This video covers configuring a sequence to fulfill the items in an order guide.
You can use an order guide to submit requests for multiple items at the same time.
While the individual requests can be independent and fulfilled in parallel,...
... there are many cases where they are dependent on one another and need to be sequenced.
With order guide sequencing, you can configure a sequence to fulfill the items,...
... sot that required items are fulfilled before their dependent items.
In our scenario, we’ll create a new hire order guide with catalog items for onboarding an employee.
First, the new hire is assigned a laptop based on their role.
Only then can the employee’s corporate VPN be created.
After that, their desk can be set up with an external monitor.
The user’s active directory—or AD—account can be set up any time during the process before the email account is created.
Let’s see how we can control this process using a sequence.
First, you need a user with the admin role to install the Order Guide Sequential Fulfillment plugin.
Now we open the order guide and generate a sequence for fulling its catalog items.
This new hire order guide comes as part of demo data with the base system which we’ve customized for our needs.
Here we can see the catalog items.
The Generate Sequence button lets us create a new sequence process that we can customize in the Process Automation Designer.
Alternatively, if you already have a process set up to sequence the fulfillment of the items,...
... you can associate it with the order guide by selecting it in the Sequencing process field.
But in our example, we don’t have one, so we’ll create a new one.
After clicking Generate Sequence, specify a name so that you can find and edit the sequence directly in the Process Automation Designer if we need to.
When we click Generate, the new process opens in the Process Automation Designer.
Now let’s create process lanes for VPN, …
… desk setup, …
…and AD and email.
Now we move the catalog items into the lanes.
VPN can go here,…
…Monitor and Desk setup can go here,…
…and AD and Email go here.
The When to start menu in the lane properties let us configure when the fulfillment of the lane should start:
... after the previous lane which is the default, with the previous lane, or immediately.
Because the active directory account can be created anytime during the process,...
... let’s set this lane to start immediately.
We can also configure the activities within lanes.
For our AD and Email lane, we need to set the Email account fulfillment to start after the AD account is created.
We need to save for this change to take effect.
Now we need to verify that the state of the task to create the AD account is closed complete,...
... rather than closed incomplete or closed skipped.
For this case, we can add a condition.
We reopen the activity to add our condition.
We select the outputs from the previous step in the generated task record, and search for the state.
Then we select the state Closed Complete.
For each activity, a task is created and finished before the next activity is triggered to start.
But you can end the activity, and trigger the next activity to start immediately after the task on the current activity is created.
To do this, select the End the activity without waiting for the completion of the task record checkbox.
This is particularly useful for Record Producers.
For example, you can start the next activity immediately after incident creation and not wait until the incident is closed.
You can also add other process activities here in the Process Automation Designer,...
... such as sending an email or waiting for a condition.
We’re done editing, so we click Activate to publish our sequence.
Now it'll run when it's triggered by the order guide.
Now let’s see how the sequence works.
Here in the Service Portal, we submit a new hire order guide request.
All the requests are in the Request approval state, because the overall request needs to be approved first.
After the assigned approver submits their approval,...
... we can see that the laptop request is awaiting approval from the Department Head and CIO before it can be fulfilled.
And here we can see that service fulfillment for active directory creation has started immediately, as expected.
After the laptop request is completed and we return to the page later,...
... we can see that the Corporate VPN request starts.
Also, active directory creation is now Closed complete,...
... so it completed successfully, and the email request starts.
And finally, when VPN is complete, the desk setup and monitor requests will start, as we set up here in the sequence.
So we’ve seen the entire process of setting up sequential fulfillment of an order guide, and how it's fulfilled.
For more information, see our product documentation or knowledge base.
Or ask a question in the ServiceNow Community.