When to use Flow Designer vs Workflow Editor?

[peterraeves]

I am learning up on the new Flow Designer / IntegrationHub.

What confuses me is, what this offers more than the workflow editor. It just seems like WEv2, with the same functionality, but with a different UI around it. Though I have to admit that it makes flows easier to create, there is one very big flaw with FD, what makes me think I will not use it often, is the fact that you cannot script the condition... 

So in what cases should I best use the WE? And in what cases should I best use the FD?

[Abhishek77]

The Flow designer is used to reduce scripting so that it can be created easily and understood by non-technical users. It's just that you don't need to have more scripting knowledge to do a flow designer which will reduce the development effort. The same functionality can be achieved by both Flow designer and in Workflow Editor.  The only thing is that Flow Designer would have an extension to Integration hub.

please refer to the video on this page https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/kingston-servicenow-platform/page/administer/flow-designer/concept/flow-designer.html

Please hit correct based on impact of response.

Thanks!

[peterraeves]

Workflow Editor has the same extension, called Orchestration 😉

Okay, so basically I should see FD as the 'ServiceNow Express' variant of WE.

The issue is, that if you would try to create a flow with FD and notice that you do need some scripting, you really need to completely start over in WE. So I am not sure, whether I would want to take the risk wasting time there. I really hope there will come an 'advanced' version in one of the upcoming releases, as I do see a lot of potential in the FD.

[Abhishek77]

Yes, I agree. 🙂

[mary_lindell]

There are two main reasons to use flow designer:

1) When the logic of an activity is largely sequential, A -> B -> C, with few if any logic branches. Then, flow designer is a quick and easy way to create and test workflow.

2) Certain stakeholders will prefer or require no-code methods for creating common logic. For instance, trigger a notification for a specialized reason or for data cleansing. This can be an easy way to delegate work to the SME most familiar with a process and the data. Basically, you can think of Flow Designer as a no-code way to do a scheduled job to process data in a batch fashion or a business rule to trigger some workflow; and even standard integrations using integrationHub.

I hope this provides some clarity.