Hi there,
Working on a Flow in Workflow Studio, development is done, let's deploy the changes to the next instance, a preview problem: "Could not find a record in sub_hub_flow_version for column version_record referenced in this update". Never seen that before. What might have changed since last working on a Flow. Some development? Not likely. A Store Application updated? Don't see anything related. A Hot fix, Patch, Upgrade? The Zurich family release...
Let's have a closer look at this Zurich release issue. An issue that affects every ServiceNow customer worldwide.
Preview problem
When retrieving and previewing development that includes a Flow (or a Subflow, or an Action) on a different instance (in this case using Update Sets), since the Zurich release you will be facing a Preview problem.
Basically the Preview problem tells you that the Payload of Customer Update for the Flow includes a tag called "version_record" that holds a value that does not exist on the target instance and is not included in the development you are previewing.
If you have a look at your development (in this case using Update Sets), you would also not see a Customer Update for the "version_record" referenced.
Flow Designer Versioning
So what is this "version_record" about? Opening the Flow table [sys_hub_flow] you can find a new field added by the Zurich release, "Version record". This record references the new Zurich release"Flow Designer Versioning" table [sys_hub_flow_version].
So why are these new field and new table causing a Preview problem when working on a Flow? As mentioned because the Flow Designer Versioning record that is being referenced, is not captured a Customer Update and not included in your development. The most common way to capture development as a Customer Update would be by an Attribute on the "Collection" Dictionary Entry of the table, "update_synch=true", though for the new Flow Designer Versioning table no Attributes are included.
Workaround
To resolve the Preview problem I could think of two manual workarounds.
1) Editing the Customer update and removing the "version_record" tag
Effective, though downside is the Flow Designer Versioning record is not moved to the next instance and with a System Clone this will be lost in the future.
2) Create Application File
Searching for the Flow Designer Versioning record, you could use the out-of-the-box "Create Application File" option. This would create a Metadata Snapshot Customer Update record. Just capture it in your Update Set so its part of the development you were working on.
3) Update Synch
Perhaps you could even go for adding the Custom Update Synch Attribute to the Flow Designer Versioning Collection Dictionary Entry. Effective on short team, though I did not opt for this since ServiceNow notes in several documents:
"Do not add the update_synch attribute to a dictionary record. When improperly used, this attribute can cause major performance issues or cause the instance to become unavailable. Adding this attribute is not supported".
"Do not add the update_synch attribute to a dictionary record. When improperly used, this attribute can cause major performance issues or cause the instance to become unavailable. Adding this attribute is not supported".
By far ideal such manual workarounds. We could definitely come up with an automated workaround, risk of course being a workaround is not a workaround... at most customers a workaround is indefinitely 😅. This issue will most likely be resolved in the future by ServiceNow, since it affects every ServiceNow customer worldwide.
ServiceNow Support
For your info, although I already knew the cause and have two workarounds, I decided to reach out to ServiceNow Support. Apparently this issue is already known and registered as PRB1921408 which "is confirmed to be fixed in the future release of Australia" .
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That's it. Hope you like it. If any questions or remarks, let me know!
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Kind regards,
Mark Roethof
Independent ServiceNow Consultant
10x ServiceNow MVP
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