[Music] 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 Nows workflow automation Suite to build flows and subflows playbooks and decision tables on the now platform it's this time of the year again release season is upon us and we're taking a look at the great Innovations for our workflow automation product Suite learn what's new in the Washington DC release for workflow studio and for building playbooks flows and decision tables on the now platform for today's video I'm being joined by my wonderful co-workers and product owners Jing Fay Julia and Jason and no having a name with a J is not mandatory for this job my name is Lisa Stein and I work as an outbound product manager for the now platform my area of expertise is workflow Automation and I create enablement content videos articles blogs and I create enablement content videos articles and blogs on the nail Community I have been with service now for 5 years and have been a part of the service now ecosystem since 2016 before joining service now I was a platform owner admin and developer at a customer quick reminder we may mention coming releases or product features that are still in development all timelines and features may be sub subject to change so please don't make any purchasing decisions based on anything we say today in today's session Jin feay will introduce us to workflow Studio the new builder for all things workflow then she will introduce the Innovations for building flows and flow actions next Julia will cover everything new for decision tables before Jason walks us through the changes and new features when building playbooks hi there my name is Jin F Chen I'm the product manager of flow designer within workflow Automation and today I want to show you some of the new features that we're pushing out in as part of flow designer for Washington so with the new uh workflow Studio we're consolidating all the um workflow automation Builders into one single entry point so that in one homepage you will see Playbook flows subflows actions decisions and then you're also able to create all of them um under the same creating mechanism so for flow designer moving from Vancouver to Washington we're adding a lot of capabilities so for example we're investing heavily on generative AI which includes the new feature called flow generation that generates the outline of the flow from a natural language from plain English and then workflow Studio that I just showed briefly uh go back to that's a new flow logic we're adding in again I'm going to show demo to you for a lot of the features here on the screen and then so we're continuing also on the on our flow diagramming parity which just enhancing the the diagramming view with flow Logics and support all of them so this includes to go back to uh do the following until try catch and then natural language plus annotation which I will show in a second so let me bring back to the instance and start demoing first the AI features so if I create a new flow um I can just uh so yeah so I'm being presented with the new screen where I have the option to build with analysis and build from scratch so I can tackle back and forth but under built with analysis I was given this field where I can just describe what I want the flow to achieve if you don't know what to write in here there are a few examples underneath that you can try uh but I'm not going to try those examples let me see if I can uh give you another example here we go and if I click on buil with analysis what it does is actually sending that English sentence and back to our now LM that's the llm that service now own and we're not sharing your data to anybody else but uh we're the the model is trying to understand that language and then come up with a flow structure structure that makes sense for it right so in the sentence I basically said develop a flow to automate user authentication and access provisioning and so it's not very detailed but it's kind of like a you know on a business level description and then in the flow generated it has some look up record that probably going to look up some user record and check if statement to check their authentication uh based on role and if their role is this and then add user to group else if another condition is met maybe remove the users and then add them to a different group so this is like the replacing role change or Department transfer right and then send some notification and then update uh like status to somewhere and then or if another condition me then maybe add user to a different group so it's it's generating a scenario that is probably appropriate for this particular sentence that I put in the reason why it's uh generating some placeholder is this particular instance that I'm demoing from does not have a lot of the spoke actions uh included so if it's the llm is recommending a Spoke action if I'm doing this in an environment it does have those actions installed then it will show actually those uh install actions okay so that's the first feature I want to demo the second feature I want to demo let me just look at my note uh is actually let me start from scratch I'm going to create a new flow and I'm going to just say this is demoing or demo the go back uh try catch natural language Etc okay so I'm going to create a different flow to demo those so for example let's say uh before I added anything you see that our Banner is a little bit revised so let's say in this flow I want the trigger to be I want the trigger to be incident created so I'm going to have a created trigger and table should be incident with a condition I'm going to say active is true and assignment group is it's empty okay so that's going to be my condition so any new Incident That's so let's let's make sure the trigger stay like this and then uh I'm G to add a new action which is going to be the try actually that's a FL logic my bad okay so and now I'm going to tuckle every thing over to the diagramming view so that you see from from diagramming view this is whole supported I'm going to author the flow from the diagram view from now on but in the try let's try to add a integration step so I'm going to say connect uh I think it's under connect spoke and send message to task sure and then as part of our go back to we can actually go back from the catch right so this is the fashion that we're representing try catch try something and it doesn't work then this is the catch and then this is the branch within the catch we can actually say okay we want to go back to from the catch and then where we want to go back to right the destination we can say okay we want to go back to the big beginning of try and retry everything then I'm going to just say oh uh we want to retry the integration step with connect I think that's what it is right and then you will see The annotation that's natural language annotations also supported on diagramming right um I also have another tuaco here actually two tle here that says if I want to display less uh detail right so the details means the conditions if I don't want to display all that detail and then if whether or not I want to display The annotation so I can really configure what I'm