Flow history
Summarize
Summary of Flow history
The Flow History feature in Workflow Studio enables ServiceNow customers to view, manage, and interact with the historical configurations of flows. This functionality allows users to track changes, restore previous versions, save copies, and annotate flow configurations. It provides visibility into who made changes, when they were made, and the types of operations that triggered history entries.
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Key Features
- View and Manage Flow History: Access detailed flow history entries with timestamps, user information, operation types, and annotations.
- Flow History Components: Includes a history view label, unique timestamped entry names, options for deleting, saving as copy, restoring, and filtering entries by type or user.
- Entry Types: History entries are created for operations such as force saves, activations, deactivations, autosaves, restores, and deployments.
- Filtering: Filter history entries by operation type or user, helping to quickly locate relevant changes.
- Automatic Save Overwrite Interval: Autosave entries by the same user within a configurable 60-minute interval are consolidated to reduce clutter.
- Favorite Entries: Mark up to 20 history entries as favorites to prevent overwriting and highlight important configurations for other users.
- History Entry Limit: By default, up to 100 history records are kept per flow, with the oldest non-favorite entries overwritten as needed. This limit is configurable.
- Annotations: Add descriptive text to history entries to clarify their purpose or changes made.
- Restore and Save as Copy: Restore a flow to a previous configuration or save a flow history entry as a new flow to reuse past designs.
- Deletion: Remove unwanted flow history entries to maintain a clean history list.
Practical Benefits for ServiceNow Customers
- Easily track and audit changes made to flows, improving governance and compliance.
- Quickly revert to stable or preferred flow configurations, minimizing downtime and errors.
- Collaborate effectively by annotating important changes and marking favorites to communicate valuable flow versions.
- Customize history retention and autosave behavior to balance between detailed tracking and system performance.
- Maintain control over flow lifecycle with intuitive management of flow versions, supporting continuous improvement and operational resilience.
View and manage the history of a flow. See past configurations of a flow to copy, restore, or remove them.
- View the configuration for each flow history entry.
- See the date and time stamp of when a flow history entry was created.
- See the user name of the person who updated the flow.
- See the type of operation that created the flow history entry.
- Add an annotation for a flow history entry.
- Add a flow history entry as a favorite.
- Filter flow history entries by type or user.
- Save a copy of a flow history entry as a new flow.
- Restore a flow history entry as the current configuration of a flow.
- Delete a flow history entry.
Flow history components
- 1. Flow History view
- Label indicating that you are looking at a particular flow history entry. There's also an option to return back to the flow editing view.
- 2. Name of the flow history entry
- Name of the flow history entry as a unique date and time stamp.
- 3. Flow history options
- Options to delete, save as copy, and restore a flow history entry.
- 4. Flow history list
- List of flow history entries. Each entry has a card listing flow details and options. You can apply a filter to only see history entries that match specific conditions.
- 5. Flow history card
- Card listing the flow details of the flow history entry. Details include the date and time stamp when the flow was created, any annotation describing the flow, the user who made the flow history entry, and the type of flow operation that created the flow history entry. Each card also provides options to add the history entry as a favorite, add an annotation, or delete the flow history entry.
- 6. Flow sidebar views
- Views available to display in the sidebar. The sidebar can display the flow data or the flow history. There's also an option to display the help panel.
Flow history entry types
The system creates flow history entries whenever someone perform one of these operations.
| Operation | Description |
|---|---|
| Force saved | Entry created when someone uses the Force save option to manually save the flow configuration. For more information about force saving a flow, see Save as you go flows. |
| Deactivated | Entry created when someone deactivates an active or published flow. |
| Activated/Published | Entry created when someone activates or publishes a flow. |
| Autosaved | Entry created when someone performs an operation that autosaves the flow. For more information about what operations automatically save a flow, see Save as you go flows. |
| Restored | Entry created when someone restores a flow to a prior configuration. |
| Deployed | Entry created when someone creates a new flow or deploys the flow on this instance from the application repository or an update set. |
Filter options
You can filter flow history entries by type or user.
Select a history entry type to show it in the flow history list. Clear a history entry type to hide from the flow history list.
You can filter flow history entries to show flow history entries from all users or just your flow history entries.
Automatic save overwrite interval
By default, Workflow Studio overwrites autosave history entries that are made by the same user during a 60 minute interval. All autosave history entries generated by the same user during this interval are saved as one history entry. During this interval, the most recent autosave history entry overwrites the previous autosave history entry. The save interval reduces the number of flow history entries generated by one user, which helps prevent reaching the history entry limit. You can set the automatic save overwrite interval using the sn_flow_designer.autosave_version_interval system property. For more information about this system property, see Workflow Studio flow system properties.
Favorite flow history entries
Each flow can have up to 20 favorite flow history entries. Marking a flow history entry as a favorite prevents the entry from being overwritten when the flow history entry limit is reached. You can also use favorites to communicate to other users that the entry contains a valuable configuration that should be saved. When a flow reaches its history favorite limit, you must remove an existing favorite before you can add a new one.
Flow history entry limit
By default, Workflow Studio stores 100 flow history records. When the total number of flow history entries exceeds this limit, Workflow Studio overwrites the oldest history entry that is not marked as a favorite. You can set the maximum number of flow history records to store using the sn_flow_designer.maximum_flow_history_records_per_flow system property. For more information about using this property, see Workflow Studio flow system properties.