# Future State Planning & Committing

Guide on how to implement future state planning and committing

Designer provides unique capabilities to perform future state planning without changing data in ServiceNow.

The future state elements and relationships can be "committed" manually or workflow triggered into the ServiceNow platform.

It is also possible to initiate other workflows and processes e.g. provisioning, procurement, or change processes during the commit.

## Future & Current State Elements

**Current State Elements** (committed) are items populated in the ServiceNow repository. They have a SysID and are unique entries e.g. Business Application ABC in the *cmdb\_bus\_application* table.

**Future State Elements** (not committed) are shapes with a defined table, but are not existing within the ServiceNow repository yet. They are stored temporarily within the Designer environment and the Diagram and need to be committed into the ServiceNow repository.

{% hint style="warning" %}
**Future State Elements are not shared across Diagrams**

Future State Elements are only available within the Diagram and not shared across other Diagrams. So they are not searchable in the Repository Browser.
{% endhint %}

## Distinguishing Future & Current State Elements

Clicking on a shape will show overlay symbols. A Future State Element has only the Hyperlink overlay symbol. A Current State Element has five overlay symbols.

![](/files/mXIAJcv2b2r94GtRlcG6)

Additionally, the Future & Current Elements and Relationships are shown in the Diagram Content widget in the Right-hand Panel.


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