In this Platform Analytics Academy session, we used the hour to answer questions from our customers. This session was filled with great questions, and we had plenty of Product Managers on-hand to answer questions live and via chat. Take a look at this session or read through the questions that were asked below and go directly to the answer in the video via the link provided with the question.
Questions Asked
Question - Is there any way to share reports similar to responsive dashboards where you can control if those the reports are shared with can only view the report or if they can edit the report?
Question - Is there a good solution for a met/missed indicator that is "Met" when all SLAs/OLAs on the ticket are met and "Missed" when anyone SLA/OLA is missed? This would include a Response as well as Resolution SLAs/OLAs on the given ticket. It would essentially be an equivalent of what the "Made SLA" field used to indicate, I believe. We keep getting requests for this sort of flag to be populated on Incidents and SCTASKs so that the information is available in Report Designer and then anyone (with itil) can use it. We don't want it limited to PA.
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Typed Solution - Another option, it’s a little more out there but if there’s some reason the above won’t work, then you can use Bucket Groups. Set your bucket group from 0-1 for Met and 1-2 for Breached, and then in the breakdown script add your condition, and just return 1 or 2 depending on how you want it to bucket.
ServiceNow Documentation: Create a Flow with a SLA Task Trigger
Question - Relating to sharing reports in the next experience, is there any way that we can restrict users from sharing with security groups?
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Question - Is there a resource on that next experience sharing reports? We are already using the next experience but not sure how to share a report without exposing the ability to edit.
ServiceNow Documentation - Data visualizations in configurable workspaces
Share a visualization in the Visualization Designer
Question - How to share reports with role(s) in the classic reporting?
Typed Solution - Unfortunately I cannot attach a screenshot but when you click on Share on the Report Designer, you can see the Everyone option and under it the Required role. This is the current option in reports.
Question - Is there a plan to eventually deprecate reports/dashboards and switch to the next experience UI/workspaces? If so, when should we plan to finish migrating reports and dashboards to the new experience?
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Question - Responsive Dashboards have Breakdown widgets. Will this be available as a visualization within Platform Analytics Workspace?
Typed Solution - Hi, yes they are not called breakdowns but the chart types are available. For example Pie, Donut, Semi-donut, Bars, Total, and column.
Question - We need to add Targets for multiple breakdowns of services and service offerings. There are hundreds of them. So I'm looking to automatically apply the target to all 5 or 6 breakdowns. Is there a way to do this?
Typed Solution - We have the option to add a target to all the elements of the breakdowns. You can find more info on it here: Add a target for all elements of a breakdown In case you need not all, but for some, you can go to tables of targets and create/update records with the script potentially, no standard user-facing UI for this.
Question - To continue this, when a ticket get's reassigned the SLA restarts. Is this how it's supposed to work? Seems you can get around SLA's by continue reassigning the ticket. Time to Assign SLA
Question - We need to build dynamic content widgets but have little/no experience with coding in Jelly. A use case is the ability to display specific fields from project_status based on a specific program or portfolio.
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Question - How can we trigger a Threshold notification on the hour every hour?
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Question Follow-Up - And use a Scheduled Email of Report sending on the hour every hour?
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Question - Is there any documentation on AI and machine learning that you spoke about?
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Question - ServiceNow reports (of course some reports) are extremely slow, which passes 30 seconds threshold and times out on the widget. Leaders do not appreciate long wait times and a large pool of the user community is exporting the data to do reporting externally via other BI tools. Despite following all best practices, the tuning process is not well received and is very slow. I am promoting reporting / PA in my organization and how can we speed up the tuning process? I have 2-3 HI cases where I worked with multiple engineers yet didn’t have major success.
