Optimize flow designer to easy maintenance

[MARISA INACIO1]

Hello, everyone,

I'd like to get an opinion from someone who works with catalog services and flow designers.

I have several catalog items and for each service I have a flow. For approvals I have a single subflow that calls all the flows. However, each service flow has its own characteristics as well as a different number of tasks between them.

I'd like to optimize it so that maintenance isn't so difficult, but I can't find much information.

Does anyone have any experience of having one flow for each item? And then have subflows? Or another way to reduce the number of flows?

Thanks in advance for your help

Marisa

[Ratnakar7]

Hi @MARISA INACIO1 ,

Optimizing the management of catalog items and flow designers in ServiceNow is crucial for efficient maintenance and scalability. Here are some strategies you can consider:

1. Use Subflows for Common Approvals:

   • If multiple catalog items share a common approval process, create a subflow for that approval process and invoke it from individual service flows. This way, changes to the approval process can be centralized in one subflow.

2. Leverage Flow Designer Snippets:

   • Create reusable snippets for common tasks or actions that are shared across multiple flows. This promotes consistency and simplifies updates.

3. Design Modular Flows:

   • Break down complex flows into modular components. Each module can represent a specific step or task in the process. This allows for easier understanding and maintenance.

4. Use Dynamic Inputs:

   • Make use of dynamic inputs to create flexible flows. This allows you to configure inputs dynamically based on the specific needs of each catalog item.

5. Documentation:

   • Maintain detailed documentation for each flow and catalog item. Clearly document the purpose of each step, the expected inputs, and the desired outcomes. This makes it easier for others (or even yourself in the future) to understand and modify the flows.

6. Version Control:

   • Consider versioning your flows. This allows you to make changes to a flow without affecting the existing instances of that flow. This is especially important if changes might impact ongoing requests.

7. Reuse Catalog Tasks:

   • If multiple catalog items have similar tasks, consider creating reusable catalog tasks and associating them with the relevant catalog items. This way, changes to a shared task will apply to all catalog items using that task.

Thanks,

Ratnakar

[SunilKumar_P]

Hi @MARISA INACIO1,

I work with catalog items and deals with workflows / flow designers as per the need.

1. Its a good practice to limit the number of steps steps in a flow.

2. Its good to use subflows for reusable things.

Regards,

Sunil

[Dr Atul G- LNG]

HI @MARISA INACIO1 

I'd like to get an opinion from someone who works with catalog services and flow designers.

I have several catalog items and for each service I have a flow.

Atul: Check, if any of the catalog item can be combined and drived through variables. Share common paths / format.

For approvals I have a single subflow that calls all the flows. However, each service flow has its own characteristics as well as a different number of tasks between them.

Atul: Use Subflow and also see , in last 6months - 1 years how many time these catalog were used any to decommission or merged.

I'd like to optimize it so that maintenance isn't so difficult, but I can't find much information.