Is your work flowing? What makes Flow Designer and IntegrationHub better and why you should migrate now.

Lisa Holenstein · ‎02-19-2021

[2022-06-07] Added Platform Academy sessions and Creator Con Labs about Flow Designer to the resources

[2021-10-25] Updated for Rome release.

Whenever a new technology is introduced, innovators and early adopters move into the field quickly with the majority of developers and users lagging behind, waiting for more stability, functional parity with the legacy tech stack or just being generally hesitant to invest the time to make the switch before they’re sure the new technology is here to stay. In the case of Flow Designer and IntegrationHub (FDIH), now is the time to leave any remaining doubts behind. Flow Designer and IntegrationHub have been on par since the Orlando release and are by now (Quebec release) exceeding functional parity, show improved performance, better functional transparency, and outdo the user experience and usability of the Workflow Editor and Orchestration by miles.

This blog will provide you with a range of benefits in using the latest ServiceNow Platform Technology to help you bridge the gap and build a future-proof workflow and integration foundation for your organization. Let’s workflow it!

If you have further questions or want to share your adoption journey of Flow Designer and IntegrationHub, please leave a comment below. We're interested in both your achievements and struggles to help all of our customers towards a successful adoption.

(TL;DR & resources at the end of this blog)

Functionality

With the Quebec release (Q1 2021), FDIH exceed the functionality available in Workflow Editor & Orchestration (WFE & Orch) and other legacy platform technology. Flow Designer and IntegrationHub can and should be used for:

Service Catalog Fulfillment Workflows
SLA Workflows
Inbound email processing, inbound email flows will be processed before validating any legacy inbound (email) actions
Outbound email, either sending an email directly with the email action or triggering a notification directly from the flow
Scheduled Jobs by triggering a flow based on a specific date, time, repeat intervals (e.g. every week on Monday).
In place of After or Async Business rules that run on Insert or Update operations Read when to use Business rules over Flows
Replace complex decision scripting with decision flow logic and Decision Builder
Making re-usable functions available to other flow users with custom actions, these can also call existing script includes
Outbound interfaces to other systems via IntegrationHub, using available spokes from the store or creating your own. IntegrationHub now features 150 spokes (Febuary 2021), containing 1000’s of integration methods, available through the ServiceNow Store
Inbound integrations via IntegrationHub, using Rest API Trigger to initiate ServiceNow workflows from a remote system, or as callbacks from a remote system
Data Stream (IntegrationHub) data source for Import Sets
JSON + XML parser: Flow Designer makes it much easier to handle complex data
Action Plan for Event Management automated triage and automated remediation using alert management rules
Action Plan for Metric Base triggered events

FDIH now cover all functionalities that WF + Orch had, except for:

JMS Orchestration activity
UI Action “Show (Work)Flow”: “Show Workflow” has a very high impact on UI form performance. The conditional query checks all workflow contexts every time while loading a record, which adds to form delays. Therefore, the engineers decided to not include this function oob at this point, outside of Requested Items (sc_req_item). You can add this function by using the Share item “Show Flow”.

Performance

FDIH is faster, more reliable, and safer in regards to upgrades, here are some technical reasons why:

Scaling performance (multi-threaded) vs. single-threaded BRs
Workflow runs single threaded in the foreground, and a common Workflow workaround is to add a timer as a first step, so the workflow wakes up in a background thread. Flow Designer handles this within your trigger definition and streamlines the experience for the desired foreground/background execution.
FD actions call Java on the backend, which performs faster than JavaScript
Reduces upgrade cost by replacing complex custom script with upgrade-safe Now Platform logic, less knowledge-loss when a developer leaves the company, flows are easier to pick up than custom script

