[Music] hello and welcome to the workflow Academy in this comprehensive platform Academy video series we'll dive into the transformative world of workflow automation empowering you to build Monitor and optimize efficient workflows with ease join us as we explore the core tools of service now's workflow automation Suite to build flows and subflows playbooks and decision tables on now platform my name is Lisa hollenstein and I work as an outbound product manager for the now platform my area of expertise is workflow Automation and I create enablement content articles and blogs on the now Community I have been with service now for nearly 5 years now before joining service now I was a platform owner admin and developer at a customer in today's session I will walk you through building a flow but using only the flow diagramming view to show you how far we've come in feature parody compared to the linear or natural language view a quick reminder I may mention coming releases or product features that are still in development all timelines and features may be subject to change so please don't make any purchasing decisions based on anything I say today diagramming has been one of the top requested features for flow designer since its initial release over 5 years ago many people work best with the linear natural language layout that flow designer is known for but about the same number of developers admins and other flow creators prefer prer a more graphical way to understand the logic and pathing of their workflows in a multi-release effort we're now on the final stretch of full feature parody between both views the past couple of store releases added support for decision tables flow stages subflows du until and annotations this means that you can freely toggle back and forth between both views and use the one that helps you do your best work applications distributed through store apps receive updates every 3 months allowing us to innovate faster and you to benefit from the newest features more often flow diagramming is installed by default and every family release updates it to the latest store release minus one for example when you upgrade to the Washington release it'll include flow diagramming with the latest Vancouver store release version to get the benefits of the very latest version make sure to check the application manager at least once per quarter to update your store apps in today's demo I'll walk through creating a flow and a subflow using only the diagramming view I'll highlight features that have been added to diagramming recently that you may have missed so far this demo was recorded on a Vancouver patch 5 instance with flow diagramming version 24.4.2 First we're creating a new flow and then immediately we'll switch to the diagram view I'm adding a service catalog trigger to build out a flow for fulfilling a catalog item the first feature I want to call out are annotations these are little comments that you can add to any flow step or logic to provide extra context to your workflow once we confirm the trigger we'll see this annotation show up with a light gray background in the diagram next we'll add to get catalog variables action the Action Properties open in the side panel just as the trigger properties did a few moments ago for some actions this may feel a little crowded because we have multiple configuration options to alleviate this you can expand the side panel to be twice as wide for much more real estate you'll notice that you can still see your flow on the left with the currently opened action highlighted with a blue frame now we can specify which variable info to get and we'll choose the trigger record the submitted request item then we'll pick all available catalog variables and move them to the right side notice that the action will even surface the template catalog item so that we know which data we're working with without having to check the Action Properties what's next for most service catalog items that's right an approval we'll get an approval by the requesters manager and add this to The annotation the most common setting for single user approvals is to just choose approve or reject when anyone approves or rejects then I'll use the pill picker to to Lo walk from the requested item via the requested for user user to get to the requesters manager if you want to learn more about flow approvals I have an article and Academy recording on the service now Community covering everything from simple to complex sequential or parallel approval configurations you can find the link in the video description below or you can click the card on the screen now anytime we're asking for approval we'll need to specify what will happen for which path our workflow can take from here consequently our next step is an if Ranch found under flow logic this is the first time you'll notice one of the bigger selling points of flow diagramming and that is a visual representation of all possible paths on the canvas for ni condition we'll have two paths one for the condition evaluating to true and the other for false the condition we'll use for this example is when the requester's manager approves this request note that you can see a summary of the condition on the if Block in our diagram as well in the true path that is when the approval was granted we'll now add a create catalog task action for further fulfillment filling out the details I can specify the tasks short description and even choose which catalog variables to display again working with a template catalog item I can also set additional Fields beyond the short description form here this action provides us with a checkbox to wait for completion if it is checked our flow will be paused until the catalog task is closed adding another action after the catalog task is completed to update the requested item state to Clos as well next we'll head over to the false path which is when the approval was not