Unable to Activate a Flow in Flow DesignerIssue An administrator is unable to activate a ServiceNow-delivered out-of-the-box (OOB) flow in Flow Designer. The Activate button is disabled or unavailable, even though the user has administrative privileges and can view the flow. This behaviour is commonly observed with protected flows such as ITSM Actionable Notifications trigger flow - Approval Reminder. Symptoms The Activate button is greyed out or unavailable in Flow Designer.No error message is displayed.The flow is inactive and cannot be reactivated by the customer.Users with the admin role are unable to activate the flow.Elevating to security_admin does not provide the ability to reactivate the flow. Cause Some ServiceNow-delivered flows are protected using a Read-only protection policy on the underlying sys_hub_flow record. This is expected platform behaviour and is designed to prevent direct modification of protected ServiceNow content. For protected flows: Customer administrators can view the flow.Administrators with elevated security_admin privileges may be able to deactivate the flow.Reactivating a protected flow requires internal ServiceNow maint-level access.Customer accounts cannot obtain the required level of access, regardless of assigned roles. As a result, the Activate button is intentionally unavailable to customer users. Release Any ServiceNow-delivered flows which are protected using a Read-only protection policy. Resolution If a protected OOB flow needs to be reactivated, contact ServiceNow Support and request activation assistance. ServiceNow personnel with the required internal access can reactivate the flow on behalf of the customer. Verification To determine whether the flow is protected: Navigate to Flow Designer.Open the affected flow.Review the flow properties and protection status.If the flow is ServiceNow-delivered and protected, the activation controls may be restricted to internal ServiceNow personnel. Recommendation If ongoing administration of the flow is required, consider creating a customer-managed copy of the flow within your own application scope. Benefits include: Full control over activation and deactivation.Ability to modify flow logic as needed.No dependency on ServiceNow Support for future reactivation activities. The original protected OOB flow should remain unchanged and can be retained for reference.