Flow Designer: Configuring Vs Customizing

[Paula Alejandra]

Hi,

It's been some time now since I got to understand the importance of remain vigilant on Customization. I am almost become myself a fan of Configuration and make my customers think twice before asking customizations that do not bring real value to the process nor the business.

Now, Flow Designer opened my eyes to a new world and, at some point, I felt attracted to it as there is no doubt that there are many actions that would improve processes performance. But the moment I started to feel joy about this new world of possibilities I started hearing a voice whispering me "remember being careful with customizations"... So here are my thoughts on this and, PLEASE, let me know if I am right or there's something I need to adjust in my reasoning:

• Flow Designer will remain to be CONFIGURATION proned as long as scriptinig is out of its way
• The moment we include scripting within a Flow we would've crossed the line into CUSTOMMIZATION

Are the above assumptions correct? Please, help me get out of this maze 🙂

Thanks in advance, 

[Peter Bodelier]

I'd say rely on @Chuck Tomasi on this one. 🙂

Configuration vs. Customization? - wrong question! (servicenow.com)

[davidduenes]

Good call, and nice read! Thank you Peter!

[Paula Alejandra]

Hi Peter,

Thank you SO MUCH for this valuable reading. I agree with Chuck in a 100% but that doesn't answer my question.

You'll see, the only reason why I am debating myself with these 2 terms is because of the many times that I came across ServiceNow statements towards Customization and Configuration, stressing out the benefits of one over the other.

I assume that, at some point, the message called for a rebranding as probably most of us took it too literally, hence, creating this absurd polairty. I get it and I am happy if that's the case. However, in my brain there's still an open question and I crave for an answer... not to act upon it, but to understand what is considered to be Configuration and what is considered to be Customization as I like calling things for what they are so that I don't create confussion in future discussions.

Since Flow designer brings the best of the two worlds [ low-code, no-code | scripting ] my guess is that, depending on the type of Flow you build you could be just configuring OR customizing but I know that I might be wrong qbout it, hence my search for a senior Admin's advice. 

If you could help me get rid of this doubt I will be really happy!

Thanks!

[Peter Bodelier · Accepted solution]

I understand your struggle, but I'm afraid there is not really one answer to rule them all. That's why I always refer to that article.

For me personally, if I have to give a definition:

Customization is changing OOTB records which are captured in update sets.

Configuration is everything else.

So in your example it would mean that if it's an OOTB flow, its customization, and if it's a custom flow, it's configuration.

But this is probably one of the thousands of views you can and will get around it. So although it might be hard.... Forget about it 😉