The ServiceNow® Playbooks builder within the Workflow Studio application enables playbook owners to create multiple-flow processes in a diagram or task board interface. The Playbooks builder was enhanced and updated in the Washington DC release.

Playbooks highlights for the Washington DC release

  • Processes are now called Playbooks in both the builder and in Playbook Experience.
  • Open the Playbooks builder in Workflow Studio. Workflow Studio enables workflow owners to author, configure, and monitor playbooks, flows, subflows, actions, and decision tables in one place.
  • Restart your entire playbook, or restart from a specific activity or stage.
  • Use dynamic inputs to configure your activity to show a certain set of fields based on the value of another input, such as a selected catalog item, selected decision table, or a REST API response.
  • Trigger a playbook from any entitled table. For more information, see the Removed from this release section.
  • As of release 25.2, use generative AI to create playbook outlines.

See Exploring Playbooks for more information.

Important: Playbooks is available in the ServiceNow Store. For details, see the "Activation information" section of these release notes.

Important information for upgrading Playbooks to Washington DC

After you upgrade to Washington DC, update the Playbooks and Workflow Studio applications in the ServiceNow Store.

New in the Washington DC release

Workflow Studio
Build and manage playbooks, flows, subflows, actions, and decisions from a shared access point.
Restart
Restart your entire playbook, or restart from a specific activity or stage.
Role for canceling a process
Admins can grant users a new role that allows them to cancel running playbooks without the pd_admin role or write access to the parent record.
Run activity as a specific user
Use the Flow Designer Run As property to determine the role that runs an activity.
Dynamic Inputs
Use dynamic inputs to return variables in your activities for use cases such as submitting a catalog request.
Automation assets
For automation-only activities, add a subflow, flow, or action directly to your activity instead of creating an activity definition.
Form views enhancement
View and modify form views with Form Builder in a new Workflow Studio tab.
Playbook Assist
Starting in release 25.2, provide text directions to generate a playbook outline with placeholder activities.
Vancouver 24.2 release
See 24.2 features in the Vancouver Playbooks release notes:

UI changes

Processes
A process is now called a playbook during both design time in Workflow Studio, as well as during runtime in Playbook Experience.

Changed in this release

Faster loading times
Starting in release 25.2, playbooks are loading faster.

Removed in this release

  • The trigger license requirement has been removed, allowing you to use any entitled table to trigger a playbook.

Activation information

While the interface lives in Workflow Studio, they are separate ServiceNow Store apps. Workflow Studio is part of the ServiceNow AI Platform® and available by default. Get the latest playbooks functionality by downloading the app in the ServiceNow Store.

To use the playbook generation feature in Workflow Studio, upgrade to the 25.2 release, and download the Now Assist for Creator application.

Visit the ServiceNow Store website to view all the available apps and for information about submitting requests to the store. For cumulative release notes information for all released apps, see the ServiceNow Store version history release notes.

Related ServiceNow applications and features