Getting Started with Platform Analytics – Platform Analytics CoE

[Thomas_Davis]

What is Platform Analytics?

The ServiceNow® Platform Analytics experience provides a single center for consuming the data from all Platform Analytics products. Platform Analytics experience was enhanced and updated in the Yokohama release.

Platform Analytics features:

• Create, edit, and configure configurable workspace dashboards.
• Configure visualizations.
• Dashboard, Visualization, and KPI libraries.
• Certify configurable workspace dashboards and visualizations.
• Export data visualizations.
• See data visualization usage.
• Configure dashboards and visualizations more easily.
• Include this workspace's features in your configurable workspaces.

How do I get started with Platform Analytics?

Step 1: Documentation

Step 2: Training

Step 3: Guidance & Best Practices

Step 4: Further Resources

Step 1: Documentation

To familiarize yourself with the complete spectrum of Platform Analytics features and the newest enhancements in each release, ServiceNow® Docs is the place to go.

Release Highlights

Yokohama

Platform Analytics Release Notes

• Generate data visualizations conversationally: Use Analytics Generation to generate Platform Analytics artifacts from conversational interactions. Analytics Generation is part of the Now Assist for Creator application.
• Implement filters in groups: Create filter groups with shared apply, clear, and reset buttons. Filters in a group appear in their own container. Grouping filters reduces the number of calls and improves performance compared to cascading filters for big data use cases.
•  Apply multiple levels of breakdown to an indicator: Migrate indicators from traditional Performance Analytics architecture to change data capture (CDC)-based data snapshots. This new architecture allows for more than two levels of breakdown to apply to an indicator. RaptorDB Professional is required, and not all indicators qualify for migration.
• Show the distribution of data in a box plot data visualization: Show the median and lower and upper quartiles of numeric data along with outliers by using box plots. You can also compare the distribution of different groups of this data.
• Target suggestion cards: Be notified of missing target values and review dates for indicators. If you have target Insights active for your dashboard, Target suggestion cards alert you to the missing values and provide an easy way to fix them.

Xanadu

Platform Analytics Release Notes

• Create a Process Mining project from dashboard insights: With a single click, create a Process Mining project from the list of suggestions in the Insights panel on a dashboard. Suggestions are available when an issue is identified that might be improved through Process Mining.
• Control data source availability: Restrict the ability to create data visualizations for a data source to roles that you specify.

Washington

Platform Analytics Release Notes

• Dashboard migration to Platform Analytics Experience.
• Platform Analytics in Unified Navigation.
• Proactive Analytics insights on dashboards.
• Proactive Analytics workflow triggers.
• Pareto visualization.

Step 2: Training 

Now Learning Training

Start by completing the training on ServiceNow® Now Learning

• Platform Analytics (PA) Overview (3 hours)

Developer Program

Next, request a Personal Developer Instance (PDI) to practice what you have learned.

Step 3: Guidance and Best Practices 

Whether you're a first-time implementor or an experienced developer, the following resources will help you understand how to approach best using Platform Analytics.

Platform Analytics Academy

We have been covering Platform Analytics topics in our Platform Analytics Academy sessions.

• March 20th, 2024 - Platform Analytics Migration Center
• March 6th, 2024 - Improve Dashboard Performance with Dashboard Caching
• February 21st, 2024 - What's New in Washington "Platform Analytics"

Step 4: Further Resources

Developer Program

• What is a Workspace?
• Exercise: Add a Data Visualization to the Workspace
• UIB Setup | sn-dashboard

Activation Information

Platform Analytics is included in the App Analytics Workspace plugin (sn_app_analytics_w), which is active by default. Updates to this plugin are available in the ServiceNow® Store. Visit the ServiceNow® Store website to view all the available apps and information about submitting requests to the store.

[Suvedha]

Hi,

Thank you for the post. 

Do we need Performance Analytics subscription for Platform Analytics workspace

[jeffrubinoff]

I believe you only need it for some of the directly PA-related functionality.

