Best Practice on building a process to approve/reject an item

[Alan42]

We're a fairly new ServiceNow customer and I'm moving our first non-IT workflow from Kissflow into ServiceNow. I have my initial thoughts on what steps to take but I thought it best to ask if there's an accepted best practice I should follow instead.  This is a complaint/claim workflow. A member of a specific group starts the workflow and fills out an initial form. Then it goes to an initial reviewer who completes a few additional fields and approves or rejects it. If approved it goes to a few more groups along the path for approval or an information gathering task until it is gets a final classification, and is closed out.    

My plan is to initiate the workflow with the completion of that initial form, have it assign a task from there to gather information and issuing new tasks and approvals as needed.     Very simple with initiation step A and complete step G with up to 5 approvals or tasks in between.     Doing this should be simple but I'm not sure how we are supposed to display all the gathered information to the business owner.      A report would be doable but I would think there's something delivered we haven't touched yet.     

Should I do it differently?  Is there a delivered display document I need to know about?    

[sumanta pal · Accepted solution]

Here are the steps you can follow to implement your workflow in ServiceNow:

1. **Create a Custom Application**: ServiceNow allows you to create custom applications. You can create a custom application for your complaint/claim workflow.

2. **Create a Table**: Create a table in your custom application to store all the information related to the complaint/claim. This table will have fields that will be filled out by the user initiating the workflow and the reviewers.

3. **Create a Workflow**: ServiceNow provides a graphical workflow editor where you can design your workflow. You can create a workflow that starts when a new record is inserted into your table. This workflow will assign tasks to the reviewers and move the record through the different stages of the workflow.

4. **Use Approvals**: ServiceNow has an in-built approval mechanism. You can use this in your workflow to get approvals from the reviewers.

5. **Use Notifications**: You can use notifications to inform the users about the tasks assigned to them and the status of the workflow.

6. **Create a Report**: Once your workflow is complete, you can create a report to display all the gathered information. ServiceNow provides a reporting feature where you can create different types of reports like list reports, pie charts, bar charts, etc.

7. **Use Dashboards**: You can also use dashboards to display the information. Dashboards can have multiple reports and can provide a high-level view of the workflow.

8. **Use Service Portal**: If you want to provide a user-friendly interface to the users, you can use Service Portal. You can create a portal where users can initiate the workflow, view their tasks, and see the status of their complaints/claims.

Remember to test your application thoroughly before deploying it to the production environment

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[Dr Atul G- LNG]

Hi @Alan42 

My thoughts as below:

We're a fairly new ServiceNow customer and I'm moving our first non-IT workflow from Kissflow into ServiceNow. I have my initial thoughts on what steps to take but I thought it best to ask if there's an accepted best practice I should follow instead. 

This is a complaint/claim workflow.

Atul: Okay and understood.

A member of a specific group starts the workflow

Atul: Workflow attached to the item. You mean only set of ppl allowed to raise complaint?

and fills out an initial form.

Atul: From ServicePortal it can be start

Then

it goes to an initial reviewer who completes a few additional fields and approves or rejects it.

Atul: You are mixing 2 things, we generally not allowed approver to change any value once a record is submitted, Reviewer review and update the work notes or in this case can update field.l

Is reviewer and approver are same? If yes, then not a good case, keep 2 user for this, 1st as reviewer to whom assigned task and allow to fill / update fields.

2nd approver may be manager see all information and happy to take decision.

If approved it goes to a few more groups along the path for approval or an information gathering task until it is gets a final classification, and is closed out.    

Atul: Do you want 1 by 1 / sequential or parallel approval? All members need to approve or first approval will move the record.

My plan is to initiate the workflow with the completion of that initial form, have it assign a task

Atul: For assignment, use assignment rules.

from there to gather information and issuing new tasks and approvals as needed.     

Very simple with initiation step A and complete step G with up to 5 approvals or tasks in between.     Doing this should be simple but I'm not sure how we are supposed to display all the gathered information to the business owner.      A report would be doable but I would think there's something delivered we haven't touched yet.