If you miss any content, please leave it as a comment and I will add it to this article.
| Table of Contents |
My library Knowledge Sources To Go is very popular, but it was intended mainly as a thematically grouped guide to standard sources and was provided by me as a PDF file. For certain topics, however, there is so much content that I can no longer include it in that document, as it cannot continue to grow forever.
For this reason, I have decided to handle such topics in individual community articles like this one instead.
What are Playbooks?
Playbooks, built in Workflow Studio, promote your subflows and flow actions to a new level by driving cross-enterprise and cross-departmental workflows. Together with Playbook Experience, you can expose your playbook, the expected next steps, and all relevant information directly to the end-user for increased efficiency and process transparency. With optional, ad-hoc activities you can make your processes flexible to meet any unexpected needs.
Entry point to the official product information pages
Entry point to the official product information pages.
Getting Started with Process Automation Designer and Playbooks
This white paper introduces the Process Automation Designer (PAD) and Playbook Experience tools and highlights the value customers can achieve by using these tools in conjunction when designing and managing processes.
Guidance & Practical Tips
Trainings & Courses
Introduction to Playbooks and Process Automation Designer (Washington)
In this course, you will familiarize yourself with the Playbooks and PAD interfaces, use cases, in addition to a basic overview of each topic. Playbooks is a way to visualize your business process, with configurations and inner-workings taking place in Process Automation Designer.
Playbooks and Process Automation Designer Fundamentals (Washington)
If you are interested in building or authoring cross-enterprise workflows in a single, unified process, you've come to the right place. Using a kanban board-like interface, you can provide end users with a task-oriented view of your process. In addition to PAD, you will use Playbooks to customize the default Playbook user experience to create a visualized business process workflow.
Enhance your cross-functional workflows on the Now Platform with Playbooks in Workflow Studio! Dive into real-world use cases, explore key roles, and dream up process solutions by building dynamic playbooks that drive efficiency across your teams.
Learn how to embed and configure Playbook pages in configurable workspaces, portals, and mobile devices. Dive deeper into topics including custom layouts, activity overrides, and UI Builder integration.
Articles & Blog Posts
Blog posts on Process Automation Designer written by the ServiceNow advocates.
2020-10-21 by @Lisa Holenstein
Process Automation Designer Introduction
Process Automation Designer (PAD) is a new application in Paris that will elevate your business processes to the next level. PAD is based on the technology of Flow Designer. As a business process owner, it allows you to organize flows into unified cross-enterprise processes and provide your users with a guided path through the process life-cycle with playbooks.
2021-01-27, by Jon G. Lind
ServiceNow Playbook Experience: The Face of the Workflow
Playbooks were designed to enable agents across business units to visualize workflows in a simplified, task-oriented view which reduces the time to get up-to-speed on a case and guides agents to the next steps to take towards case resolution. Benefits include increased productivity through the ease of editing values directly on the form, better visibility into the status of a case, and easier design and maintenance of workflows.
2021-09-08, by @Earl Duque
Getting started with Playbooks
In this post, we will provide a walk through on how to create your first and basic playbook in ServiceNow.
2022-10-20 by @Lisa Holenstein
Make an activity optional in Process Automation Designer
In this post, we will provide a walk through on how to create your first and basic playbook in ServiceNow.
2023-01-27 by @Jasper Miller
Building and executing an RPA robot from a ServiceNow custom App
In this article, I will take you through the steps required for executing a Robot from a Flow in App Engine and providing it with data from the platform. The instructions that I will provide, will take you all the way from building the app, designing the robot, importing it into your ServiceNow instance, managing required configurations, passing data and executing it from the platform.
2023-09-22 by @laurenmcmanamon
What's New in Process Automation Designer (PAD) for Vancouver
Join me as we explore all of the changes made to Process Automation Designer, starting with general enhancements.
2023-12-11 by @Dan Martinez
Making use of Playbooks in the Service Operations Workspace
Playbooks were released several releases ago to help agents deal with tickets faster. They were available in the "CSM Configurable Workspace", but since the "Service Operations Workspace" was release more and more customers asked about embedding playbooks there to deal with their Incidents in a much better way.
2025-03-18 by @Martin Virag
3 Ways to Automate Assignment Updates in ServiceNow Playbooks
I've been working with Playbooks for some time now, and I'd like to highlight a common issue and its resolution when users start using Playbooks.
2025-03-18 by @Ethan Davies
Capture Additional Information without custom fields with Playbook Questionnaires
The ServiceNow Platform has become incredibly vast, it is increasingly difficult to keep on top of every update and addition, even in your areas of interested or specialisation. Because of this, ever so often I experience a “Have I been living under a rock?” moment. A moment where you discover a feature (maybe by chance) and you can’t believe you didn’t know about its existence before. That is exactly how I felt when I learned about Playbook Questionnaires at Knowledge 2025!
Videos & Podcasts
2020-10-22 by ServiceNow Community
TechNow Ep 80 | Process Automation Designer/Playbook Part 1
Arriving in the Now Platform Paris release, the new Process Automation Designer app empowers process owners to author cross-enterprise workflows and create a unified process. In addition, you can use Playbook to provide users with a simplified, task-oriented view of your process.
2020-10-30 by Chuck Tomasi
Breakpoint: Process Automation Designer / Playbooks with Yaron Guez
Learn more about two new features of Paris, Process Automation Designer and Playbook from the man who knows - Software Engineering Manager Yaron Guez. We take you through the features and even some behind the scenes looks at where we come up with ideas and features for platform capabilities like this.
2020-11-0, by Omar Martinez
Process Automation Designer Playbook setup
ServiceNow Process Automation Designs quickly tied into your Workspace via Playbook. Walkthrough the configuration of doing just that. Citizen Developer Edition guidance.