seeing on the screen let's say I'm GNA show The annotation and then the print it all works together so the print is actually going to comply to whatever configuration I have in here so maybe I just want to show annotation and not the not the details and then because I want to present this to a non-technical um audience right so I can I can export it in such a way that's most appropriate for my audience all right let's continue there so I showed you try catch and go back to on diagramming we also add support for do the following until and so it's represented in the loop fashion so do the following and then what ever is in the middle and then until and then loop back uh let's say I want to just create an incident or actually create a create something create a recer say I want to create instant tasks here we go and then um I can keep doing that and then based on a condition I can create incident tasks based on a condition so I can say Okay create task and then uh incident tasks let me start from the beginning so create in tasks then oh actually yeah I can say Okay create a task if the knowledge is false right so maybe I can just create an instant task to to create a knowledge from this incident something like that so I can keep doing that until until the condition is met um of course by tacoing over the details I will see that the condition is displayed on the surface so that I can I can view the whole uh flow and details with it on on a one single gland view then oh one other small enhancement I want to show you is because now with a lot of the flow logic basically all the flow Logics are supported there going to be a lot of lines on the screen and sometimes the lines can be overlapping each other and so we added this small enhancement where if you are highlighting over a edge it actually highlight the two notes or two actions that this Edge is connecting so that you can if it's on a very complex and big flow you will understand uh it will make it easier for you to understand where are the lines going from where to where okay I think that's all the demos I have thank you very much hi everyone my name is Julia Peis and I'm a principal product manager on the workflow automation team I oversee decision tables on the service now platform and I'm excited to talk to you about what's coming in the Washington release for us the Washington release was all about making it easier for you to build and use decision tables I'll show you some of the key features that we're delivering within this release and then we'll go through into a quick demo the first feature is the ability to duplicate this is something that you see within flow and playbooks and is now available for decision tables as well you can duplicate your decision tables being able to copy over either the structure of your decision table or the structure and the rows in your table to create different copies of a decision table for different use cases or purposes we'll take a look at an example of this in the demo Additionally you can now copy your to make it much faster and easier to author New Logic the next feature is the ability to see related objects if any of you use subflows this is probably something you've used to see where your subflow is used or your action within decision tables you can now see related objects to see which flows and subflows are using the decision table this makes it much easier to test for impact of changes whenever you're modifying the logic stored in your decision tables lastly an exciting feature is coming to decision tables in Washington which is the ability to generate a code snippet so that you can execute your your decision table from anywhere in the platform that you write code this is of course available today by writing your own script using our API documentation but with create code snippet it is faster and easier to quickly get that code that you can drop anywhere you want to call your decision table from a script and now you can use that feature in addition to leveraging the make a decision action and flow designer for your decision tables let's jump into an instance and take a look at these new features we're now looking at a decision table within workflow Studio this decision table is being used to figure out if a student is eligible for a scholarship program we have their age at the program start their assessment score and their application country as condition columns that are going to be used to define the logic and then the decision table will return whether someone's eligible for the program or not this decision table is being used for applicants in the US and Canada let's use the duplicate decision table feature to create another version of this decision table for students who are in Europe you can see duplicate decision table here in the Overflow menu and we have a few options we can rename the new decision table here we'll just call it scholarship one eligibility in Europe we can change the scope if we'd like for the new decision table we can choose if we want to duplicate the draft or published versions if they're different and lastly we can choose whether we want to include the decision rows or not in this case the logic and the rules in the decision table is going to be different for this European program than it is for the US and Canada program so we'll choose not to include decision rows when you duplicate a decision table it opens the new decision table in a new tab in workflow Studio as you can see here we have the same input and result column and the same condition columns and you can use this base to start authoring rules for new countries in this example we might want to have um a few different eligibility statuses for different ages depending on the country so we may say if the applicant is going to be less than 16 in the UK then they're not going to be eligible but we want to may want to say that in other countries at less than 16 depending on an assessment score they will be eligible in this case we can leverage the duplicate row feature if you hover over any row in a decision table you'll now see this duplicate icon when you click it it will copy down the data from the row above into the next row now we can say for this different country if the student is less than 16 we can start filling out the assessment score and change the country and use this pattern to more quickly author our decision table now that we no longer have to click and specify this first value you can also duplicate a decision row by using the duplicate option in this menu you can see that here below the ability to add rows above and below whenever you duplicate a row it will add the new row below the row you duplicated the next feature we're going to take a look at here is the ability to see related objects in this decision table we haven't yet used it in a flow but if I go back to the original decision table we can go to the overflow menu click see related objects and see this decision table in two flows this is particular particularly helpful because if you make changes to your decision table you may want to double check where it's being used in this case we can click into the application review