TechNow Ep 81 | Process Automation Designer/Playbook Part 2

[Chuck Tomasi]

Join us for the second of this two-part series on how the new Playbook app makes it easier than ever to visualize cross-enterprise workflows. Playbook is a new in-platform capability to visualize processes built with Process Automation Designer and help everyone be more effective.

Originally aired: November 17, 2020 8:00 AM PT

Featured Experts

Yaron Guez joined ServiceNow in 2017 as an engineer working on Agent Workspace after a decade of entrepreneurship. He’s been leading the Playbook Experience team for the past year, developing a new way to view and interact with business workflows in real time. Yaron is passionate about combining software architecture with product design to solve challenging business problems. When he’s not working, Yaron is playing with his infant son, Levi, gardening, hiking, playing piano, or traveling with his wife, Melissa.

Chuck Tomasi is a Sr. Developer Advocate for ServiceNow. He is a computer science major with over 35 years of IT experience. As a former ServiceNow customer, Chuck won the first Innovation of the Year Award at Knowledge 10. Since joining ServiceNow in 2010 as a Technical Consultant, he has done many large scale ITSM implementations and custom applications, acted as an adjunct instructor for Education Services, created and lead the Technical Best Practices program, makes appearances on Live Coding Happy Hour, created dozens of fit for purpose custom applications, and co-hosts the ServiceNow series "TechNow".

Kreg Steppe is a Staff Programmer Lead within ServiceNow Training and Certification developing and supporting cloud training infrastructure. He specializes in developing integration solutions, automating repeatable processes and Cloud Management in ITOM. Kreg's prior experience includes operating his own ISP, developing web applications in PHP, network integration, managing network support, Application Development on cloud based networks, DNS and email server maintenance. He is a Linux enthusiast and enjoys Photography.

Jeremy Duncan is a Platform Architect on the Workflow Design Studio team at ServiceNow. Jeremy is an Enterprise Architect with over 16 years of IT and Service Management experience. His experience and certifications span across retail and manufacturing with focuses on hardware, software, and information security specialties. He has done many implementations in both the Enterprise Federal and Commercial spaces since 2011 and brings a breadth of platform knowledge that aids him in sound architectural decisions. He achieved his B.B.A. at MTSU and majored in Information Systems. He spends his free time fighting crime as a volunteer certified police officer in North Nashville since 2012 and enjoys family time, camping, with his wife and kids!

---

LIST ALL EPISODES

Questions and Answers

Good morning Everyone derrick.nash@ferc.gov

-- Derrick Nash

Good morning Derrick! Thanks for joining us!

-- Jeremy Duncan

Someone is vaccuming!

-- Akira Muranaka

Thanks Akira and sorry about that! proof that we're live! ;)

-- Jeremy Duncan

you do need to activate the plugins

-- Vyvyan Howland

For upgraded systems yes. For new installations, I don't think so.

-- Chuck Tomasi

Cannot see demo at all... no audio at all.

-- Gayla Fligge

Hi Gayla, have you tried refreshing your browser? We've found that fixes in the past. There's been a recent upgrade so I don't know if that's still a fix.

-- Chuck Tomasi

The last form that was configured ahead of time - the playbook form view - where is that configured?

-- Joseph Plaster

I recommend starting here. https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/paris-servicenow-platform/page/administer/workspace/task/configure-playbook.html

-- Chuck Tomasi

Can someone provide a link from the first class review?

-- Jennifer Schoenhoeft

https://community.servicenow.com/community?id=community_blog&sys_id=29c01bb1dbdbd414fa192183ca961974

-- Jeremy Duncan

Were can I practice of both PAD and Playbook Experience?

-- Akira Muranaka

You can test learn and practice on a free personal developer instance at https://developer.servicenow.com

-- Chuck Tomasi

I was asking about getting the Part 1 info, this is Part 2

-- Kris Dunn

Part 1 is available at http://bit.ly/tn80blog

-- Chuck Tomasi

In activity definition, Instead of fulfiller seeing the read only form fields or form field in activity definition , can deep link be configured for task we are waiting on? related task item?

-- Vytesh Ramesh

Great question. I recommend posting it to the idea portal on the community. Yaron checks for ideas there. It will also let others upvote it if they also believe it's a good idea.

-- Chuck Tomasi

Will Playbooks have an equivalent to Flow Designer's "Code Snippets" to be able to use/trigger Play Books from Business Rules or other elements of code?

-- Daniel Schreiber

I haven't heard if that's on the roadmap, but we can certainly pass on the suggestion. I suggest you work with it for a bit to find out if that's a "nice to have" or a "need to have" then post your idea to the Idea Portal on the community.

-- Chuck Tomasi

Does CCW1001-PAD include Playbook?

-- Akira Muranaka

Yes. The instance is preconfigured with everything you need to go through the learning plan.

-- Chuck Tomasi

Sorry you are quite fast, can you zoom in a bit ?

-- Stephane Roucou

We will be posting this to YouTube for you to watch. Give me a couple days and it will be on the ServiceNow Community YouTube channel.

-- Chuck Tomasi

where can I find the lab?

-- Jennifer Schoenhoeft

https://www.servicenow.com/creatorcon.html

-- Kreg Steppe

What is the expected level of support for Domain Separation when this goes live?

-- Daniel Schreiber

Hi Daniel, you're looking at Level: Basic as described here: https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/paris-servicenow-platform/page/administer/process-automation-designer/concept/process-automation-designer-domain-separation.html

-- Jeremy Duncan

I had to activate it

-- Jennifer Schoenhoeft

Glad you got it working.

-- Chuck Tomasi

Apologies if this was covered last session, as I wasn't here during then, but what's the expected system of input for these new processes? Are we going to be associating these workflows with Catalog Items, are there going to be new submission forms for records, or is this going to be its own isolated application, in a sense, that Agents will be interfacing with?

-- Brayden Mitchell

Hi Brayden, Process Automation Designer is built around Flow Designer, which is a different application from Workflow Editor. PAD utilizes Agent Workspace for its main UI. Here is a link to Pt1. which may help shed some more light: https://community.servicenow.com/community?id=community_blog&sys_id=29c01bb1dbdbd414fa192183ca961974

-- Jeremy Duncan

Will this recording be available after this meeting? I'd like to share with my internal ServiceNow admins so they can understand how to leverage this feature. And where can I get more info like this?

-- Kedric Jammer

The video is embedded at the top of this post and also available on YouTube directly from the ServiceNow Community Channel under the TechNow playlist. To get notified of upcoming events like this you can sign up for the developer program at https://developer.servicenow.com or follow me (Chuck Tomasi) on LinkedIn. Thanks.

-- Chuck Tomasi