(Re-)Usability

Flow Designer uses Natural Language to allow Process Owners as well as No-/Low- and Pro-Code Developers to automate approvals, tasks, notifications, integrations, and record operations without coding
Access configuration (Flow Designer) and runtime information (Flow executions) in a single environment to create, operate, and troubleshoot flows from a single interface
Promote process automation by having subject matter experts create re-usable Flow Actions + Subflows to be used by Process Owners / Low-Code Devs. Actions + Subflows are easily discoverable in Flow Designer, in contrast to Script Includes and the callable methods included in them
Create cross-departmental process automation with the Process Automation Designer (PAD) and Playbooks. PAD calls (Sub-)Flows/Flow Actions, this allows for creating re-usable custom PAD activity actions
Connection Dashboard in the Flow Designer UI for easy access and setup of connections and credentials via templates
Flow variables: The option to initiate runtime variables that can be created for a specific flow and then set with flow logic steps and used throughout the Flow. In legacy Workflow, runtime variables were stored in the ‘scratchpad’.
Flow Designer Action Record Producer: Create a task record from a record producer item. Record Producers allow your Citizen developers to create records in a pre-defined way with specified input variables and outcome. This is very useful if you decide to restrict access to the generic flow actions (create, update record) to avoid user mistakes.
Virtual Agent can now call Flows/Flow Actions (e.g. IntegrationHub spokes) directly, this makes calling FDIH much more accessible for low-/no-code topic designers, as they don’t need to invoke it through a script anymore.
REST Trigger: IntegrationHub now allows to trigger a Flow from an inbound REST Call. This greatly reduces or even removes the need to create a scripted REST API for processes that would be kicked off by an external system.
[New with Rome] Flow error handler: Enable flows to catch errors, run a sequence of actions and subflow to identify and correct issues.
[New with Rome] Action error evaluation: Enable actions to catch step failures and continue running. Identify when specific error conditions occur and return your own action status code, status message, and error state.
[New with Rome] IntegrationHub - Import: Automate data import tasks from a new design environment that consolidates several legacy forms into a single modern interface. Define external data sources, specify target tables, map how source data becomes target data, and schedule regular imports.

(Selected) FAQs

How can I check in/check out Flows? – Most of our customers tell us that they rarely work with multiple developers on the same Flow/Flow action at the same time in each sub-prod instance. Leveraging the platform approach, it’s a good option to use a Git repo to commit and restore versions.

Why can’t I rollback in Flow Designer? – Rollback in WF often brought issues with it, how much should be rolled back, what about data that changed on other records due to business rules or flows triggering from the initial update, notifications, etc. All these considerations led our engineers to decide to not offer a rollback function in Flow Designer at this point.

What’s happening with the Workflow Editor and Orchestration, can I still use it? – For the time being, Workflow and Orchestration have entered “Maintenance Mode”. We’re not actively developing any new features, but you can still use your existing workflows, make changes to them or even create new ones, although we highly recommend you giving Flow Designer and IntegrationHub a try for new feature requests before resorting to WF. It is a great option to incrementally replace parts of your old workflows with new (sub)flows. You can trigger flows from a "Run Script" workflow activity in WFE with the available Flow API (Code Snippet) and in return call workflows from Flow designer.

Can I use IntegrationHub Starter? – IntegrationHub Starter is a no cost offering for all customers that have been through a contract renewal since early 2019 and includes access to 1 million transactions. Check that you have access by looking for IntegrationHub Starter plugin, and if not reach out to your account team to request.

TL;DR (too long; didn't read)

Flow Designer and IntegrationHub have thoroughly surpassed the legacy technology in terms of functionality, performance, and usability. If you haven't started adopting them yet, you definitely missed out and should start now.

Resources

General resources

Consider doing the ServiceNow Fundamentals training before diving into any of the other topics.

Main overview of Flow Designer
Developer Blog: Flow Designer What’s new in Quebec
Developer Blog: Flow Designer What's new in Rome
Flow Designer Rome Release Notes
Flow Designer Quebec Release Notes
Flow Designer Paris Release Notes
Flow Designer on Docs
Flow Designer on the Developer Blog
Flow Designer Learning Courses on the Developer Portal

Main overview of IntegrationHub
Developer Blog: IntegrationHub What’s new in Quebec
IntegrationHub Rome Release Notes
IntegrationHub Quebec Release Notes
IntegrationHub Paris Release Notes
IntegrationHub on Docs
IntegrationHub on the Developer Blog
IntegrationHub Learning Courses on the Developer Portal

Podcast: Break Point - Automation and Integration in Rome with Jake Burman

ServiceNow Community servicenow community

Is your work flowing? What makes Flow Designer and IntegrationHub better and why you should migrate now.

Functionality

Performance

(Re-)Usability

(Selected) FAQs

TL;DR (too long; didn't read)

Resources

General resources

NowLearning resources

CreatorCon Labs (K22)

Community resources

Platform Academy

NowCreate resources

ServiceNow backend takes a giant leap making the platform more efficient -Introducing RaptorDB

Platform Fundamentals Academy - April 18th, 2024 - Upgrades in Washington

Creating Portal Announcements Automatically from an Outage or Knowledge Article