[Music] hello hello and welcome to the workflow Academy in this comprehensive platform Academy video series we'll delve 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 the now platform my name is Lisa hollenstein and I work as an outbound product manager for the now platform my area of expertise is workf Automation and I create enablement content videos articles and blogs on the now Community I have been with service now for 5 years and have been part of the service now ecosystem since 2016 before joining service now I was a platform owner admin and developer at a customer in today's video we'll look at different ways to use decision tables when creating automation for your service catalog fulfillment 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 so let's look at the topics for today we'll look at service catalog what is it decision tables catalog items using decision tables and then also Dynamic subflows and a little bit of record prodev users the first platform feature we'll look at today is the service catalog the now platform digitizes workflows across functions and critical Business Systems by connecting them end to end on a single platform so that companies can maximize the value of existing it Investments cut costs and make impactful improvements Across The Core Business processes and one of the key areas for automation is the service catalog service catalog is available to your agents employees customers and and other end users through various interfaces like service portals the now mobile app configurable workspaces and more catalog items can be used to streamline fulfillment for any kind of request for any of your departments including workplace Services field service management Customer Service employee requests legal operations ordering hardware and much much more each catalog item fulfillment is driven by workflow automation usually a flow with a service catalog trigger these flows can range from a simple task to be manually worked by an agent to complex Automation and Integrations in the automation layer of the now platform you'll find our core workflow automation tools we build playbooks flows and decision tables in workflow Studio to automate work across our Enterprise to create some of the more complex workflows developers would build large if then else constructs and then use branching or build out hundreds of individual service catalog flows today I want to show you some ways to simplify those complex flows replacing if than else conditions with simple decision action and dynamically running dedicated subflows for fulfillment so what are decision tables and why should you use them decision tables enable developers to decouple decision logic from their code to create and maintain decision rules in applications with decision it is seamless to update your business rules any time as you can modify decision rules without changing the code with decision tables you simplify your flows and scripts by building reusable logic and you also reduce the change burden decisions can be created and maintained in workflow studio with an intuitive low code UI different roles Grant fine grained access to either just the results full decision rows or the whole decision table moreover decision tables can be edited in Excel to include those process owners that don't work in service now at all decision tables can be used from flows and subflows as well as script Fields across the platform today we'll look at various examples in the context of service catalog fulfillment before we head into the different ways to use decision tables in service catalog flows here's a first example to demonstrate the power of simplifying your flows and code with decision tables we want to have different groups approve and fulfill a request based on the category of the catalog item without decision tables we'll see if then El's logic branching in the flow that can get unwieldy really really fast and it's hard to keep track of all the options once they exceed two or three paths additionally each fulfillment beyond the path is basically the same except for the assignment group but we'll have to keep it updated in multiple places if the slightest aspect of the Fulfillment task notifications or updating the record changes decision tables can have multiple condition columns that are connected with an implied an they can also have have multiple result columns so that your decisions can get as complex as you need them to be the default res at the bottom allows you to always have a fallback answer if you add new catalog item categories that don't have the dedicated approval or assignment group yet when we use decision tables we can simplify the management of our fulfillment Flow by a huge factor with it make a decision logic we can remove the complex if then else branching and instead use the outcome of the decision table for our approvals and assignment so let's look at more places to use decision tables to simplify our catalog flows in the same vein as the first example we can use decision tables for all kinds of decisions based on fields and references on our specific requested item records such as the request or status department or location we can also make decisions based on any info on the catalog item or the catalog category it's included in we can determine groups to approve or fulfill tasks prioritize requests submitted by certain requesters or even apply a discount based on request a data Beyond this we can also make decisions based on catalog variables note that we're not yet able to natively use catalog variables as inputs for a decision table the current recommendation is to create simple non-reference inputs that match the catalog variables field types when building the service catalog flow we can then first use get catalog variables for the current requested item and then map those variables to the make a decision inputs as promised earlier flows are not the only place to make decisions the decision table API class provides us with different methods to make decisions from scoped and Global server site script and with the clever use of a script include and the Glide Ajax class these decisions can even be used from client scripts including those in catalog client scripting service now developer MVP lella recently published a community article on how to populate variable choices based on a decision table I highly encourage you to check out his article it'll be listed in the resources below one of the most powerful combinations for decision tables is with Dynamic subflows we canot only determine decision result columns for groups users strings choices and other simple field types but we can also output a reference result for the sis Hub flow table which houses all flows and subflows I wrote a full article that you can find on the community if you want to learn how to use the dynamic flow logic with decisions but we'll look at the high level definition right now one of the use cases we've seen developed by our customers is to attach the same parent service catalog flow or even previously Legacy workflow to all catalog items but then the flow determines at runtime which approval and fulfillment tasks to create we've looked at making decisions based on catalog variables earlier and this time we'll use the variables to determine which subflow to run for each fulfillment variant be that catalog categories or geographical reasons or any other grouping will create a subflow or even nested subflows to run for the best result make sure that the subflow inputs are the same across all that might get chosen in the decision table then use the dynamic flow logic pick one of the subflows as a template to surface its inputs then we use the decision table result to specify which flow to run and map further inputs to the catalog variables for individual executions you can keep wait for completion checked for the upcoming use case we recommend to leave it unchecked now we'll up the stakes and add another layer of complexity to our request fulfillment multi row variable sets some customers have asked us to help them design a way to kick off a number of records and or tasks from one catalog item the solution for this lies in multi row variable sets like before we'll have fulfillment subflows for each variable condition and make sure that the decision table input matches data that we have available from our parent request then we'll get the variables from the catalog item by choosing the multi row variable set now we'll iterate through the result set with f for each logic then we'll make a decision for each entry and use the decision result and other variable set row data to kick off a dynamic flow for this scenario we want to make sure to uncheck the wait for completion option if we're looking for a quasi parallel execution if we leave it active the flow will not proceed to the next for each end entry until the first is fully processed after this brain twister we'll slow back down a little in the last application space we're looking at for decisions in service catalog our record producers record producers are different from regular catalog items and that they don't create a requested item but a record in the specified Target TBL instead this also means that we're not assigning a service catalog flow that automatically kicks off when the item is submitted if we want further automation to happen we need to create a flow with a record created trigger for this table another change from the other catalog items is the script field this script is executed after the form is submitted but before the target record is created since we can access the producer variables in this script we can also use them to make decisions and Define fields to be set on the generated record remember you don't need to use current update or anything because this record will be saved automatically now let's do a little recap of what we learned today decision tables are incredibly versatile they can be used in flows and any script on the now platform additionally they allow you to hand over the maintenance of decisions to process owners to make changes without having to touch the actual flows in script the default result lets you specify your fallback option catching everything that does not satisfy any of the condition rows above decision inputs and results can be almost anything from simple string integer Boolean or Choice Fields but also currency date and reference Fields they're most powerful when combined with the dynamic flow logic to conditionally run subflows the use cases and scenarios we looked at today are just some examples where decision tables can simplify your flows and scripts when automating service catalog fulfillment I'd love to hear your stories let us know in the comments or in the service now Community how you use decision tables if you like this session please upvote this video and whether you liked it or not this 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 animation Center of Excellence on the now Community I've collected resources and links and I'm regularly publishing new articles with best practices FAQ and guidance around flows playbooks and decision tables thank you for choosing to spend 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