Playbooks Best Practices - Workflow Automation CoE

Lisa Holenstein · ‎10-24-2022

Workflow Automation CoE > Playbooks > Best Practices

Guidance and practical tips

Application Scope

Create Process Definitions and Activity Definitions in a scoped application
Use ServiceNow source control integration with Git for versioning, forking, and branching of your processes and process activities
Application names should not include a version as part of the name

Keep an eye on triggers to avoid parallel, conflicting logic

When creating new process definitions, keep track of existing business logic like flows and business rules triggering at the same conditions (e.g., categories, types, states,…) that run potentially conflicting logic.

Creating subflows or flow actions to power process activity definitions

Flow Designer is the tool of choice to automate self-contained units of logic, always keep reusability in mind. While you can use flows to power your activity definitions, we recommend using subflows and flow actions instead, because they allow you to specify inputs and outputs, which simultaneously serve as activity inputs and outputs.

As such, I will recommend reducing scripting where possible. When you find yourself using similar inline scripts regularly, consider creating a Utils Spoke with several reusable actions
Flow Actions should only ever do one thing at a time (e.g., calculate a value, get data from a remote system)
Subflows are groupings of actions for reusability (e.g., approval, making a decision & some following actions with the decision result, etc.)

Keep reusability in mind

When creating declarative actions for activity definitions that may be used in other processes as well, don’t script visibility conditions based on activity/lane names. Base the conditions off of record fields instead (e.g., state, category,…). The same rule applies to lane or activity conditions as well.

This will be specifically important with the (new in Tokyo) copy process feature. Once you start copying and adjusting an existing process definition to another process’ needs (for example by renaming lanes), you may run into issues down the line if you don’t heed this recommendation.

Naming convention

Include a description for your Playbook
Use human-readable names for Playbook Name, Activity Definition Name, Flow Name, Subflow Inputs, and Subflow Outputs.
All Input/Output labels use Camel Case with spaces.

Use optional activities for flexible process execution

Optional activities allow your processes to be more flexible and meet real agents’ daily requirements. Processes will not always follow the prescribed path and there will inevitably be unforeseen detours. With optional or adhoc activities you allow your agents to still follow the playbook on a high level, while accounting for situations that require a more flexible approach.

ServiceNow Community servicenow community