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Introduction
Sometimes ServiceNow is just slow. But is it your internet connection, or is the entire enterprise currently suffering load times from below?
Figuring that out might seem like a daunting task - and it actually often is.
To make it less daunting I have compiled a list of Performance Monitoring tools.
Additionally, help yourself - there is NowLearning available on this topic. You invest 1hr and 20 min. and you are left with a foundation to troubleshoot performance issues: Performance Troubleshooting Overview.
Remember, your room becomes a mess if you don't clean up regularly. Your platform is the same. I would recommend using the Instance Performance Maintenance and Administration guide by @Mwatkins in conjunction with the below resources to manage your platform.
Platform Solutions
Performance Profiling - Automated Test Framework
Understand how platform changes (data imports, updates, upgrades, ...) will impact the performance of your instance.
Ongoing performance reporting on instance
View a wide range of platform performance metrics for your instance and for the machine on which your instance is running. The ServiceNow Performance homepage provides central access to different graph sets for monitoring the performance of your instance.
Discover application dependencies and their performance.
Set up indicators to measure the usability, cost, quality, performance, and risk of applications. Evaluate and score your business applications based on qualitative inputs. You can translate abstract information of applications based on surveys and assessments into more tangible concrete metrics. These assessments help you make strategic decisions on whether to replace or upgrade applications.
Application Insights enables you to proactively manage the health and performance of your instances.
Application Insights provides time-series graphs and data that enable you to visualize performance trends, see correlated events, and access resources to take corrective action.
Configure proactive mitigation flows triggered through performance thresholds.
Understand portal activity.
Understand the user experience of your ServiceNow end-users.
The ServiceNow® User Experience Analytics application provides dashboard views for monitoring usage analytics of your Next Experience web applications as well as Virtual Agent, ServiceNow mobile, and Service Portal applications. Visualize metrics and interactions to better understand the user experience, and create more intuitive journeys for your users.
Discover paid and unused platform capabilities.
Admin Center provides a central hub for platform owners and admins to access platform capabilities, discover new applications, and get intelligent, actionable insights.
Use the Admin Center application to discover the capability of the available applications and how they can be implemented to work towards achieving your business goal.
Manage upgrades end to end.
Use to plan and manage your upgrades. Use the Upgrade Preview module to explore different release versions available to you and gain insights about the experience of an upgrade without actually upgrading your instance. You can also monitor the status of any ongoing upgrade and view the summary of your latest upgrade with the new Upgrade Monitor module. The also features an Upgrade visual task board (VTB) to manage post-upgrade skips. A separate Upgrade History module can be used to view all your past upgrades. Managing your customizations is critical to maintaining a well-performing platform.
See mid server performance.
The dashboard consists of reports and gauges that display information from the MID Server Status table.
Overview of technical performance data.
This System Diagnostics page provides an overview of useful diagnostic information about a running instance and cluster nodes.
Understand transactions (scripts, queries, more) that may be causing performance issues.
To aid in performance evaluation, the Stats Tools records statistics for system activities that affect performance such as the execution of queries, scripts, and transactions.
Understand the performance of a specific form.
A response time indicator (clock) appears at the bottom right of many forms and lists.
This indicator provides the processing time for a completed transaction, including the total time and the time for each step. Click the icon to show and hide the response time details. Point to the icon to see a tooltip with the details. The following example shows the response time for retrieving a filtered list in a demo instance.
Test a local users connection to the instance.
A connection test can indicate the connection speed between your computer and your instance. A connection speed test (/connection_test.do) is available as a UI page.
Understand all customizations displayed at bottoms of forms and lists.
Diagnose and resolve issues you suspect may have resulted from the most recent upgrade by enabling upgrade debugging during a user session. Each transaction lists whether an artifact was skipped, customized by the customer, or modified by ServiceNow during the last family-to-family or patch version upgrade.
Platform Logs
As an administrator, you can use Slow Events logs to gain insight into how events are affecting platform performance.
To aid in debugging, you can filter slow event log detail by application scope, limiting events to only those events originating in specific scopes.
Administrators can use Slow Interactions logs to gain insight into how interactions are affecting platform performance.
Debugging interactions can help you resolve slowness issues in an instance.
Administrators can use slow mutex logs to gain insight into how mutex locks are affecting platform performance.
A mutex, short for "mutual exclusion," is a programming tool that ensures only one process or thread accesses a shared resource at a time. By locking and unlocking the mutex, it prevents simultaneous access, which can cause issues like race conditions or data corruption. Mutexes help coordinate and control access to shared resources in multithreaded environments, making sure processes take turns and work smoothly together.
Administrators can use slow query logs to gain insight into how queries are affecting platform performance.
The Slow Queries log aggregates data for similar queries. Use slow query data to evaluate the need for new indexes, changes to existing indexes, or changes to frequent queries.
