quite like the look and feel of flow designer to be honest with you um I know the graphical interface is getting there um but the biggest thing for me what would make me switch over um from everything I do is the logic the logic was the uh the thing for me about um having complex logic in an easy to read format um things that you could easily do within script as you mentioned within a few lines um if you're able to translate that in a better way or easier to read fashion within flow designer that would take almost all boxes for me then the may I think the interface needs to be faster what I don't like is when you have to you want to do something but sometimes you have to write a script so you have to create an action so you need to load up a different screen Create Your Action publish it then put it back into the engine I know they've got different tabs but maybe if I could load that on a different screen so I do a lot of opening new tabs with script and flick between quite quick and I think the scripty element inside you know when you you can like drag and drop your pills over but you've got yeah access to build script in the fields yep that needs to be quicker as well it needs to be more intuitive on yeah yeah um yeah the theme around mine is Security based isn't it oh yes well I'm old school yeah what's the thing I thought a lot this is where the debate goes isn't it a lot of the old school guys prefer certain methods but I think you you're you're kind of converted I think you're converted to flow I think oh absolutely absolutely yeah a lot of the old school guys are not yet nothing but I am converted to flow but there is nothing better than writing a function a YouTube video a while back and someone um I think they're actually in Canada their location doesn't make a difference so I don't know why I mentioned that um but they and one of their comments was nice functions and I've actually said someone I said that's the best compliment I've ever had in my life I think you should get a t-shirt with that on that'll be a fantastic t-shirt nice functions laughs okay so what are the key learnings let's wrap this up yeah we nearly we're past the half an hour and people are starting to get bored yeah um let's wrap this up to flow or not to flow James what are you saying flow I think yes as we and servicenow advise your first starting point being flow designer is a good thing I think defining these uh architecture principles is also useful um understanding who is going to be taking this over from you is also a very good thing to have um under your design considerations so just to sum it up for me yes try and flow first if you can't do it in flow then think about other options um and yeah just just get on board and it might take a a mindset change for those who are so used to the kind of scripting side of things um but yeah I think just try and China get on board the flow train I'll go with that and what um what would we like our listeners to do is there anything that we we'd want to know from them to go and investigate to come back to us what do we need what do we want I would investigate ways where you have recently implemented something in workflow but haven't tried it in flow so you know get into your pdis having a go of just re-implementing what you had done it might be just a simple a process thing or approvals or if you've not tried catalog with a flow designer yet find where the um where the pain points are and see what you can achieve and flow maybe time it time have give yourself a challenge uh timer challenge between trying to create something in flow compared to workflow that's a good answer but I was more getting at we want them to follow the podcast for us that's what I was getting at what do we want click follow like share subscribe I don't think you can on me no okay but no that's a good summary thanks for that James it's been um an interesting conversation I know something that we've talked about and I've talked about many times with other people sorry it's a bit more deep today yes deep isn't it a bit serious um well let's not do that next time let's bring some humor back here um but I think I think that's a good summary um so I think until next time I think I've been Russ happy James and this that's all for today's podcast thank you for listening and if you want to get your question answered by the service Ducks get in touch through talk to the doc at service hyphandux.com or just use one of the links below thank you [Applause] [Music] foreign