Looking for Fun & Unique Flow Designer ideas to practice building flows

[jyothave]

Hi Community,

I’m not working full‑time in ServiceNow yet, but I’ve started learning and I want to get hands‑on with Flow Designer. I’ve finished some flow learning path and micro‑certifications, but I’m still not fully confident applying them in real scenarios.

Could you recommend interesting or unique flow challenges that go beyond “create a task when an incident is opened”? I’m looking for ideas that are fun to build and help me practice good design patterns—like using actions, subflows, flow logic, error handling, and integrations.

I’d especially love:

• Multi‑table scenarios (e.g., incident → problem → change) that require branching, looping, or lookups
• Human-in-the-loop approvals or dynamic delegation
• Data quality automation (normalization, duplicates, enrichment)
• Notifications that are context-aware and suppress spam
• ATF (Automated Test Framework) strategies to validate flows without breaking prod

If you have sample requirements, step-by-step outlines, or best practices (naming conventions, guards, retries, rollback strategies), please share!

Thanks in advance!

[AnjalPDijo]

Hi @jyothave ,

Here’s a practical scenario you can build to practice Flow Designer with real-world complexity.

Scenario: Toy Manufacturing Workflow

This example simulates an organizational process with multiple roles, approvals, and state transitions. It’s perfect for exploring branching, dynamic notifications, human-in-the-loop approvals, and error handling.

 

Access Details

1. Raw Material Owner – Create and update records in Draft state.
2. Factory Analyst – Update records during Factory Processing stage.
3. Reviewer (Quality Control) – Review and request revisions in Review state.
4. Head of Operations – Approve records in Awaiting Approval stage.
5. Toy Maker – Update details and finalize in Toy Making stage.
6. No record should be created without linking it to a valid manufacturing request.

State Requirements

Draft → Factory Processing → Review → Awaiting Approval → Toy Making → Closed

• Draft
  Owner drafts the request and selects raw materials.
  Flow Action: Notify Factory Analyst when ready for processing.
  UI Action: Send to Factory.

• Factory Processing
  Analyst confirms material suitability.
  Flow Action: Update activity log and notify Reviewer.
  UI Action: Send for Review.

• Review
  Reviewer gets notification to review.
  UI Actions:

  • Review Complete → Move to Awaiting Approval.
  • Request Revision → Mandatory comment pop-up, revert to Draft, notify Owner.

• Awaiting Approval
  Head of Operations receives approval request.
  Flow Logic:

  • If approved → Move to Toy Making, notify Toy Maker.
  • If rejected → Revert to Review, notify Reviewer.

• Toy Making
  Toy Maker updates details and completes manufacturing.
  UI Action: Finalize → Move to Closed.

• Closed
  Record locked for edits, visible for reporting only.

You are welcome to add your own additions and customisations on states or any other parts to make it more business relevant.

Hope this helps!

Best Regards,
Anjal

[Siddhesh Gawade]

@jyothave 

I have mentioned some common business requirements; they will definitely help you practice/understand flow designer:

• User Onboarding:

  • automate provisioning, access, assets, and welcome tasks.

• User Offboarding:

  • Purpose: safely revoke access, reclaim assets, archive accounts.

• Access Request / Access Review:

  • Purpose: request/grant access and perform periodic recertification.
  • Flow features: catalog-driven inputs, dynamic approvers, approval subflows, scheduled recertification flows.
  • High-level steps: request submission → A - Resolve Approver → approval wait → on approve call provisioning API → set expiry and schedule review → recertification flow triggers on schedule to send review tasks.

• Scheduled repeating flow:

  • Purpose: run periodic jobs (metrics, reconciliation, digests).
  • Flow features: Scheduled trigger, batching, checkpointing, logging.
  • High-level steps: Scheduled trigger → query target records in pages → for each batch call subflow to process → write progress/checkpoint → on error move to dead-letter table.

• Call subflow in main flow:

  • Purpose: reuse logic and keep flows modular.
  • How: create a Subflow with defined inputs/outputs; in main flow add a “Subflow” action and map inputs/outputs.
  • Behaviors: runs as part of parent execution (map outputs back to main flow).

• Call flow/subflow from script:

  • Purpose: trigger flows programmatically.

• Create custom actions with inputs & outputs:

  • Purpose: build reusable building blocks (lookups, enrichment, provisioning).
  • How: in Flow Designer create an Action, define inputs (typed), build steps (script, connector, subflow calls), and expose outputs.
  • Best practices: single responsibility, clear input/output names (in_/out_ prefixes), include validation, add retry logic inside the action, document usage.

• Flows for inbound mail:

  • Purpose: automate ticket creation, routing, and replies from incoming email.
  • Flow features: Email trigger or Inbound Email Actions + Flow Designer Email trigger, parsing, attachment handling.
  • High-level steps: trigger on email received → validate sender and spam checks → parse subject/body (regex/AI) → lookup user/CI → create/update record and attach files → send auto-reply or route to group.
  • Tips: sanitize inputs, limit attachments, implement dedupe and guard to avoid mail loops, include manual review path for ambiguous parsing.

Regards,

Siddhesh Gawade

[abirakundu23]

Hi @jyothave ,
Please find below use cases where you can more leverage the Flow designer concept like Flow, sub flow , action & Error handling mechanism.

1.Use Case : Order Item

As an IT Employee  submit the order for Headphone. Respective child task and approval will be triggered to Employee's manager.
Flow Creation:
Design Step :
i)You can create Flow where trigger condition be Application  - >Service Request -> Select your Catalog Item Name.
ii) Approval triggered to Manger. Once approved Notification trigger through Flow.
iii) Create child task.

Sub Flow: Reusable item and call same sub flow from Multiple Flow.
Approval Process: You can configure Approval process through sub flow and call from different  Order item Flow.

2. Use Case : Consider HR Agent want to create Child HR case from the parent HR Case by clicking "Create Child Case" .

Create UI Action ->"Create Child Case" . You can create either Flow/ Sub Flow for Child case creation and trigger from UI Action.

3.Use Case : External Customer raise issue of the defect product and need support through email.
Email triggered using Flow:
In ServiceNow instance Case will be triggered by Inbound email action. 
Using Flow inbound email can be configured.

4. Integration with 3rd party Application : You can activate Integration Hub in instance and also activate spoke for Microsoft teams/ Slack integration.
Spoke is scope application and combination of Flow, Sub flow and action. You can leverage this part as well.


5. Call Flow/Sub flow from script as well.

6. Create custom action to achieve customer requirement with input, code logic and output.
7. Configure Error handling mechanism to handle error part of any flow/ sub flow in instance.


Please mark helpful and correct action if it's worthy for you.