How's everyone holding up this Midweek? Feeling super productive , or just eagerly waiting for the weekend to roll in ?
Well, here's a little something to add some boost to your day! I'm absolutely thrilled to introduce @ken.hayward ,Solution Architect in Freshworks, who's all set to host an insightful session - Powerful automations to transform and scale your service delivery in Freshservice for you on May 23 at 7:30 a.m. PDT. If you haven't checked it out yet, you're missing out!
Ken’s got a 90-minute agenda lined up for you all. Get ready to dive deep into some concepts that are bound to revolutionize the way you approach your automations.
Here’s a little bit about him! For those of you who had the pleasure of attending his solution booth back in 2022, you already know the expertise he holds.
Ken is a Solutions Architect at Freshworks, where he has been instrumental for the past 6 years in assisting organizations to mature and transform their business processes. Leveraging Freshworks' suite of ITSM and ESM products, Ken has consistently amazed customers with significant efficiency gains and improved user experience improvements they gain by transition off of legacy tools like BMC, Ivanti, Cherwell, and ServiceNow.
So, mark your calendars and gear up for an engaging session! And, if you've got any burning questions swirling in your mind, don't hesitate to ask Ken here. He's more than eager to share his wisdom.
Looking forward to seeing your active participation!
Here’s your registration link -
Best
Kamakshi
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Hey Everybody! I’m super excited to be hosting this session on supercharging your automations in Freshservice. The goal is to help everyone understand how to build enterprise-scale workflows leveraging custom objects to gather approvals on Service and Change Requests. I’m preparing some supporting documentation which I hope to share soon.
Please post any questions you have about the content here and I’ll be happy to clarify. Looking forward to the session!
Best
Thank you so much @ken.hayward for hosting this for us! Looking forward to this!
Tagging some of our Freshservice users here for visibility.
@Joost van den Reek@keefe.andrews@patricksawyer@rubi.odell@mark.uther@jbermudez@keith@zachary.king@stacyv@i.cameron@Denise.S.P@mmccoy@jluna@Suki@shannon.mejia@PatrickMurphy@eeha0120@Stague71@jpeters@Joshua.Lawrence@zackzack@jsynotte@LucasHansson@Russell Ho-Aitken@raymondcanilao@benp@jens.hartmann@kirstyende@zachscott@Maxime Moreau@osimon@Daniel Söderlund@edward.kim@jbergman@malokt@maghed@EricRoeland@dezarno@Gerald@maarten@abigayle.paulson@theophilo.camargo@Rsomers@monika.hipp@Corporate Ladder@afautley@Chris Sherlock@Croy
Hi Folks! I’m attaching some light reading material in advance of our session this Thursday We’ll be talking about a few different levels of automation; this document outlines what I’ll refer to as “Level 3” approval automation which we’ve used as the foundation to support some of our largest, most complex enterprise customers.
Hey @ken.hayward
Thank you for sharing this resource! This is going to be super helpful for our members :)
Hello Folks!
The session starts in an hour! If you have any questions and not able to attend, pls post them here and Ken would answer them for you during the session.
For those are not able to login and encounter any issues, please drop a line here, I shall assist you!
See y’all soon!
I don’t see a way to get into the session. I registered a while ago and there’s no link. - I ended up finding it in my spam for some reason! nevermind
I don’t see a way to get into the session. I registered a while ago and there’s no link.
I don’t see a way to get into the session. I registered a while ago and there’s no link. - I ended up finding it in my spam for some reason! nevermind
Hey @Kristin B.
Sorry about that! The email is triggered by Zoom and sometimes there could be a delay, but not sure about the spam. I will surely get this checked by my team!
I had to drop early, is there a recording available?
This example doesn’t specify what the criteria should be for this node. We are currently using meta.success = true, but doesn’t seem to work. Is there better documentation on how to use workflows with Microsoft AD?
I had to drop early, is there a recording available?
Yes supposedly a recording will be dropped right here on this page, I believe I heard.
I like the idea of creating groups in a separate custom object (CO). In my approval solution I’m looping 1 workflow automation (WFA) supported by 2 CO.
It has the option send out as many rounds of approval as you like. Example Application owner → manager → Department manager → CIO → CFO etc and any order you want.
They can by any typ as well. any one, everyone, majority, first. It skips rounds if the requester is the one to approve except everyone/majority. You define all in the 2 custom objects.
As of to day I have 1 CO where I setup the base data, assignment group, status, category etc.
Second has all the rounds/steps of approvals. As of today I added each requester of the “group” that should approve for each service item. With creating groups in a separate CO and link that into my second CO it would make it much easier to manage.
I had to drop early, is there a recording available?
Yes supposedly a recording will be dropped right here on this page, I believe I heard.
Hello @robsteriam
The recording of the session will be shared here soon!
This example doesn’t specify what the criteria should be for this node. We are currently using meta.success = true, but doesn’t seem to work. Is there better documentation on how to use workflows with Microsoft AD?
meta.success = true should work, or meta.status = 200 (or possibly 201). What’s the behavior you’re seeing on the AD side - is the user account being created? Technical Support should be able to help with in-depth torubleshooting.
