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Hi there,
Also can't wait to upgrade your company instances to the Washington DC release? Just do it, go go go 😀. While performing "Upgrade in a week" at one of the largest financial companies in The Netherlands the upgrade went pretty smoothly. Only a handful of small issues found. One of issues worth sharing though... Upgrading to Washington DC (Patch 1), you do need to manually update "Workflow Studio" which will solve some Flow Designer related bugs. While Workflow Studio is new, somehow not the latest available Store version is applied when upgrading to Washington DC (Patch 1).
Updating to the latest version of Workflow Studio can be a bit of a search though. So let's share the knowledge gained. Realizing that this article most probably will be outdated soon, still putting this down so hopefully it helps a few others in their search.
Washington DC (Patch 1) Flow Designer bugs
While performing some tests on the new Workflow Studio in the Washington DC release, we came across a few bugs related to Flow Designer:
- Not able to move Actions within existing Flows.
- Flow executions within a Flow not getting visible.
You might have come across some other bugs, perhaps these were all Flow Designer related bugs, who knows.
New version available: Workflow Studio
When freshly updating your instance to Washington DC Patch 1, the newly introduced Workflow Studio (sn_workflow_studio) will be installed. Somehow though... it's not the latest available Store Application version that gets installed. This is also what the info message shown when opening Workflow Studio hints. When freshly updating your instance to Washington DC Patch 1, Workflow Studio Store Application version 25.0.6 is installed while version 25.1.3 is already available. Workflow Studio also contains two dependent Store Applications that immediately our outdated, Flow Designer - Designer (sn_flow_designer, installed version 25.1.3 and latest version 25.1.4) and Unified Developer Core (sn_udc, installed version 25.0.3 and latest version 25.0.6).
When trying to update Workflow Studio to the latest version, we hit some obstacles before being able to update the Store Application. For starters, within the ServiceNow instance, in the new Application Manager Workflow Studio was not found at all. On the ServiceNow Store Workflow Studio was visible, though the related plugins Flow Designer - Designer and Unified Developer Core were not visible?! ServiceNow Support, help!
Steps to manually update Workflow Studio
Updating a Store Application to the latest version, how hard can that be... well it took a bit of a search, a Personal Developer Instance, and a Support Case. Though eventually we slayed this dragon.
Our steps taken to be able to manually update Workflow Studio:
1. "Get" Workflow Studio from the ServiceNow Store:
https://store.servicenow.com/sn_appstore_store.do#!/store/application/ae5cba824353e110f8abe279fcb8f2...
2. "Entitle" your instance for Flow Designer - Designer and Unified Developer Core through the ServiceNow Store:
https://store.servicenow.com/sn_appstore_store.do#!/store/application/801cef500b312200c438ee6537673a...
https://store.servicenow.com/sn_appstore_store.do#!/store/application/8a841f2bc42f457e8809ea71d35e82...
Manually searching for these Store Applications on the ServiceNow Store won't pop-up results. Through a Support Case we got to know that this is a known issue at ServiceNow and they are working on this.
Note that to be able to entitle your Instances for these plugins, the Instance needs to be on the Washington DC release. So you can only do this after upgrading an Instance. Most likely you are upgrading Instances one by one, so you can't instantly entitle all your Instances for these plugins on the ServiceNow Store.
3. "Sync" the Application Manager status
System Definition > Plugins
The Application Manager status is automatically updated every few minutes. Can't wait? Manually "Sync now"!
Note that depending on your instance settings, the date might be shown wrong. Small bug 🙂 I didn't bother raising a case for this.
4. "Update" Workflow Studio within your Instance
After syncing your Instance with the Store, Workflow Studio should be visible in the Plugins. If not, you can use this URL:
https://your-instance.service-now.com/now/app-manager/home/app/id/ae5cba824353e110f8abe279fcb8f258/v...
Result
After 10-15 minutes, updating Workflow Studio (and its depending plugins) should be finished. And with that, the two bugs mentioned are history!
Hopefully with some upcoming Patch, Workflow Studio is automatically up-to-date (Washington Patch 2 did get available on April 11, worth trying!). If not, I hope this article can save you a struggle.
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That's it. Hope you like it. If any questions or remarks, let me know!
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Kind regards,
Mark Roethof
Independent ServiceNow Consultant
9x ServiceNow MVP
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