Playbook Experience

Understand how Workflow Studio Playbooks work in the ServiceNow AI Platform® to automate cross-functional processes and consolidate them into task-oriented views for your end users.

All > Process Automation > Workflow Studio > Playbooksis the design environment where playbook owners build playbooks. Meanwhile, the runtime experience is where end users, such as playbook agents, follow the playbook to complete a business process.

Design environment

The Playbooks design environment in Workflow Studio consists of these components:

Playbooks

A playbook is where a playbook owner configures and organizes multiple instances of Workflow Studio content into a coherent business process. A playbook consists of a trigger and a sequence of stages, which are made up of a sequence of activities.

Trigger definitions

A trigger definition specifies the conditions that must be met to run a playbook. A user with the admin, playbook.admin, or pd_trigger_author role typically creates and configures a trigger definition that playbook authors can use as a template. A trigger definition specifies the record operation and table conditions that must be met to start running a playbook. A playbook owner typically selects a trigger template when creating a playbook.

Trigger instances

A trigger instance is produced when you select a trigger template. The trigger instance stores the conditions that a record must meet to start running the playbook.

Stages

A stage is a logical grouping of activities in a playbook. A playbook owner creates a stage to group activities and specify the start rule for when the stage should start running. A stage in your overall business process.

Activity definitions

An activity definition maps subflow and action inputs and outputs to an activity instance. An activity definition contains:

• The automation plan to map the triggering input record data to action or subflow inputs
• The activity experience to map action or subflow outputs to a user-facing view of the playbook

A user with the admin, playbook.admin, or pd_content_author roles typically specifies the automation plan and activity experience when creating an activity definition.

Activity instances

An activity instance is produced when you add an activity to a playbook. The activity instance stores the automation plan data mappings from the activity definition. You can change these data mappings when the default values do not fit your playbook. The playbook can specify the start rules for when the activity should start running.

Start rules

A start rule specifies when a stage or an activity starts running. A playbook owner can use start rules to specify what parts of a playbook run simultaneously and what parts run serially.

For more information about how to use and navigate the Workflow Studio user interface, see Playbook builder.

Runtime experience

Workflow Studio produces these runtime components for Playbooks:

Process executions

A process execution stores the details of running a playbook in a context record. You can use a process execution to troubleshoot and verify that playbooks run as expected.

Activity executions

An activity execution stores the details of running an activity instance in a context record. You can use an activity execution to troubleshoot and verify that playbooks run as expected.

Playbook runtime

Playbook runtime is when a playbook runs for an agent or fulfiller. A playbook runs for agents only after Playbook Experience administrators configure how and where the playbook appears. See Set up a Playbook.

During runtime for a playbook, your instance:

1. Evaluates any conditions specified in the trigger definition and processes the trigger.
2. Processes the Events and starts running the playbook in the background.
3. Builds the automation plans from each activity into an entire process plan.
4. Runs the process plan for your playbook.
5. Stores the process execution information in the Process Execution [sys_pd_context] table.
6. Provides data for the running playbook view that agents and fulfillers experience.

Figure 1. Playbook processing

Your instance processes a playbook during runtime by evaluating trigger conditions, processing the event in the queue, building and running a process plan, storing process execution details, and providing data for the Playbook Experience.

Data security and HTML sanitization

Playbooks protects against cross-site scripting and code injection by evaluating all string data for HTML markup. The system only preserves HTML markup that is present in its inclusion list. All other HTML markup is removed from string data.

The inclusion list supports these HTML elements and attributes, which cannot be modified.

Table 1. HTML inclusion list

HTML element	Included Attributes
a	class, href, target, title
abbr	class, title
address	class
area	alt, class, coords, href, shape
article	class
aside	class
audio	autoplay, class, controls, loop, preload, src
b	class
bdi	class, dir
bdo	class, dir
big	class
blockquote	cite, class
br	class
caption	class
center	class
cite	class
code	class
col	align, class, span, valign, width
colgroup	align, class, span, valign, width
dd	class
del	class, datetime
details	class, open
div	class
dl	class
dt	class
em	class
emp	class
font	class, color, face, size
footer	class
h1	class
h2	class
h3	class
h4	class
h5	class
h6	class
header	class
hr	class
html
i	class
img	alt, class, height, src, title, width
input	aria-label, class, type, value
ins	class, datetime
li	class
mark	class
nav	class
ol	class
p	class
pre	class
s	class
section	class
small	class
span	class
sub	class
sup	class
svg	class
strong	class
style
table	align, border, class, valign, width
tag	class
tbody	align, class, valign
td	align, class, colspan, rowspan, valign, width
tfoot	align, class, valign
th	align, class, colspan, rowspan, valign, width
thead	align, class, valign
tr	align, class, rowspan, valign
tt	class
u	class
ul	class
video	autoplay, class, controls, height, loop, preload, src, width