Can we create one flow to use for all catalog items?

[Linda_G]

Good morning, we are going to move forward with transitioning our current catalog items from workflow to flow designer.  Right now the catalog items all have a unique workflow even though most of them start off the same.  Is there a way with flow designer to create one flow for all catalog items?  An example:

Request is submitted, manager approval is required unless it is the manager of the requested for submitting the request and then the request is auto approved.  After that a task is created to a specific group.

Is this something that is doable?  I'd hate to create a unique flow for every catalog item because it makes updating difficult, which I'm struggling with in workflow now.

[johnfeist]

Hi Linda,

You certainly can do what you describe.  When we set up our service catalog, we intentionally built one workflow that handles most of our items.  Where you can run into a challenge is assigning a task to a specific group, especially if there can be multiple tasks involved in fulfillment (e.g. give a quote, order something, configure it, deliver it, etc.).

Let's look at the simple case, one task per item.  If that item is always delivered by the same group, you can add a field to the sc_cat_item record to identify the group.  From there, you can have your flow refer to the item to get the assignment group.  Where it gets trickier is if you have multiple locations and the item needs to be delivered by a local team.  For that you could still use the task group field but have one value that signals local delivery or add a check box for that.  You would need to include some scripting to figure out the assignment group based on location, who supports what areas, etc.

What we did for the more generic workflow was define the possible steps in going from initial request to completion.  We created a table to hold the meta data for each item.  That lets us identify a specific group (e.g. network) or local delivery for any possible activity.  The workflow then just checks at each step along the way if that step is set up in the meta data.  You can do the same in flow designer.  It might make for a long flow but it is possible.

Hope that helps.

:{)

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