"Your flow cannot be found. Flow sys_id:An" error

[jcmings]

Sorry if this is the wrong place to put this -- but I ran into this issue the other day and couldn't find any guidance and wanted to post the solution that ended up working for me.

Problem: 

Whenever I open a specific flow in Flow Designer, I get the error "Your flow cannot be found. Flow sys_id:An." This prevents any changes to my flow from truly saving. 

Solution:

Many of the solutions I found online coached going to sys_hub_flow.list and pulling in the "Main snapshot" field and then pasting that sys_id into the URL of your errored out flow designer screen. While this allowed me to load the flow, it didn't recognize any changes I made. To finally resolve the error, I followed these steps:

1. In the Flow Designer landing page, right click the name of the flow causing issues and copy the sys_id
2. Navigate to sys_update_version.list and paste in the sys_id of my erroring flow
3. Revert to a previous (working) version of the flow

Other notes:

A lot of the posts I found online (mainly on these forums) discussed running into this issue when migrating a flow between environments. In most cases, users failed to move a sub-flow as well, and this caused issues. I happened to run into this error in a single environment, and I believe it's because I messed with the "Latest snapshot" field. 

Hope this helps!

[jcmings · Accepted solution]

Solution located in original post

[scottl]

This is not the solution, and will not resolve the issue for most cases.  There is a known bug in SN Flow Designer where it will corrupt the flow when adding a Get Catalog Variables action, saving, then adding a Assign Output action. This is not isolated to new flows either.

Saving as you go, is not a feature currently supported by ServiceNow flow app.  Yes, you read that right. Saving as you go, will now corrupt your flow for the scenario above.  Everything in a flow must be built in one go, then saved, and only then will it not corrupt itself.

ServiceNow is not planning on adding the "feature", "Save as you go" until at least Jan 2025.  

[jcmings]

@scottl  Can you share some more details on your "saving as you go is not a feature" statement? I am on Washington and have been saving/updating my flows without any issues. Your message seems to indicate that users must save/publish a 100% correct flow the first time or experience corruption errors. As mentioned, I have not experienced this issue recently; the only time I have is when I messed with the Latest Snapshot field.

[scottl]

The concept of "saving as you go" breaks, and corrupts subflows when dealing with the "Get Catalog Variables action" and "Assign Output action". If you add a "Get Catalog Variables action", save and then add "Assign Output action" and save, it will corrupt your subflow!

The work around if you want to add a "Assign Output action" to a saved subflow which has a 'Get Catalog Variables" action already, you must DELETE the "Get Catalog Variables" action, and any existing Assign Output actions, before adding the new one, save it, and then rebuild the others back in, with your new "Assign Output action", all without pressing save. Only when all completed, you can save.

Just painful. Wasted so much time recreating things.

And SN will not release the fix until end of JAN.