Subflow history
Summarize
Summary of Subflow history
The Subflow history feature in ServiceNow's Workflow Studio allows customers to view and manage past configurations of a subflow. It enables users to copy, restore, annotate, favorite, filter, and delete flow history entries. This capability helps maintain control over subflow versions, track changes, and recover previous states efficiently.
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Key Features
- Flow History View: Displays detailed information for each subflow version, including timestamp, user who made changes, and operation type.
- Flow History Entry Types: Entries are automatically created or manually triggered during operations like force save, activation, deactivation, autosave, restore, and deployment.
- Filtering Options: Filter history entries by operation type or user to quickly find relevant versions.
- Automatic Save Overwrite Interval: Autosave entries by the same user within a 60-minute window are consolidated to minimize redundant history entries. This interval is configurable via system properties.
- Favorites: Mark up to 20 flow history entries as favorites to prevent overwriting and highlight important configurations.
- Entry Limits: Default limit of 100 flow history records per subflow, with older non-favorite entries automatically overwritten. The limit is adjustable by system settings.
- Annotations: Add descriptive text to history entries to summarize purpose or changes for better collaboration and clarity.
- Management Actions: Ability to delete history entries, restore a subflow to a previous version (creating a new history entry), and save a copy of a history entry as a new subflow.
Practical Benefits for ServiceNow Customers
- Efficiently track and audit changes made to subflows with detailed metadata on each version.
- Quickly restore subflows to previous configurations to recover from errors or unwanted changes.
- Collaborate effectively by annotating significant flow history entries and marking favorites to signal important configurations to team members.
- Optimize history management by using filters and system property settings to control autosave behavior and history retention limits.
- Maintain subflow quality and governance by systematically managing flow versions within Workflow Studio.
View and manage the history of a subflow. See past configurations of a subflow 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 subflow.
- 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 subflow.
- Restore a flow history entry as the current configuration of a subflow.
- 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 subflow 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 subflow details and options.
- 5. Flow history card
- Card listing the subflow details of the flow history entry. Details include the date and time stamp when the subflow was created, any annotation describing the subflow, the user who made the flow history entry, and the type of subflow 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 subflow data or the subflow 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 subflow configuration. For more information about force saving a subflow, see Save as you go flows. |
| Deactivated | Entry created when someone deactivates an active or published subflow. |
| Activated/Published | Entry created when someone activates or publishes a subflow. |
| Autosaved | Entry created when someone performs an operation that autosaves the subflow. For more information about what operations automatically save a subflow, see Save as you go flows. |
| Restored | Entry created when someone restores a subflow to a prior configuration. |
| Deployed | Entry created when someone creates a new subflow or deploys the subflow 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 subflow 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 subflow 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.