Typed Solution - Hi, performance issues can be tricky to identify sometimes. We have some generic instructions on what to be careful of. If you cannot figure it out always a case on support is the way to solve it. I will find and share the community article. Performance Best Practice for Efficient Queries - Top 10 Practices
Question - Hi- I am looking for a way to track work completed by an analyst (in an attestation) when the process is for the manager to close it out in their name. Can a query on analyst names be done on the activity log? How can the manager figure out who is doing what without exporting the data to Excel and painfully going through the work notes? thanks
Typed Solution - Take a look at the “Assigned To” metric on the Incident table, and make a copy of it to apply to the table you need it on. It measures the duration of time assigned to each resource for a ticket, so even if it’s closed by someone else, you can see how much time each person spent on it.
You may want a database view to combine the metrics of a ticket to the ticket itself (incident has one called incident_metric).
Question Follow-Up - And an additional follow-on - can a report be time-based meaning you have 4 hours before breach?
Typed Solution - Yep! I’ve done this for a lot of customers. Looking at incident_sla (or just the sla depending) there’s a field that holds the date/time of the breach. In your criteria for the report, just set the condition Less than 4 hours before (this time)
Question - We have an indicator breakdown based on a checkbox (using bucket groups) 95% of the values map currently, but the last 5% do not get mapped at all. I checked and there are no values that are unmatched. Any idea what could cause this? Everything should have a value as its either checked or unchecked.
Typed Solution - In the UI we map null and false as false and true with true. I have a feeling you might have some null values which are not mapped in your bucket. Please check the records with a filter to verify my assumption.
Question - Also, in PA, can I use another existing field on the availability table to be the target?
Typed Solution - I assume you have the number in another field/column. Right now is not available but I will make a note and will pass it as a possible improvement for the future targets. Try using FlowDesigner to automatically set that record on the targets table whenever the Target field on the Availability changes.
Question - The advantage of using the CEO dashboard is only using the infrastructure. If we know the KPIs we can rather add them to PA Dashboard and use it. I want to understand if there is any advantage that I`m missing in using the UI builder CEO dashboard directly.
Typed Solution - Mostly it’s just prettier, underneath it’s still Performance Analytics. The CIO dashboard, on the other hand, I believe has some UI built for Mobile as well, so there’s some benefit there, but ultimately it’s just a presentation layer for data coming out of Performance Analytics.
Question - Can we create KPI to capture users(we call repeat users) who are submitting tickets to a specific assignment group more than once a month?
Typed Solution - If you’re just wanting to see a list of users, you can open the list, filter for the month, and use the Group by and look for Groups with a bucket higher than 1. If you have a few specific assignment groups you’re wanting, then you can use related list conditions… set your report against the User table and then make the condition “related to more than 1 record on the Incident table, caller field, where assignment group is X”.
Question - Do you have a migration guide from classic reporting (not PA reporting using indicators etc.) to analytics workspace on the Next Experience? Or could you consider this for an upcoming academy session?
Typed Solution - It is definitely something we will have in a future session. Making sure you all have the right information and content available by Washington.
Question - How can I share a Dashboard, to be a TAB on another Dashboard?
Typed Solution - We don’t have a standard functionality that supports putting a tab of one dashboard to another. You can potentially hack it to link the same tab records to multiple dashboards, but is highly not recommended.
Question - Is Jelly still relevant in Next Experience?
Typed Solution - No
Question - I would love to see future academy sessions on advanced dashboards built using PA Workspace Technical Editor with examples. We are looking for ideas on how to use it.
Typed Solution - Thank you, made a note and we will include it in future sessions and involve our development teams for examples
Question - My issue is that I need to apply that to the Service availability which has 100s of Business services and service offerings. So there are some that have a 99.00% availability goal, and others have a 99.50% availability. Each of these services is tied to the Bus owner, delegate, etc. What I need to do is to apply that 99.00% to the service (which is a breakdown already) and apply it to all other breakdowns.
Typed Solution - for this one only way that I know would be to create a script to generate records in pa_targets with the required value per service/offering
Question - What is the name of the Training for Next Experience? or a link to it?
Typed Solution - You can start here: Get Started with Platform Analytics in the Workspace
Getting Started with Platform Analytics – Platform Analytics CoE
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