Wait For Condition activity

  • Release version: Zurich
  • Updated July 31, 2025
  • 2 minutes to read
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    Summary of Wait For Condition activity

    The Wait For Condition activity allows you to pause a playbook until a specified record meets certain field value conditions. This ensures that subsequent playbook steps only proceed when required criteria on a record are fulfilled, enabling more dynamic and condition-driven workflows.

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    Key Features

    • Role Availability: Available as a common activity for users with admin, playbook.admin, or pdauthor roles.
    • Configurable Inputs:
      • Label and Description: Set a title and informational text for clarity within the playbook.
      • Run Condition: Define when the activity or stage runs using conditions based on data from prior activities.
      • Start Rule: Choose when the stage or activity begins, either immediately or after specific stages/activities complete.
      • Start with Delay: Optionally delay the start of the activity or stage by a specified time.
      • Record Reference and Table: Specify the record and table that the playbook will monitor for condition matching.
      • Conditions Template: Define the exact criteria the record must meet for the playbook to resume.
    • Advanced Inputs:
      • Enable Timeout: Configure a timeout to skip the activity if conditions aren’t met within a set duration.
      • Duration and Schedule: Specify how long to wait before timing out, with scheduling options for computing duration.

    Key Outcomes

    By using the Wait For Condition activity, ServiceNow customers can control playbook flow precisely, ensuring actions occur only after specific conditions on records are met. This enhances automation reliability and allows for conditional pauses within complex playbooks. The timeout feature adds flexibility, preventing indefinite waiting and allowing playbook execution to continue gracefully if conditions remain unmet.

    Pause the playbook until a record has field values that match a set of conditions.

    Roles and availability

    • This activity is available as a common activity. Users with the admin, playbook.admin, or pd_author can add this activity to a playbook.

    Inputs

    Open the activity properties panel and configure your activity to add values for the following inputs. If the input value varies, use the pill-picker to show where to get the value. To learn more about the pill-picker, see Dot-walking examples.
    Input Type Description
    Label String Title to display as activity and playbook card.
    Description String Information to display about activity usage or outcome.
    Run condition Condition Builder Conditions that must be met to run an activity or stage. You can use data from prior activities to build conditions.
    Note:
    Select Show additional options to see this field.
    Start Rule Choice Under Schedule > Start Rule, 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.
    Under Schedule > Start Rule, select a start rule for when your activity should start running:
    • When stage starts: Your activity starts running as soon as its stage starts running. Your stage starts running when your playbook is triggered.
    • After specific activities: Your activity starts running after specified activities have finished running.
    Start with delay True/False Option to wait for a duration of time before running an activity or stage. When enabled, this input displays the Start with delay input properties.
    Note:
    Select Show additional options to see this field.
    Record Reference Reference to the record that pauses the playbook until conditions match.
    Table Table Name Table containing the record to update.
    Conditions Template Value Criteria that a record must meet for the playbook to continue.

    Advanced inputs

    After configuring the required inputs for your activity, you can also choose to configure additional inputs. In the side panel, select Show additional options to display these advanced inputs. For more information, see Activity experience.
    Input Type Description
    Enable timeout Choice Option to time out the Wait for Condition activity if the conditions aren't met after a specified Duration.
    Duration Date/Time Amount of time to wait before the activity times out and its state is set to Skipped. This input requires setting the Enable timeout input.
    Schedule Choice Schedule used to compute duration values. This input requires setting the Enable timeout input.

    Outputs

    The Wait for Condition activity has no outputs.