I like the idea of creating groups in a separate custom object (CO). In my approval solution I’m looping 1 workflow automation (WFA) supported by 2 CO.
It has the option send out as many rounds of approval as you like. Example Application owner → manager → Department manager → CIO → CFO etc and any order you want.
They can by any typ as well. any one, everyone, majority, first. It skips rounds if the requester is the one to approve except everyone/majority. You define all in the 2 custom objects.
As of to day I have 1 CO where I setup the base data, assignment group, status, category etc.
Second has all the rounds/steps of approvals. As of today I added each requester of the “group” that should approve for each service item. With creating groups in a separate CO and link that into my second CO it would make it much easier to manage.
I agree that using a separate CO from Approval Groups generally keeps it cleaner from a maintenance perspective, especially at larger scale (eg. not having to update many rows of the Master Table CO when an approver needs to be changed).
Regarding approval types (everyone, majority, first), you can also store this in a CO (either the Master Table at the service item-level, or Approval Groups at the group-level, depending on the need) and bifurcate your workflow accordingly. Not sure if that was already a component of what you were describing
Thanks for attending the session and contributing to the conversation!
I like the idea of creating groups in a separate custom object (CO). In my approval solution I’m looping 1 workflow automation (WFA) supported by 2 CO.
It has the option send out as many rounds of approval as you like. Example Application owner → manager → Department manager → CIO → CFO etc and any order you want.
They can by any typ as well. any one, everyone, majority, first. It skips rounds if the requester is the one to approve except everyone/majority. You define all in the 2 custom objects.
As of to day I have 1 CO where I setup the base data, assignment group, status, category etc.
Second has all the rounds/steps of approvals. As of today I added each requester of the “group” that should approve for each service item. With creating groups in a separate CO and link that into my second CO it would make it much easier to manage.
I agree that using a separate CO from Approval Groups generally keeps it cleaner from a maintenance perspective, especially at larger scale (eg. not having to update many rows of the Master Table CO when an approver needs to be changed).
Regarding approval types (everyone, majority, first), you can also store this in a CO (either the Master Table at the service item-level, or Approval Groups at the group-level, depending on the need) and bifurcate your workflow accordingly. Not sure if that was already a component of what you were describing
Thanks for attending the session and contributing to the conversation!
ya my types are all in the flow and set in the CO for each approval. I don’t have VIP as part om the flow but it can be added. The base of this flow is a number field that use to keep track of the round/step I’m on. The total number of number step are diffande per SI in the CO. So the expression(s) can calculate the next step. This is something we sell as package to our customers.
Hello Folks!
Here’s the recording of the session for y’all to view.
@ken.hayward is currently collating all the questions and will be sharing some answers here.
Thanks @ken.hayward
I finally got around to testing this out and everything is working except for when I skip approval for VIP or requested for manager = requester.
Since it doesn’t trigger a send approval email, the Approval status is ‘Not Requested’. How can we trigger the automation (in my case) AD orchestration if approval is not set to Approved? I tried using either of these 2 events, but it doesn’t fire. When a previous workflow (Skip Manager Approval) runs, it is setting Remaining Approvals to None Remaining, but for some reason doesn’t fire. If I manually update the Remaining Approvals dropdown to None Remaining, it does fire.
Thanks @ken.hayward
I finally got around to testing this out and everything is working except for when I skip approval for VIP or requested for manager = requester.
Since it doesn’t trigger a send approval email, the Approval status is ‘Not Requested’. How can we trigger the automation (in my case) AD orchestration if approval is not set to Approved? I tried using either of these 2 events, but it doesn’t fire. When a previous workflow (Skip Manager Approval) runs, it is setting Remaining Approvals to None Remaining, but for some reason doesn’t fire. If I manually update the Remaining Approvals dropdown to None Remaining, it does fire.
Hi Damon, I’d recommend adding “Service Request is Raised” as a triggering event for SRA8, and then ensure that there’s a condition in place “Remaining Approvals is ‘None Remaining’”. Can you give this a try and let me know if it works?
Thanks!
Thanks @ken.hayward!
That worked. In my mind, the ‘request was already raised’ and then it was updated by SRA3. I guess if another workflow updates the object, it is still considered in the ‘raised’ state…
The ‘ANY’ conditions are confusing to me. I’m used to being able to set ‘AND’ conditions or use logic like (1 AND 2) OR 3, so it isn’t running a workflow on EVERY ticket/request and then checking for additional conditions on it...
Also, the ‘Remaining Approvals’ shows up on all tickets now. Is there a way to have this field only show on Service Requests? It is confusing for users to see it on incident tickets. I suppose I could just uncheck the ‘Displayed to requester’, but then users won’t see it at all.
@ken.hayward - Is there a suggested way to make this work when part of onboarding (ie. multiple service request items)? This query shows a comma separated list of service items, so it doesn’t match Service Master Table.
, or just eagerly waiting for the weekend to roll in 
?
We’ll be talking about a few different levels of automation; this document outlines what I’ll refer to as “Level 3” approval automation which we’ve used as the foundation to support some of our largest, most complex enterprise customers.