2020-11-19 by ServiceNow Community
TechNow Ep 81 | Process Automation Designer/Playbook Part 2
Join us for the second of this two-part series on how the new Playbook app makes it easier than ever to visualize cross-enterprise workflows. Playbook is a new in-platform capability to visualize processes built with Process Automation Designer and help everyone be more effective.
2021-08-19 by ServiceNow Dev Program
Building Playbooks in Rome Part 1
On this episode, we will be building a playbooks and using process designer. Crack a beverage and come join us!
2021-09-02 by ServiceNow Dev Program
Building Playbooks in Rome Part 2
On this episode, Earl Duque, Brad Tilton, and Andrew Barnes continue setting up a full playbook experience, including the new Record Watchers from Rome.
2022-01-26 by Cask
Inside the Barrel - Process Automation Designer and Playbooks
Welcome to the Inside the Barrel Podcast! Follow along as Dorian and Jon take on process automation and playbooks!
2022-03-31 by Glidefast Consulting
In this ServiceNow Tutorial, Sr. Technical Consultant Jordan Rogus gives a demo on Playbooks in ServiceNow.
2022-04-28 by Cask
Inside the Barrel - Activities in Playbook
Welcome to the Inside the Barrel Podcast! Follow along as Dorian and Jon explore Process Automation Designer and some basic activities to get you started.
2022-06-07 by ServiceNow Support
Configure a sequence to fulfill items in order guides
Shows you how to configure a sequence to fulfill items in order guides..
2022-07-08 by ServiceNow Community
Getting Started with Process Automation Designer
This session helps you learn when, how, and why to use Process Automation Designer for your cross-enterprise workflow automation. We're joined by guest host Jason Lefever, Product Owner for PAD and Playbooks.
2022-08-08 by Arnoud Kooi
Adding Playbook as a Record Page Tab to ServiceNow Configurable Workspace Part 1/2
This video tries to explain the metadata involved to create a UI Builder page.
2022-08-09 by ServiceNow Community
Getting Started with Playbook Experience
This session helps you learn how to configure engaging a process experience for your agents with Playbook Experience. We're joined by guest host Jason Lefever, Product Owner for PAD and Playbooks.
2022-08-17 by Arnoud Kooi
Adding Playbook as a Record Page Tab to ServiceNow Configurable Workspace Part 2/2
This video covers how to add Playbook as a Record Page Tab to a Configurable Workspace using UI Builder.
2023-03-17 by ServiceNow Dev Program
Process Automation Designer Optional Activities
2023-08-16 by TechnoMonk
ServiceNow's Game-Changer: ServiceNow Process Automation Designer Demo & Overview
ServiceNow, a leading digital workflow company, offers a plethora of tools to streamline and automate business processes. One such tool is the Process Automation Designer. Let's dive deep into what it is and how it can revolutionize your business operations.
2023-08-17 by James Downs
I explore the new Process Automation Designer features in ServiceNow Vancouver Release
Exciting updates await in the Vancouver release of ServiceNow Process Automation Designer, and we're here to showcase them all in this comprehensive video. Join us as we explore the latest features, including the revamped diagram interface that simplifies process visualization, the game-changing "Cancel Process" button, and a host of other enhancements designed to supercharge your process automation workflows.
2023-11-30 by ServiceNow Community
Updates for Playbook Experience
So much news, so little time! This is why Inbound Product Manager Jason Lefever joined us for TWO back-to-back sessions about Playbook Experience (this session) and Process Automation Designer (https://sn.works/platformacademy/46). Much has changed since we last looked at these products in Summer 2022, and we can't wait to give you a closer look at the new features introduced in the Tokyo, Utah, and Vancouver releases. This session's highlights: Custom Playbook Layouts and Mobile Controller
2024-03-28 by ServiceNow Community
What's new for Workflow Automation in the Washington DC Release
In this academy session, our Product Owners for Flows, Decision Tables, and Playbooks will showcase the innovations delivered for Workflow Automation! Join me, Jingfei Chen, Julia Perlis, and Jason Lefever to learn what's new in the Washington DC release.
2024-04-24 by ServiceNow Community
Top 5 Tips for Playbooks and Playbook Experience
Series of short videos to get you started with Playbooks and the Playbook Experience
2025-03-12 by ServiceNow Dev Program
Mastering Playbook Variants in ServiceNow Yokohama: A Game Changer for Workflow Automation
ServiceNow developers, get ready for a major upgrade! The Playbook Variants feature in the Yokohama release is here to help streamline complex workflows without duplicating processes.
2025-03-18 by ServiceNow Dev Program
Mastering Playbook Localization in Yokohama: A Must-Know for ServiceNow Devs!
ServiceNow developers, are you ready to scale your workflows globally? In this episode of Creator Toolbox, Kristy is joined by Taylor Burrows, a Principal Inbound Product Manager, to dive deep into the Playbook Localization feature in the Yokohama release.
Troubleshooting
Known Error Portal
Pre-configured filter for the respective topic. Remove the query string or modify the filters on the left side if you want to narrow down the search results in a different way.
Selected Articles
Process Automation Designer's lane not displaying all the activities (KB1000712 🔒)
[sc_req_item] Table not available on Trigger of Process Automation Designer (KB0868613)
Process Automation Designer (PAD) - Condition Builder fields are not populated in Modify Condition W... (KB0870896)
Case Onboarding Playbook - Internal Server Error (500) or Gateway Timeout Error (504) is displayed w... (KB0999139 🔒)
Playbook activity not triggering when condition all met (KB1002542)
Quebec instances have perf issues adding activities due to excessive choice data being retrieved by ... (KB0995462)
Lane Condition to Run does not show changes to activity names (KB0997568)
