Kafka Producer step

  • Release version: Australia
  • Updated March 12, 2026
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    Summary of Kafka Producer step

    The Kafka Producer step allows users to publish events to a Kafka topic within the ServiceNow environment. This functionality is available through Workflow Studio and requires a Stream Connect subscription and the ServiceNow Stream Connect Installer plugin.

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    Key Features

    • Topic Alias: A unique name for the topic to which messages will be published, selectable from a drop-down list.
    • Message: The content of the message being sent.
    • Key: A specific key for partitioning messages, ensuring related messages are stored together.
    • Headers: Name-value pairs for additional message metadata, which can include static values or data pills.
    • Wait For Completion: An option to pause the flow until the step completes.
    • Schema: A reference to a schema table, ensuring the message format aligns with the selected schema.
    • Error Handling: Options to either stop the action and evaluate errors or continue to the next step despite failures.

    Key Outcomes

    By using the Kafka Producer step, ServiceNow customers can efficiently send messages to Kafka topics while maintaining message integrity through key partitioning and adhering to predefined schemas. Users will receive runtime details through the Step Status object, including an error code and message, aiding in troubleshooting if issues arise during message publishing.

    Create an action that publishes events to a topic in your Kafka environment.

    Roles and availability

    The Kafka Producer step is an Workflow Studio action step. Users with the action_designer role can create a custom action with one or more action steps.

    This step is requires a Stream Connect subscription. For more information, see https://www.servicenow.com/now-platform/workflow-data-fabric.html.

    This step requires the ServiceNow Stream Connect Installer [com.glide.hub.stream_connect.installer] plugin.

    Fields

    Field Description
    Topic Alias

    Name of the topic alias for the topic you want to publish messages to.

    A topic alias is a unique topic name that can be connected to any underlying Hermes or Direct Kafka topic.

    Select a topic alias from the drop-down list.
    Message Text of the message.
    Key Name of the key for a specific partition. Topics can be partitioned. Messages with the same key are stored in the same partition. For example, payment messages with a key of June would all be stored in the same partition of the Payments topic.
    Headers Headers for the message, in name-value pairs. For both the Name and Value fields, you can enter a value or use a data pill.
    Wait For Completion Option to require the flow to wait for the step to complete before continuing.
    Schema Reference to a schema table. Select a schema from the list. For information on schemas, see Schema management in Stream Connect.
    Note:
    The message you're sending in the Message field must adhere to the structure of the selected schema.
    If this step fails Option to go to error evaluation or continue running the next step. This option has no effect on the Step Status. Select one of the following.
    • Stop the action and go to error evaluation: Stop running the action at the current step and go to error evaluation. The Step Status object contains the error information returned by the step.
    • Don't stop the action and go to the next step: Ignore the failure and continue running the action from the next step. The Step Status object contains the error information returned by the step. Action error evaluation runs regardless of whether the action continues running.

    Example

    In this example, the step sends a message recording the creation of an incident. The message includes an incident identifier, a description, and a message header. The message is sent to the incidents topic, and stored in the partition with the name of the incident identifier.

    Example Kafka Producer step.

    Outputs

    Field Description Data Type
    Step Status Object data pill containing runtime details about the step. Each step in an action returns a Step Status. Object
    Step Status > Code Integer data pill indicating whether the step produced an error. By default, a value of 1 indicates that the step produced an error. A value of 0 indicates that the step ran successfully. You can't customize these codes. Integer
    Step Status > Message String data pill containing the error message produced by the step or system operation. You can't customize this message. String