For anyone that has created or used workflows, you know that the star of the show is 'Stages.' Workflow stages provide summary-level feedback about the progress of a workflow. Primarily, this is used for Requested Items being ordered through the Service Catalog, where you can have different "stages" in the ordering process; however, you can use Stages for any Table that you want to have a workflow associated with.
In earlier versions of the platform, creating and reusing stages were somewhat tedious and took a lot of effort to keep organized. Starting in Dublin, the implementation of Workflow Stage Sets were introduced and help with being able to maintain different groups of Stages that you may want to use in multiple workflows.
There are several uses and benefits for using Stage Sets. Some benefits of Stage sets include the ability to populate default stages, being able to import stage sets into a workflow, exporting stage sets from a workflow, and you can better sync stages when involving Subflows. Stage Sets may be useful for when you start creating or editing workflows in your environment.
Populating Default Stages
Prior to ServiceNow Dublin, if you navigated to Workflow > Default Stages (by table), you would have been taken to the table "wf_stage_default" where it would have a list of individual stages tied to a specific table that you could pre-define to use for any new workflows of that table type.
This was changed. Navigating to Default Stages (by table) will now direct you to the "stage_set_table" list view, like shown below.
This list defines a Stage Set to a Table and now when you open a new Workflow of this Table type, the stages that are defined in this default Stage Set is what will be available at the start of your workflow creating process.
This improvement keeps the default Stages organized and easier to maintain and modify. So, if you know you will be creating several different workflows that all need the same default "set" of stages, then utilizing this "Default Stages" list will save you lots of time and effort.
Ability to Import Stage Sets into a Workflow
Another huge benefit with Stage Sets is the ability to import different Stage Sets into a workflow. When creating a new Workflow, there may be a "default" Stage Set that can be loaded to pre-populate some stage values for this workflow. However, you may have several different "sets" of Stages that you want to use for different situations, even though they are all linked to the same table.
If that is the case, then all you have to do is head to the Workflow Editor. When you navigate to the Edit Stages window, you will see a related link called Import from Stage Set (see screenshot below), here you can select an already existing Stage Set to then import it into your Workflow.
NOTE: Before importing a stage set, you may want to delete any current stages listed here that you don't wish to have just to avoid any confusion or duplicates.
This is useful in cases like domain or group specific workflows, where you may want to use one set or stages for "HR" workflows, but then another for "Finance," and another for "IT" etc.
Export Stage Sets from a Workflow
Another cool feature with Stage Sets is the ability to export a Stage Set as you may be creating one during the creation of a new workflow. For example, if you have created a group of stages that you want to be able to use in future workflows, you can choose the Export to Stage Set related link from the Edit Stages window to be able to save this group of Stages.
From here, once this has been saved, you will then have the ability to select this Stage Set to use in other workflows by importing it like mentioned in the previous section.
Syncing of Stages when involving Subflows
Another huge benefit of Stage Sets can be seen once you start involving subflows into a main workflow. There have been many issues in the past where Stages are not rendering properly when a workflow calls a subflow that may have its own stages that are different than what is in the main workflow.
To address this, a Stage Set can be utilized where you create a Stage Set that contains all the Stages necessary for both the Main workflow as well as any subflows that are involved, and then use this Stage Set in all these "flows", so that they all have access to the same Stage values.
For example, let's say you have a workflow and a subflow like such that needs the following Stage values. Main Workflow Stages needed:
Subflow Stages needed:
What would be ideal to do for this is to create a Stage Set with all seven of these Stage values, and then in the main workflow and the subflow, import this Stage Set to both workflows and then utilize the stages accordingly. This way, no matter if the running activity is within the main workflow or the subflow at any point, the Stage renderer and widget will know what values to show accordingly. NOTE: One key point here is that you will want to remove any other stages in the "Edit Stages" list that may have been pre-entered (i.e. Default Stages), as this could affect what values the renderer and widget may believe are available for this Main workflow and subflows. |
Stage Sets can be utilized from the beginning when you create a new workflow (i.e. Default Stages) to even when you are completing a workflow and want to use the same group of Stages for future workflows (i.e. Exporting Stage Sets). These are just a few of the different ways and advantages of using Stage Sets in your environment, and there are likely many other benefits that I have not mentioned as well. Overall, you can use these Stage Sets to your advantage when possible, especially if you are in an environment where you are creating and editing a variety of different workflows. Not only does this save you from lots of repetitive time and effort, but can also allow you to be more creative with your workflows and stages, since it will be easier to save and reuse any custom Stages that you create.
What are your thoughts on Stage Sets in Workflows? Any benefits you have seen that I did not touch on?
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