What are advantages of using Flow Designer?

[donaunilove]

Does using flow designers reduce technical debt?
Does flow designer support advanced developers?

[Astik Thombare]

Hi @donaunilove ,

Advantages of Flow Designer

Flow Designer offers several advantages for automating workflows in ServiceNow:

1. Citizen Developer Friendly:

• No-code/Low-code interface: Visual drag-and-drop functionality allows users with little to no coding experience to create and manage workflows. This empowers business users to automate tasks without relying on IT teams.

2. Increased Productivity and Efficiency:

• Automate repetitive tasks: Free up IT resources and improve overall efficiency by automating manual processes like approvals, data routing, and notifications.
• Streamline complex workflows: Design intricate workflows with conditional branching, loops, and integrations without writing complex code.

3. Improved Visibility and Control:

• Real-time monitoring and reporting: Track workflow execution in real-time and identify bottlenecks or errors for quick resolution.
• Version control and audit trails: Maintain a history of changes and ensure compliance with regulations.

4. Enhanced Integration:

• Connects to various applications and data sources: Integrate seamlessly with ServiceNow applications, external systems, and cloud services through pre-built connectors or custom integrations.

5. Reduced Technical Debt:

• Reusable components: Utilize pre-built and customizable flow components to avoid repetitive coding and maintain a clean codebase.
• Centralized workflow management: Manage all workflows from a single platform, reducing the risk of scattered and unmaintained scripts.

Does Flow Designer Reduce Technical Debt?

Flow Designer can potentially reduce technical debt by:

• Eliminating the need for custom scripting: Replacing manual scripts with visual workflows can lead to cleaner, more maintainable code.
• Promoting code reuse: Utilizing pre-built components and templates reduces code duplication and improves consistency.
• Centralizing workflow management: Consolidate workflows onto a single platform, making them easier to track and manage.

However, technical debt can also increase if:

• Complex workflows are poorly designed: Overly intricate workflows can become difficult to understand and maintain, leading to technical debt.
• Lack of governance: Without proper governance and best practices, Flow Designer workflows can become spaghetti code, increasing technical debt.

Does Flow Designer Support Advanced Developers?

Yes, Flow Designer can also be beneficial for advanced developers:

• Extensibility: Developers can extend Flow Designer functionality by creating custom actions, connectors, and scripts.
• Integration with development tools: Flow Designer integrates with other ServiceNow development tools like ServiceNow Studio and ServiceNow Developer Portal.
• Enhanced development speed: Developers can use Flow Designer to automate repetitive development tasks and prototype workflows quickly.

Overall, Flow Designer is a valuable tool for both citizen developers and advanced developers. Its no-code/low-code interface makes it accessible to everyone, while its extensibility and integration capabilities cater to the needs of experienced developers. However, it's crucial to implement best practices and proper governance to maximize Flow Designer's benefits and prevent technical debt.

Please mark ✅ Correct if this resolves your issue, and also mark 👍 Helpful if you find my response valuable based on its impact.

Regards,

Astik Thombare

[AnveshKumar M]

Hello @donaunilove ,

Apart from the low code/no code and the drag and drop features, Here are the advantages/ benifits of Flow Designer.

1. Minimal effort to achieve similar task when compared with the other options like Work Flow

2. Custom Actions that we can design if it's not available OOTB.

3. Readily build SPOKES for most common integrations (ofcourse licensing cost is there)

4. Not only work flows, but also a Good alternative for Scheduled Jobs, Inbound email actions and some times even the business rules.

5. Debug friendly, you can see complete data like what went in and what came out where it failed which is not possible in work flow where we need to find it from system logs.

And Yes, Advanced developer can use this to create new Spokes and even they can write Inline scripts (which gives more flexibility and I love this) to achieve something complex.

At the same time it has some draw backs too.

1. Licensing cost if you want to use Spokes from store.

2. Re ordering the action will make a mess, you need to be careful while re ordering an action in a flow.

Please mark my answer helpful and accept as a solution if it helped 👍✅

[Sandeep Rajput]

@donaunilove Here are few cents from my side,

1. Does using flow designers reduce technical debt?

Answer: Since flow designer follows low code/no code design principles a lot of technical debt can be reduced using it. This statement holds true if the flow is designed using the OOTB Actions. However, the technical debt would arise in some cases when the custom actions are designed to support the flow or additional scripting is done inside the steps to support the flow.

2. Does flow designer support advanced developers?

Answer: Yes it does in fact despite it being a low code/no code solution, there are ample options available to design your own custom actions with different steps involving scripting and REST/SOAP calls. In some cases flow designer offers more flexibility than the traditional workflows.

Hope this helps.