[Suvedha]

Hi Jeff,

Thanks for the reply.

I am not able to see new button in data visualization creation. What might be the reason?

Regards,

Suvedha.

[jeffrubinoff]

It is documented, and I find it on test instances, that any role gives the right to create personal data visualizations. Please ask your admin for the viz_creator role and see if that helps.

[Joatan Fontoura]

Hi!

I saw that in Washington release, Platform Analytics is no more offered like a workspace.

Should we think that there are plans to deprecate classic reports and Report Designer in the future?

Thank you!

[Thomas_Davis]

Hey @Joatan Fontoura that is a great question. @martapenzo or @RJ Barmentloo do you have any insight on this question?

[martapenzo]

@Joatan Fontoura Hi, after the migration and the activation of Platform Analytics experience the menus that are part of Reports and Performance Analytics will be merged into Platform Analytics and Platform Analytics Administration sections.
The migration center is available from Washington release.
Reports and Report designer will not be removed from the instance and can still be used to create reports for the Service Portal or to edit reports that are in compatibility mode in the new Platform Analytics dashboards.

[Joatan Fontoura]

Hi, @martapenzo!

OK, thank you for clarifying me.

Regards!

[Ganesan5]

Hi, Question regarding impact to end users points. upon migrate will end users will have same level of access capabilities, like how they use the system for reporting? will this copy over the permissions as well?

In our current instance which on Washington I see a message mentioning this will be forced to everyone in Yokohama release in Q2, 2025?

[martapenzo]

Hi @Ganesan5,

if the Core UI dashboards and reports have been shared with users. groups and roles, after the migration the permissions are maintained.
If you have customized in your instance which users can create dashboards or reports, you would need to apply again those ACLs on the new tables (par_dashboard and par_visualization).

Regarding the timelines we are evaluating as of now an extension of the time before the deprecation. Most probably it will be moved to Australia release and we will send an update communication the latest in Q2 2025.

Thanks

[Faisal Shaikh]

@Thomas_Davis - we are planning to migrate to the platform analytics here soon. This will likely change the user experience for many ITIL users, particularly power users who builds reports / dashboards. Do you know of any user guide or documentation available that was targeted for the ITIL users? 

[martapenzo]

Hi @Faisal Shaikh,
from the enablement toolkit you can find resources and PPTs to download that can be useful to share with your users: https://www.servicenow.com/community/performance-analytics-blog/platform-analytics-enablement-toolki...

[gjz]

I was watching the Migration webinar (March 20, 2024) and decided to try to migrate one dashboard.  However, I can't get to the Migration status page that was shown in the webinar.  Where do I find it so I can see what happened with the test migration of one dashboard?

[martapenzo]

Hi @gjz,

the page in the screenshot is available only if you trigger the full migration from the Performance Analytics > Migration Center menu (the button is "Start moving"). 
If you have only triggered the migration of one dashboard from the Core UI pa_dashboards table, then you will not see the results from the Migration Center. The dashboard will be automatically migrated and available in the Platform Analytics > Library > Dashboards menu

[AH6]

Are there any plans to provide ability to download breakdown scores? Thanks!

[martapenzo]

Hi @AH6, do you mean the breakdown scores information from the KPI details page? Thanks

[AH6]

@martapenzo that's correct. We want to download the breakdown scores from the indicator. Thanks!

[Pablo1]

Hi @AH6 currently I don't believe there is a button or action that will allow you to do that from either KPI details or from the indicator form.

However, depending on your role (or you might need to work with a platform admin or pa_admin) have you looked at pa_scores_l1 table? You might be able to utilize the API or create a script that could pull the data you're looking for from this table.

[ah20]

Thanks @Pablo1 , I'll look into pa_scores table. Please share any sample script to extract data from this table. 

[Ashish Samant]

Thank you for the article.
Just wanted to provide a feedback, The training link is not working any more.

Here is the latest link: 
https://learning.servicenow.com/lxp?id=learning_course_prev&course_id=a5520a899336b19456aeb94c5cba10...