Auto-Label Blocked Stories in Agile Visual Task Board (VTB)

[Rampriya-S]

Hi everyone,

           When working in Agile, visibility into blocked stories is critical for sprint tracking and quick resolution. By default, stories marked as Blocked in ServiceNow do not automatically reflect on the Visual Task Board (VTB).

In this article, I’ll Walk you through how I created a Flow Designer automation that auto-labels stories with a Blocked label when they are marked as blocked and removes the label when they are unblocked.

This automation ensures that the VTB always reflects the status of work items—making it easier for Scrum Masters, Product Owners, and team members to track bottlenecks at a glance.

Business Problem

• Agile teams often rely on the VTB to track sprint progress.
• Blocked stories may be hidden in the backlog or missed unless manually labeled.
• Manual label management is prone to error and takes extra effort.

Goal: Automatically keep the VTB card updated with a Blocked label whenever a story is blocked/unblocked.

Solution Overview

We’ll use Flow Designer with a trigger on the Story [rm_story] table to:

1. Detect when the Blocked field changes.
2. If story is in VTB and Blocked = true, create a Blocked label entry.
3. If story is unblocked, remove the Blocked label entry.

Steps to Implement

Step 1 – Create the Flow

• Navigate to Flow Designer > New Flow.
• Name: Auto label VTB Agile blocked stories.
• Trigger: Story Created or Updated where Blocked changes.

Step 2 – Look Up VTB Card

• Action: Look Up Record on Visual Task Board Card [vtb_card].
• Condition: Task is Story record (Trigger).

Step 3 – Check Story Presence in VTB

• Add an If condition: Lookup status = Success.
• This ensures the story has a card in VTB.

Step 4 – Blocked Condition

• If Blocked = true
• Action: Create Record in Label Entry [label_entry].
• Table = VTB Card, Label = Blocked.

Step 5 – Unblock Condition

• Else → Lookup existing Blocked label entry.
• If found → Delete Record.

Expected Behavior

• We are supposed to create the Blocked label on the board where we want this behavior to apply.
• When Blocked: A Pink Blocked label circle appears automatically on the story card in VTB.
• When Unblocked: The label is removed instantly.

Benefits

• Improves sprint visibility by highlighting blocked work.
• Saves manual effort in updating cards.
• Ensures consistency across all team boards.

Conclusion

This Flow Designer automation ensures that your Agile boards always stay in sync with the Blocked status of stories. It’s simple, effective, and eliminates manual overhead—helping your teams stay focused on resolving blockers rather than tracking them.

[rajumunta]

First of all a great article and I like the way you have got it organized. Few things to keep in mind: 

Roles & permissions: Newer releases might require specific roles to add/edit labels (vtb_admin or global_tags_creator).
Refresh issues: VTBs sometimes do not auto-refresh in real-time. Users may need to manually refresh to see label updates, depending on platform version.