Workflow Academy Recap: Getting Started with Playbooks (2025 Edition)

Lisa Holenstein

Published: December 2025
Series: Platform Academy: Workflow Academy
Presenters: Lisa Holenstein, Sr. Principal Platform Outbound PM; Jason Lefever, Sr. Manager, Inbound PM
Host: Sharon Barnes, Outbound Product Manager, Platform

What We Covered

On December 11, we hosted our annual Playbooks refresh session as part of Platform Academy. Jason Lefever and I walked through both the fundamentals for folks just getting started and all the exciting innovations we shipped in 2025.

Watch the Recording

Key Highlights

Where Playbooks Fit in the Workflow Automation Toolkit

We kicked things off by showing where playbooks sit within our broader workflow automation ecosystem. The toolkit includes Workflow Studio as our unified builder, flows and actions for atomic automation, decision tables for complex logic, Now Assist for AI-powered workflow creation, and workflow data fabric for cross-system connectivity. Playbooks occupy a unique space here: they give you end-to-end process automation with a guided user experience that flows alone can't deliver.

Playbooks vs. Flows: When to Use Each

This is probably the question we get asked the most, so we spent some time on clear guidance. Use flows when you have simple, self-contained logic, individual catalog item fulfillment, SLA and inbound email handling, or business rule replacement. Reach for playbooks when you're dealing with complex, multi-phase processes that span departments, when you need process visibility for your agents, when multiple personas are involved, or when you need ad-hoc input and activities. And here's the good news: your existing flows, subflows, and actions can be reused as activities within playbooks, so nothing goes to waste.

New Zurich Release Features

We showed off several capabilities we introduced in Zurich. You can now configure up to 10 triggers per playbook with scheduled query options. We added trigger-less playbooks that let you launch programmatically via API with custom inputs. We improved authoring and runtime permissions so you have granular control over who can create, edit, view, restart, and complete activities. And we introduced decisions for dynamic execution routing, which lets you set up branching conditions based on process data.

Now Assist for Playbooks

One of my favorite features to demo is generating playbooks from natural language prompts, and you can even use images! Now Assist with RAG support helps you quickly scaffold playbooks, and it supports dynamic translation for global teams.

Agentic Playbooks: AI Within Enterprise Workflows

Jason took over for the big finale: Agentic Playbooks. This capability embeds AI agents directly within playbook activities. Unlike fully autonomous AI agents, Agentic Playbooks operate within your enterprise workflow guardrails. You get predictable, rule-based outcomes while leveraging AI for tasks like summarizing tickets, reviewing compliance, or generating personalized recommendations.

During the demo, Jason showed a contract renewal playbook where an AI agent automatically calculated discount percentages based on customer history and corporate policy, then drafted a renewal email for human review. You can click "How" to see the AI's reasoning, which keeps everything transparent.

Q&A Highlights

You asked 29 questions during the session! Here are some of the most common ones we addressed:

Playbook Scope and Use Cases

Q: Are playbooks primarily for CSM?
A: Not at all. Playbooks are available across the entire ServiceNow AI Platform. CSM was one of the first teams to adopt them for out-of-box processes, but you can use them for any use case on tables you're licensed for.

Q: Would onboarding new employees be a good use case?
A: Absolutely! Our HRSD team is actually adopting playbooks for out-of-box lifecycle events right now. You can definitely build your own onboarding processes too.

Q: Can existing flows be wrapped into a new playbook?
A: Yes! You can use existing subflows and flow actions as individual steps in a new playbook.

Playbook Experience and UI

Q: Can playbooks be used in Service Portal?
A: Yes. We have setup instructions in our Workflow Academy video series at https://sn.works/workflowacademy/2407S

Q: For portal and mobile apps, are experiences already configured?
A: Many product teams ship out-of-box playbooks and playbook experiences. Field Service Management uses Mobile Playbooks, for example. We currently have over 250 out-of-box playbooks across the platform.

Technical Implementation

Q: Could a flow start a playbook, then let users complete steps in Service Portal?
A: Absolutely. You can even surface the same running playbook in different places: Service Portal, Workspace, or the Mobile app.

Q: Can I restart individual stages instead of the entire playbook?
A: Yes. Our restart feature lets you restart individual activities.

AI Capabilities

Q: Can human activities and AI agent activities work simultaneously in the same playbook?
A: Yes. Some activities can be fully performed by humans while others are assigned to AI agents within the same playbook.

Resources

Resource	Link
Workflow Automation Center of Excellence	https://sn.works/CoE
Workflow Automation Training	https://sn.works/CoE/Training
Getting Started with Playbooks	https://sn.works/CoE/StartPlaybooks
Playbook Experience Configuration Video Series	https://sn.works/workflowacademy/2407S
Playbook Data Collection Session	https://sn.works/workflowacademy/2410
Jumpstart: Workflow Automation Playbooks (Impact customers)	https://sn.works/jumpstart/playbooks
Platform Academies	https://sn.works/academies

Have questions? Drop them in the comments below or find us in the Workflow Automation community forum. We'd love to hear what you're building with playbooks!

— Lisa