Service Catalog Request Trigger for Flow Designer?

[simonvolkwe]

Hello Service Now Community,

I am relatively new to Service now and have tried to create an approval flow for a Service Catalogue Request. I had big problems with the Request not triggering the flow in my system.

In the flow designer it says that the flow is triggered when a user submits the Service Request. See picture below

(Trigger assignment in Flow Designer)

However, this is not quite correct, is it?

For the flow to start, the business rule ‘StartFlowDesigner Flow’ must be executed (see image below)

But this is only started if the Requested Item Stage is set to Approved.

Is there a reason for this?

Because it is not really what is mentioned in the description for the Service Request Flow Trigger.

I have now changed the rule so that flows are started which have ‘waiting_for_approval’ as the stage (which is the default value for sc_req_item.stage) but I am not sure whether this implementation makes sense as I am adapting a predefined business rule.

I know I could use a second flow to handle the approvals apart from the rest of the fullfilment. But isn't that inefficient and inconvenient instead of using the service request submit as a real trigger?

I'm looking for the reason behind this decision, as it seems like many developers have encountered this problem in the last years.

A few forum posts with the same/similar problem:

- Solved: Flow Designer not Triggering for Service Catalog R... - ServiceNow Community (2019)

- Solved: flow designer is not triggering an approval - ServiceNow Community (2021)

- Solved: Flow Designer does not trigger service catalog tri... - ServiceNow Community (2022)

- Solved: How to run Flow Designer by Catalog Item request - ServiceNow Community (2024)

Thank you in advance! ^^

[JenniferRah]

That's correct. That BR is needed.

When you submit a catalog item, the state of the REQ is Approved and the stage of the RITM is request_approved. That's its default stage, but you typically change it as soon as you launch your Flow. That's what allows this BR to execute just once and not execute every time the RITM is saved.

But if you didn't have the Flow listed in the catalog item, this BR also would not execute. So both are needed.

[simonvolkwe]

That is strange in my (new) PDI the default value for sc_request.request_state is "Pending Approval" [requested] and the default value for sc_req_item.stage is "Waiting for Approval" [waiting_for_approval]

I need to manually set the sc_request.request_state to Approved.

Are you aware about this Workflow? "Service Catalog Request" which will auto approve every item which costs less than 1000$?

After the processing of this Workflow the States will be set to Approved and Request Approved like you mention it.

But this is not how any normal Business should process their Orders.

[Dr Atul G- LNG]

Hi @simonvolkwe 

I am not 100% got what is exact issue you are facing, the Flow Designer is low code/ no code interface / platform. The trigger Service Catalog has the code written in back ground which run as soon as any Catalog item get submitted and REQ and RITM get generated. You need to map the flow to catalog item , so that the flow must trigger. 

[Ankur Bawiskar]

@simonvolkwe 

Unless you attach the published flow to your catalog item, it won't trigger

When Request is auto approved RITM is created and it's associated workflow or flow will get triggered

If my response helped please mark it correct and close the thread so that it benefits future readers.

[Ankur Bawiskar]

@simonvolkwe 

any update to this?