Streamline Flow Error Handling in ServiceNow

[Anand Kumar P]

Imagine you’re a developer worked on a ServiceNow flow. When an error occurs in flow after submitting the request , endusers/requestors often doesn’t understand what went wrong or how to resolve it. By enabling Error Handler, you can automate error management and make the process seamless.

For instance:
• Scenario: An error occurs in a flow.
• Error Handler Solution: Automatically create an incident/ send email with error details.

This way, the issue is logged and tracked immediately, without requiring manual intervention or investigation.

Outcome: Endusers stay informed, and support teams can act quickly to resolve the incident,ensuring smooth flow operations.

Benefits of Flow Error Handling

Error Handler Components

1. Error Handler Switch: Easily enable or disable error handling for any flow.

2. Error Handler Section: Add up to 10 actions, subflows, or logic steps to manage and resolve errors.

3. Error Status Data Pills:
4. Code: Indicates if an error occurred (1 = error, 0 = success).
5. Message: Provides error details for debugging.

Available States:

• Completed (Error Caught): Error handled successfully within the flow.
• Completed (Error Skipped): Custom actions continued execution despite an error.
• Error: Occurs when the error handler is disabled or fails.

What Happens When an Error Occurs?

• The flow stops and executes the error handler section.
• If resolved, the flow ends with “Completed (Error Caught).”
• If unresolved, the flow stops with an “Error” state.

 

[Jesper Slot]

The error handler section is brilliant!

And to streamline just a bit further, I created a very simple subflow to use in the error handler section. It takes two parameters; name of the functionality and error description, where you could map the "message" into. It then generates an incident to our ServiceNow team with this info (could just as well have been an email like here), so despite being very simple it ensures that we always know if something fails and we always get the information the same way every time and we also don't need to spend time on inventing this step every time we build something new.

And the thing about subflows is they do not only work in flows (and flow error handling section) but you can easily incorporate them into a script. For example a catch block of a try/catch function, which we've done for data sources and business rules for integrations.