Stages and activities
Summarize
Summary of Stages and activities
In ServiceNow Playbooks,activitiesare individual steps within a business process, and these activities are grouped intostagesthat represent logical phases of the workflow. You can sequence multiple activities within stages and multiple stages within a playbook to model cross-enterprise processes efficiently. Playbooks enable you to design workflows that guide agents through the right sequence of tasks with user interactions and automation.
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Working with Stages and Activities
You can add and sequence stages either through the Board or Diagram views in the Playbook design environment. Similarly, activities are added via an activity picker accessible from these views. Activities can be selected from common libraries, custom applications, or created as new activity definitions when needed.
- Stages: Group related activities logically and control their execution sequence with start rules (e.g., start when the playbook starts or after specific stages complete).
- Activities: Represent individual tasks that can be interactive (requiring user input) or non-interactive (automated behind-the-scenes). Optional activities can be dynamically inserted by agents during playbook execution.
Configuring Stages and Activities
When selecting stages or activities, you configure properties such as:
- Label: The display name shown during playbook runtime (keep names concise).
- Description: Internal notes visible only in the design environment.
- Start Rules: Define when stages or activities begin (e.g., immediately, after others finish).
- Run Conditions: Specify conditions based on prior activity data to control execution.
Under the Automation tab, you configure activity inputs and outputs. Inputs can be static values or dynamic data sourced using dot-walking to related records and fields. This dynamic data binding allows activities to react to the current process context or outputs from previous activities. Editing source flows for activities is possible via Workflow Studio for users with the appropriate roles.
Design Considerations and Advanced Features
- Leverage existing ServiceNow AI Platform state models for process lifecycle management.
- Use AI agents and AI skills as activities to automate tasks and enable intelligent decision-making within playbooks.
- Include automation assets (subflows, flows, actions) directly as activities without needing custom definitions.
- Configure delays to pause execution, allowing users time to act or wait for scheduled times.
- Enable optional activities for agents to add steps dynamically during playbook runs.
- Use decision activities and stages to create branching logic based on conditions.
- Implement questionnaire activities to collect user input during execution.
- Use go back activities to loop back to previous steps conditionally.
- Support parallel branches to run multiple sequences concurrently.
- Configure dynamic inputs to show or hide fields based on other input values or external responses.
- Override playbook card statuses with activity state mapping to reflect custom progress states.
Practical Benefits for ServiceNow Customers
By effectively using stages and activities in Playbooks, customers can:
- Design clear, logical workflows that guide agents and automate complex processes.
- Incorporate both user-driven and automated tasks seamlessly in a single playbook.
- Leverage dynamic data inputs and outputs to create context-aware process steps.
- Utilize AI capabilities to enhance automation and decision-making within workflows.
- Adapt workflows dynamically with optional activities and branching logic to handle real-world scenarios.
- Improve process consistency, efficiency, and visibility across cross-enterprise operations.
In Playbook, an activity represents one step in your overall business process. You can sequence many activities together in the stages of your process.
Stages
Group activities by the stages of your business process, and sequence activities in an order that makes sense for your cross-enterprise workflow. A stage is made up of many sequenced activities that are grouped in a logical way. In the Playbooks Board view of the design environment, you can add a stage to your playbook by clicking + Add stage. In the Diagram view, select the + icon on connectors (lines) to add a stage.
Activities
In Playbooks, an activity represents one step in your overall business process. In the system, an activity is one instance of an activity definition. For more information on activity instances and activity definitions, see the Playbook Experience and activity definitions.
Adding an activity to your playbook
In the Playbooks Board view of the design environment, select + Add activity to open the activity picker. In the Diagram view, select the + icon on connectors (lines) to open the activity picker. In the activity picker, you can search for an activity to add or select one from the list of Common Activities. To choose an activity for a custom application, first select the application and then select the activity from the resulting list within the picker.
Additionally, you can add an activity just using an automation asset.
If there isn't an activity that fits your use case, you can create your own activity definition to add to the activity picker. For more information, see create an activity definition.
Interactive and Non-Interactive activities
Activity categories include:
- Interactive Activities
- When an interactive activity runs, it prompts a user for input in your playbook as it runs. For more information, see Interactive activities.
- Non-Interactive Activities
- When a non-interactive activity runs, it runs entirely behind-the-scenes and requires no user input. For more information, see Non-Interactive activities.
- Optional Activities
- An optional activity can be inserted by agents and fulfillers during a playbook run. For more information, see Optional activities.
Stage and activity details
When you select an activity, the side panel should open. Under the Details tab of the side panel, you can add names, descriptions, and start rules to the stages and activities in your playbook. Click the show or hide additional options button to show or hide additional properties for your currently selected stage or activity. The basic details for each stage and activity include:
- Label
- You can enter a display name for your stage or activity. This name appears during playbook runtime.Note:Keep your stage and activity names brief, as the system truncates long names.
- Description
- Optionally, enter a description for your activity or stage. This description only appears within Playbooks and isn't visible during playbook runtime.
- Start Rule
- Under , select a start rule for when your stage should start running:
- When process starts: Your stage starts running as soon as the playbook starts.
- After specific stages: Your stage starts running after specified stage(s) have finished running.
- Run condition
- Conditions that must be met to run an activity or stage. You can use data from prior activities to build conditions.
Activity inputs
To change default inputs and outputs for the activity, open and edit the source flow in Workflow Studio by selecting the Open link icon (
) next to the Automation field.For more information on how to work with the default inputs and outputs for activities in Playbooks, see Create an action as an activity automation plan.Note:You must have the appropriate user roles to access Workflow Studio and Workflow Studio. For more information, see User access to Workflow Studio flows.- Inputs are data that you provide so that the activity runs and performs its function appropriately. For example, a Record activity that notifies a customer of an application rejection will have message inputs for the email address, subject, body, and more.
- Expected Outputs are displayed at the bottom of the Automation tab.
Creating static and dynamic values for activity inputs
You can add dynamic data to an activity input. Click the data pill picker icon (
) and navigate, or dot-walk, to the data pill whose dynamic value you want to use when your activity runs. You can select dynamic data from fields in the input record. If your activity has a start rule of
After specific activities, you can also select dynamic data from the outputs of other activities in your playbook. For more information on dot-walking to related fields and records on the ServiceNow AI Platform, see selecting fields on related tables using dot-walking.
The inputs for interactive activities typically provide data that renders in a playbook for an agent to interact with. The inputs for non-interactive activities can render in a playbook but don't require any user input in order to run. For more information, see Interactive activities and Non-Interactive activities.
Design considerations
- Keep ServiceNow AI Platform state models in mind when designing your playbook
- Some record types already have state models that describe their life cycle. Use any existing state model as a template for the design of your playbook. For more information, see State Management.