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Release: Australia · Updated: 2026-03-12 · Official documentation · View source

Playbook Experience

Understand how Playbook work in the ServiceNow AI Platform® to automate cross-functional processes and consolidate them into task-oriented views for your end users.

All > Process Automation > Workflow Studio > Playbooks is the design environment where playbook owners build playbooks. Meanwhile, the runtime experience is where end users, such as playbook agents, follow the playbook to complete a business process. To learn more about the Playbook designer, see Playbook builder.

Runtime experience

Workflow Studio produces these runtime components for Playbooks:

  • Process executions

    A process execution stores the details of running a playbook in a context record. You can use a process execution to troubleshoot and verify that playbooks run as expected.

  • Activity executions

    An activity execution stores the details of running an activity instance in a context record. You can use an activity execution to troubleshoot and verify that playbooks run as expected.

  • Playbook runtime

    Playbook runtime is when a playbook runs for an agent or fulfiller. A playbook runs for agents only after Playbook Experience administrators configure how and where the playbook appears.

During runtime for a playbook, your instance:

  1. Evaluates any conditions specified in the trigger definition and processes the trigger.
  2. Processes the Events and starts running the playbook in the background.
  3. Builds the automation plans from each activity into an entire process plan.
  4. Runs the process plan for your playbook.
  5. Stores the process execution information in the Process Execution [sys_pd_context] table.
  6. Provides data for the running playbook view that agents and fulfillers experience.
Image omitted: process-definition-runtime-processing.png
Sequence of playbook processing.

Your instance processes a playbook during runtime by evaluating trigger conditions, processing the event in the queue, building and running a process plan, storing process execution details, and providing data for the Playbook Experience.

Data security and HTML sanitization

Playbooks protects against cross-site scripting and code injection by evaluating all string data for HTML markup. The system only preserves HTML markup that is present in its inclusion list. All other HTML markup is removed from string data.

The inclusion list supports these HTML elements and attributes, which cannot be modified.

HTML elementIncluded Attributes
aclass, href, target, title
abbrclass, title
addressclass
areaalt, class, coords, href, shape
articleclass
asideclass
audioautoplay, class, controls, loop, preload, src
bclass
bdiclass, dir
bdoclass, dir
bigclass
blockquotecite, class
brclass
captionclass
centerclass
citeclass
codeclass
colalign, class, span, valign, width
colgroupalign, class, span, valign, width
ddclass
delclass, datetime
detailsclass, open
divclass
dlclass
dtclass
emclass
empclass
fontclass, color, face, size
footerclass
h1class
h2class
h3class
h4class
h5class
h6class
headerclass
hrclass
html 
iclass
imgalt, class, height, src, title, width
inputaria-label, class, type, value
insclass, datetime
liclass
markclass
navclass
olclass
pclass
preclass
sclass
sectionclass
smallclass
spanclass
subclass
supclass
svgclass
strongclass
style 
tablealign, border, class, valign, width
tagclass
tbodyalign, class, valign
tdalign, class, colspan, rowspan, valign, width
tfootalign, class, valign
thalign, class, colspan, rowspan, valign, width
theadalign, class, valign
tralign, class, rowspan, valign
ttclass
uclass
ulclass
videoautoplay, class, controls, height, loop, preload, src, width

Parent Topic:Exploring Playbook