What is your best approach to creating recurring tasks

[Bcrant]

Hello, all. 

I'm trying to gauge what is the best way to schedule recurring tasks in ServiceNow that serve to remind analysts, admins, etc. to perform a certain action or to follow up on a particular event. I've looked at leveraging flow designer to create private tasks (PTSK) and this could work but this approach will require that staff use visual task boards (VTB). I don't think that will be an issue but it is yet another area of the ITSM to check and manage. 

Please let me know your thoughts or suggestions! 

Thanks!!

[Vivek Gaikwad]

Hi  Bcrant,

Workflow

I would highly suggest, not to use a workflow here. Don't get me wrong, it is possible. However your workflow (as you stated) will remain running indefinitely. And this is why it won't work well. Workflows have a limit on how many actions they are allowed to perform. This means, that eventually your workflow will fail. Furthermore, a workflow should always represent a process, which in this case it clearly would not.

Scheduled job

This is what we should settle one. Running a scheduled job in the smallest needed timeframe will give you the best option here. "Daily" will probably be more than just fine. Now you've stated, thinking about it, however you have been discouraged by the lack of variety it will give you. This is where a scheduled job is indeed limited. However, i propose to use a new table for this. Here is how:

Create a new table with the following fields (minimum, add fields as you desire):

- reference field to a task

- reference field to schedules

- reference field to a user

Now here is what a record will do in this table:

You can now define a task that was once created, which you want to repeatedly create. Within the schedule field you can reference when that task must be created. The user field will contain the user, said task must be assigned to. If you want, you can extend this table to your desire. E.g. add a group field to assign the task to a certain group.

Check below doc you will get better idea:https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/paris-platform-administration/page/administer/reference-pages/task/t_ScheduleTheGenerationOfAnEntity.html?cshalt=yes

Let me know if it works

Cheers,

Vivek

[Bcrant]

This is great information to have and i'll give this approach a shot! Thanks @Vivek Gaikwad 

[apjohn2]

This has come up at my company recently. I am hesitant to create new custom table/app because that can often incur licensing costs. I would strongly suggest working with your ServiceNow rep(s) on this before you put custom tables into Production and get caught out in a compliance audit later. (That is experience talking, not speculation.) There are tables that can be extended without incurring licensing costs, but I don't know what they are offhand. Your rep(s) should be able to find out for you.

I am also hesitant to use VTBs, not only for the reasons you mentioned (similar concerns--the "good luck if it breaks because we can't support it" model doesn't seem to work out, like, ever--and also VTBs and permissions can be funky and really cumbersome if you're dealing with any cross work between teams, different Boards for different shifts, and so on.).

Ultimately I think we're going to have to use Flow Designer to generate a Request/Requested Item/Catalog Task every day assigned to the Group that has to close them. I'm not a fan of using this sort of setup for such a niche use case but a) the users want to track the work in ServiceNow and b) ServiceNow doesn't offer anything (that I'm aware of) that solves this problem out of the box.

Good luck and please keep us updated on what you go with!

[Bcrant]

Thank you both for your input. We're still reviewing but I'll follow up here with the solution/process that we land on.