As an administrator, you can use Slow Scripts logs to gain insight into how events are affecting platform performance.
To aid in debugging, you can filter a slow script log by application scope, limiting scripts to only those scripts originating in specific scopes.
As an administrator, you can use Slow Transactions logs to gain insight into how transactions are affecting platform performance.
To aid in debugging, you can filter transaction log detail by application scope, limiting transactions to only those transactions originating in specific scopes.
Health Assessment - A part of the Impact product
Highlevel health of a ServiceNow instance.
"ServiceNow HealthScan helps you understand and improve the health of your ServiceNow instance. Built on best practice definitions gathered from analyzing thousands of instances, this tool quickly scans your ServiceNow instance to provide data points across five key categories: security, upgradability, performance, manageability, and usability.
HealthScan scans for an ever-increasing number of best practices, called definitions. ServiceNow is releasing new definitions each month.
Automated Scanning Tool, run by ServiceNow. Customer can not modify the definitions."
Highlevel health of a ServiceNow instance.
Scans quickly the ServiceNow instance to provide data points across five key categories: security, upgradability, performance, manageability, and usability, ahigh-level overview for presenting a semi-annual review to leadership. Provides insights as to how improve your scores.
Check compliance of latest developments.
Extended to ScoreCard. Sprint Scan helps you implement ServiceNow more effectively. By linking with the ServiceNow implementation methodology, Now Create, it enables you to perform quality control check across your whole instance at the end of every implementation cycle. As output, you get a List of Findings and Recommendation how to fix it. Including Deep-Links to the specific area, where the Finding was found within your ServicenNow Instance. This check helps you avoid common implementation missteps and errors. (Needs customer consent).
Deep dive into platform compliance and tailored recommendations from ServiceNow.
Around a 2 Weeks engagement (~40h), provided by a Technical Consultant.
Configuration Review powered by Health Scan is a detailed assessment of your ServiceNow instance and provides a written report to inform all stakeholders of the quality of the system. Beside Scanning Checks, Consultant will do defined manual checks and report findings. The results will be discussed with the customer as a part of the engagement, including concrete tasks to optimize.
Finding categories: Act, recommended, discuss.
Health Tracker App
Prerequisite: Impact advanced+
Health Tracker is an application to help optimize the process of managing HealthScan results. Findings overview, Current sprint status, Findings trend, New findings from the latest scan, Scorecard (manual import required). (Custom App on Prod) A complimentary application optimizing platform health management for customers with ServiceNow Customer Success
Enables self-service to use official ServiceNow health definition libraries & execution powered by HealthScan
Not an official ServiceNow offering. Provides better ability to manage platform health proactively
Enables developers to scan their work and get direct, automated feedback during unit testing before UAT
Empowers developers towards technically sound configuration
Reduces the overall platform health management efforts when findings are addressed at source.
Other Services
The Impact Instance Observer enables self-sufficiency with tools to manage ServiceNow instances. A part of the Impact product.
Instance Observer(IO) is an observability and performance monitoring tool that empowers you to keep track of your ServiceNow Instance(s) health and performance in near real-time while providing historical insights.
IO helps Instance Administrators, Platform Owners, and DevOps teams accelerate value and drive their desired business outcomes by increasing visibility into instance performance, helping customers push innovation with speed and confidence, and reducing operational costs and technical debt.
Operational Support Review.
Dedicated support account manager walk through of ongoing cases. A part of the Impact product.
Proactive Service Management is a critical deliverable of Support Account Management Services. It is comprised of Case Management, Change Management, and Problem Management including High Impact and Severity Problem Management. Each activity rolls up to the Operational Review which is tangible deliverable. It includes a regular customer meeting with tracking materials used to discuss operational issues and activities.
Performance Review.
Dedicated support account manager walk through of performance trends. A part of the Impact product.
Monthly report of key performance metrics related to a customer’s production instance. The monthly report is a result of a weekly review and analysis of instance data against specific benchmarks. The report includes recommendations to improve instance performance and system response.
Troubleshooting a poor network response time can be difficult, but there are certain quick tests you can perform.
One clear indicator of a network issue is when you find that users in one location have good performance, and users in another location have poor performance. That tells you that the server and application are fine. Assuming that browser settings are identical, the only meaningful difference is the network.
The ServiceNow® Benchmarks application gives you instant visibility into your key performance indicators (KPIs) and trends, as well as comparative insight relative to industry averages of your peers.
You can contrast the performance of your organization with recognized industry standards, view a side-by-side comparison of performance with global benchmarks, and implement recommendations for improved performance.
Process Optimization helps analysts and process owners quickly analyze and optimize their business processes.
Create automated business process flows from your data that enable you to monitor and more quickly discover inefficiencies in your processes.
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