granted for the next few steps I don't need the double white bar so I'll collapse it again here we'll add another update record to set the state and Prov Prov a comment on why the request is being closed and don't forget to save your work before we move on I want to highlight a couple of cool features on the diagramming canvas in the bottom left we can see a couple of items one of them houses some option toggles where we can choose to see the annotations and step details like on the if condition in the middle there's a handy little button to download the current flow as a PNG image file to your computer the file is downloaded to your default browser download location and it is gr to use in your process documentation to the left there's a tiny preview of your flow with some zooming options for the diagram in canvas another commonly used feature for service catalog flows are flow stages these stages are represented on the service portal View for the requestor and indicates how far their request has been processed by the Fulfillment teams flow stages can either be created individually for each flow or you can M use of workflow stage sets these stage templates have carried over from the Legacy workflow Editor to import the preset for requested items open the overflow menu then choose flow stages you'll see a drop- down to add stages from a template at the top this menu also allows us to determine the default duration for these stages and their order once we've configured flow stages we can start adding them into the desired spots the stage property panel has options to change the duration from the default and a toggle to always show the stage even if it is in a conditional branch that may not be reached like the rejected path for our example deactivate the toggle to disable this Behavior now before we head over to diagramming for subflows let's take a quick look at an example decision table I've prepared together with flow stages diagram support for making a decision was added to diagramming in the Utah time frame this decision table us fields from the requested item to determine a reward level from a choice list and a discount level we'll now create a new subflow as you can see once we toggle to the diagram view we can configure our subflow inputs and outputs the same way as we're used to just in the side panel I'll add a reference to the requested item table as an input and a string field for the reward level result as a subflow output from here on out diagramming works just just the same as for the triggered flows we can add actions flow logic subflows and stages if any have been configured we'll use the make a decision flow logic to use the decision table I showed earlier if you decide to keep the used branches check boox active you'll see branches for each possible result Row in the flow diagram this will allow you to Define different actions and Logic for each decision keep in mind that you'll need to update your flow if you make any changes to the decision tables that could lead to additional branches that being said for the majority of decisions made you won't need the branches more often than not the subsequent steps will be the same just using the result data pills so let's uncheck that box and I'll walk you through the next steps like magic the branches disappeared don't worry the result options are still there I'll add an update record action and use the discount percentage to add to the additional comments of the request item next we'll map the other decision result to the subflow output and then activate the subflow now that we've seen how to build a subflow in diagramming we'll call the subflow from the flow we built earlier we'll input the trigger record and keep wait for subflow completion checked I'll also add another flow stage for good measure and then have the flow sent out an email with the decision result that we can access thanks to the subflow output to inform the requestor about the applied discount before we exit the demo I'll leave you with the last tip if you love flow diagramming and want all flows to open in the diagram view there's a preference toggle that you can activate open any flow or subflow then click on the overflow menu in the top right and choose flow preferences then you can toggle on show flows as diagram this concludes this quick walkthrough of building flows in the diagram view I hope this was helpful and informative and you'll try it out yourself as mentioned at the start we're very close to full feature parody between the linear and diagram view for flows and subflows the upcoming Washington release will add diagram support for the try logic and the new go back to logic go back to allows us to loop back to an earlier step in the flow and repeat a sequence of actions if you lik this session please upload this video and whether you liked it or not the survey is your chance to provide feedback or comments about this Academy I'm looking forward to reading your feedback the same goes here you can find the link in the video description or use the QR code shown on the screen if you're interested in other topics Beyond workflows let me recommend my colleagues Academy series each of them covers a different part of the now platform we have content about conversational interfaces including virtual Agent mobile apps analytics next experience workflow core platform and of course artificial intelligence while on the topic of more content if you prefer to read up on topics at your own pace check out the workflow automation Center of Excellence on the community I've collected resources and links and I'm regularly publishing new articles with best practices FAQ and guidance around flows playbooks and decisions thank you for choosing some time today to learn about workflow automation on the now platform thank you for providing your feedback and questions to help us make these sessions better for you until next time bye