Cloud Account Management (CAM) - Playbook Customization

[Murali Reddy1]

Customizing CAM Playbook 

Cloud Account Management (CAM) offers a standardized workflow for creating new subscription accounts. It includes essential features such as:

• Request approvals

• Assigning cloud context

• Creating the subscription account

• Discovering the newly created account and populating it into the CMDB

However, many customers have additional requirements—such as implementing custom landing zone security features or incorporating a bespoke approval process.

This article provides guidance on how to customize CAM workflows using Playbooks to better align with your organization’s specific needs.

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🔧 Prerequisites

This article assumes you are a ServiceNow developer with a solid understanding of:

• Flows

• Subflows

• Flow Actions
  within the Now Platform.

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🚀 Getting Started with PAD/Playbooks

To understand the fundamentals of Process Automation Designer (PAD) and Playbooks, the following resources are highly recommended:

• Getting Started with Playbooks – ServiceNow Developer Blog

• Playbooks in ServiceNow – YouTube Tutorial

• ServiceNow Documentation – Playbook UI

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📌 Key Components to Customize a Playbook

✅ Stages

• Represent high-level phases in a process

• Provide a visual roadmap of the workflow

• Example: “Assessment → Approval → Fulfillment → Closure”

✅ Activities

• Represent steps or tasks within a stage

• Can be automated or manual

• Example: “Send Approval Request”, “Create Task”

• You can use various activity types; for custom workflows, we’ll use Subflow Activity

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📝 Scenario: Post Account Processing Using Custom API

Let’s walk through the steps to customize the CAM Playbook by adding a Post Account Processing activity that calls a custom API using the Subscription Account Number.

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📄 Step 1: Duplicate the Playbook

1. Choose the application scope:

   • Go to Cloud Workspace scope

2. Navigate to:
   Process Automation → Workflow Studio

3. Click on Playbooks in the top navigation

4. Find and open the playbook you want to customize (e.g., Subscription Account Creation Process)

5. Deactivate the existing playbook (to avoid duplicate triggers):

   • Figure 1 shows the playbook properties. When two active playbooks exist with the same trigger conditions, both will be executed, which can disrupt the workflow. Therefore, it is important to deactivate the out-of-the-box (OOB) playbook before activating your custom playbook.

   • Click the three-dot menu (…) in the top-right

   • Select Deactivate

6. Duplicate the playbook:

   • Click the same menu (…) and choose Duplicate

   • Provide a custom name and click Duplicate to create a copy

Figure 1: Playbook Properties

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🔄 Step 2: Define the Subflow

1. Navigate to:
   Workflow Studio → Flow Action

2. Create a Flow Action that invokes your custom API

   • Example name: Create Root User

   • Test and publish the flow action

3. Navigate to:
   Workflow Studio → Subflow

4. Create a Subflow called Post Account Processing

   • Input: Subscription Account Number

   • Call the Create Root User Flow Action

   • Output: Root Account ID, status

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⚙️ Step 3: Create the Activity Definition

1. Navigate to:
   Process Automation → Process Automation Administration → Activity Definitions

2. Click New to create a new activity definition

3. Provide a meaningful Name (e.g., Post Account Processing)

4. In the Automation Plan tab:

   • Click the search icon to link an action as shown in Figure 2.

   • Choose Action Type: Flow 

   • Select the Subflow: Post Account Processing

5. In the Activity Experience tab:

   • Set UI Layout to: Record as shown in Figure 3 

6. Click Submit to save the definition

Figure 2: Activity Definition - selecting subflow

Figure 2: Activity Definition - Post selecting subflow

Figure 3: Activity Definition - Activity Experience

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🎯 Step 4: Add the Activity to the Playbook

➕ Add a New Stage (Optional)

1. Open your duplicated playbook

2. Click Add Stage to create a new phase (e.g., Post Processing) as shown in figure 4.

3. To control when the stage runs, add logic in Run Conditions as shown in figure 5. This is an optional step. 

Figure 4: Adding new stage

Figure 5: Adding condition to stage

🔄 Add the Custom Activity

1. Inside your new or existing stage, click Add Activity

2. Select the activity you created (Post Account Processing) (fig: 6)

3. Configure any input mappings (e.g., Subscription Account Number) (fig: 7)

Figure 6: Adding Activity to playbook

Figure 7: Passing Input parameter to Activity

Figure 8: After setting input parameter to Activity

Testing the Playbook

1. Navigate to the CAM request UI form and create a new request.

2. Once the request is created, as shown in the figure, select the Request ID from the form.

3. After selecting the request, you'll see an option to Preview Playbook — click on it to launch the playbook interface.

4. Step through the playbook by responding to prompts and verifying that each activity behaves as expected.

Figure 9: Selecting the CAM request

Figure 10: Executing the playbook

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Activating the Playbook

Once testing is successful and the flow performs as intended:

1. Select Activate on top of the workflow studio to publish the playbook and make it live in the environment.