In this article we will see what is new, changed and removed in flow designer in Paris release with respect to prior release. There are many points to discuss on this topic. I will touch on few important points which i think will be used by many people in future. Just a recap about Flow designers, this a new way of automating the flow and with low code no code feature. This will be really helpful for people with less know about coding and can create flows quickly and easily by just drag and drop feature.
Now without wasting much of your time lets jump on to the updates on Paris release features, where i will do comparison between old version i.e. Orlando and Paris release to explain you guys exactly what it means.
New Features:
1) Content filtering: This is an awesome feature introduced where we can decide which user should see which component based of role he has.
For example: If user with delegate role wants to see Flow and sub-flows but not to actions then you can configure the content filtering rules as below.
Now main advantage of this that you can now give access components based rather than giving access to whole flow designer components, so you dont have to give flow_designer role which is equivalent to admin role. You can give operator role and then can control the access.
2) Role based flows: Now we can run the flow under certain role or with a user who has that role. If you dont have that role then you will see an error.
Above you can see the difference between the view how it looks in Paris and in Orlando release and below is the error state if you dont have that role. Please note that this is applicable to sub-flows as well.
3) Duplicate an Action and Subflow: This is a good feature which will save a time to replicate the action in respective flow. We can duplicate action, sub-flow in one flow with just on click now.
4) New Steps: We have a few new steps available when you create a new action. We have Delete Multiple Record Step and Update Multiple Record Steps.
5) New API : We can now check if the flow has Ask for Approval Action in it or not. hasApprovals() will return true if it has that action.
6) Testing Flow in Background: Don't get confused with this new feature and the feature which was available in previous version where we are allowed to run the flow in background when it was published. This new feature now allows you to test the flow in background. See below now we have new checkbox in test modal.
7) Send SMS Action: This one is interesting because now we can also use this to send SMS notification to users if you have a SMS provider with you.
😎 Flow Data Collection: We can know collect agents data interacting with playbooks, this data can be used to create reusable activities which will help alot of process agents.
9) Last but no the list: Key Value Pair : Very Nice feature which allows developers to define key and what value it should contain. It will output the value associated with the key. You can see this keys and values associated with it in real time execution as well.
Changed Features:
1) Flow Designer Now under New Feature called as Process Automation:
2) Numbering of Steps : Oh man, this one has really help atleast me. Because now we have proper number from 1, 2 , 3 and so on. Initially it was 1.1, 2 , 2.1 if we have sub branch in it. But now it is not the case, see below.
3) Warning Message for Missing Actions and Spokes: So if you have a action and or spoke missing in your flow or sub-flow then you can see a warning message explain that the respective action is missing in that flow.
4) Improvement to Inbound Flows: Now you dont have option to run this inbound email flows as system users.
So this are few new features and changed features. if you have any queries or doubts please put those in comments and also see in detail description in this link : https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/paris-release-notes/page/release-notes/now-platform-capabilities/...
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Thanks and Regards,
Ashutosh Munot