flow and that will take us right to the flow in a new tab in workflow Studio lastly let's talk about the final feature the ability to generate a code snippet for a decision table in this example this flow is triggered when the scholarship application is created and it's run through a decision table for eligibility to determine whether the applicant is for the program or not if they're not eligible we'll send a notification and update their record and if they are eligible we'll send a different notification create update the record and send a task in this case we may want to send a notification with an email where the email content depends on their age of the program start the email may contain a form and that form might be different if they're over a certain age or a c under a certain age we want to be able to dynamically change that link within the email template itself and we we can do that by putting a decision table into a script that we then leverage in that email we won't look at the full extent of this use case on this demo but what I will show you is the ability to access that code snippet for the decision table we have a decision table here where if the applicant is less than 18 they might get one form and if they're greater than 18 or 18 then they'll get this different form and from here we can go create code snippet and see that this code snippet with our specific inputs and result elements is Auto automatically generated in other use cases where you want to have a decision table that executes to return all decisions that match unlike this code which is only going to return a single result you can click over to the other Tab and get the different version of our execution code using the um API that does multiple evaluations and a code that includes the for Loop here from here you can copy the code and use it anywhere on the platform that you are writing script you can also learn more about our AP API documentation from this model so thank you all for watching that's a quick overview of the new features coming for decision builder in Washington we hope you enjoy them and that they unlock new use cases for you all thanks so much hi everybody my name is Jason LEF I'm a manager with the platform workflow automation team today I'm going to be talking about the new features that we've delivered in the Washington DC family and our store One release which is process Auto ation designer version 25.1 as well as Playbook experience bundle version 25.1 one thing that you'll notice is we have started to make mention of playbooks and Playbook experience and have stopped mentioning process automation designer we are going through a change in our naming so we will be from here on out referring to process automation designer as playbooks so Playbook books are uh the way to build automated processes on the now platform and then the runtime user experience for interacting with the process is Playbook experience one of the features that we delivered in Washington is the ability to restart this has been highly requested for a number of releases and so we were able to deliver it in Washington again you will need to install our version 25.1 store releases to take advantage of these new features so now you can configure your playbooks to be able to restart so at the Playbook properties level you need to flag your playbook to be able to restart or not and then for each stage and activity of your playbook you can set a restart strategy whether it's not to restart at all to always restart every time you rewind to that point and carry forward or to only run in a re restart type of scenario so on the design time side The Playbook author has the ability to configure which parts of a Playbook can or cannot restart and then in runtime users that are interacting with the Playbook to achieve some kind of outcome resolving cases responding to incidents fulfilling requests we'll be able to invoke restart actions from either the Playbook um menu the the actions menu the stage actions menu or within an activity within the activity actions menu and what this will do in runtime is essentially rewind to the point where you're restarting from allow the user to review the information that was entered at that point and then move forward note that changing information in a restart scenario May route The Playbook to a different place but that might be a good thing so uh this is one of the major features we delivered in Washington the other is our integration with service portal so playbooks are a seismic component they are built and configured in uh the the runtime experience is configured in UI Builder and uh up until Washington uh we integrated with workspace we had a mobile um mobile friendly page that that integrates with now mobile app and uh you can add a Playbook to any custom UI Builder page so whether you're uh just building a a complete uh screen takeover page or uh implementing some kind of wizard and presenting in a modal uh as long as it's seismic you can embed your playbook component there with the introduction of this service portal integration you can now um present playbooks to external users or uh end user requestor type of personas so uh the way that this works is we have an outof the-box page that has an outof thebox portal page that has the Playbook component embedded as an iframed widget uh and so you also are able to create what's called A playbook content item these content items are searchable on the portal they can be presented on a portal page and so the user can select them so for example request a laptop if you have a Content item presented there that will redirect to the Playbook page from the initiation of the request the the user is interacting with the Playbook and that way the user can complete work that may be required of the end user and then on the workspace side you've got the fulfiller type of persona that's completing work that's required for the fulfiller but the end user and the fulfiller alike will see the progress of the life cycle of the particular request that's being processed so there are a number of use cases that are going to be um released this year using the portal capability uh several of them focus in our customer service and Industry workflow spaces such as um onboarding complaint case uh a number of claims type of scenarios with the within insurance and such so look forward to uh seeing customer adoption and uh additional appp use cases that leverage this portal integration well that's it for now I hope you've enjoyed learning about the new playbook features for Washington just one more reminder when upgrading to Washington not only do you need to upgrade to the family release you also need to install process automation designer Store app version 25.1 as well as Playbook experience bundle version 25.1 we hope you enjoy the features and uh we'll talk again next time thank you if you like this session please upload 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 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 decision tables thank you for choosing to spend some time today to learn about worklow 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