question Re: User Preference table clean-up to prevent system performance degradation in ServiceNow AI Platform forum

User Preference table clean-up to prevent system performance degradation

jbirk — Fri, 01 Jul 2022 15:00:46 GMT

We recently had some very poor performance with our sub-production instances. So we opened a case with support and they found that we had over 77k User Preferences with my account having over 3.5k. Once I deleted all of my User Preferences (in the sub-production instances) the performance was night and day. I have since gone through and deleted all user preferences tied to inactive users and the performance seems to be back to normal.

My question and desire is to create a clean-up job so that we can limit our exposure to this issue. I know how to create the clean-up jobs easily enough, but I am not entirely sure what is safe to delete or clean-up within the User Preferences table.

Here is the document I have been directed to, but it really only says that over a certain number of records you will experience system degradation, but doesn't go into any details about what is safe to clean up and what to leave alone.
https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/sandiego-platform-administration/page/administer/navigation-and-ui/concept/c_UserPreferences.html

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you,

Jeff

Re: User Preference table clean-up to prevent system performance degradation

Mark Roethof — Fri, 01 Jul 2022 15:05:20 GMT

Hi there,

While creating such a scheduled job / sys_auto_flush / flow would be easy, I would be careful with it where it concerns active users or ones with system checked. For example it can concern user preferences which you really want to keep. User preferences like for example having the Next Experience UI turned on 🙂

Can you identify why you have such a high amount of user preferences for your user (77K for all users, doesn't sound that bad if you have thousands of users)? Is there something from a certain app causing this? Etc..

If my answer helped you in any way, please then mark it as helpful.

Kind regards,
Mark
2020-2022 ServiceNow Community MVP
2020-2022 ServiceNow Developer MVP

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Re: User Preference table clean-up to prevent system performance degradation

jbirk — Fri, 01 Jul 2022 15:30:34 GMT

There isn't anything that really stands out unfortunately and we only have maybe 2k which not all of them log into the system and use it.

After just going through the list ones that begin with menu. seem to have the most records.

Re: User Preference table clean-up to prevent system performance degradation

Mark Roethof — Fri, 01 Jul 2022 15:44:57 GMT

Can you re-share your images? They are not visible now.

Anyway, it's not a strange number of user preferences. Just checked at two customer instances, not much different.

Have you also investigated if it concerned specific user preferences causing the performance?

If my answer helped you in any way, please then mark it as helpful.

Kind regards,
Mark
2020-2022 ServiceNow Community MVP
2020-2022 ServiceNow Developer MVP

---

LinkedIn
Community article, blog, video list

Re: User Preference table clean-up to prevent system performance degradation

jbirk — Fri, 01 Jul 2022 16:44:14 GMT

I fixed the image, at least I hope so.

I did not investigate if it concerned a specific user preference as once I cleaned up all of the inactive user ones the system performance improved.

I am not having the performance issues right now. I may have to wait for awhile and see if we get build up again and do a review at that time.

I was hoping to create a clean-up job to keep it semi clean so we can hope to avoid the issue in the future.

Re: User Preference table clean-up to prevent system performance degradation

Jim Coyne — Sat, 02 Jul 2022 05:08:59 GMT

I've asked SN for some clarification on that small number of 10,000 records on that Docs article. That seems like a ridiculously small number.

I have 660 records in production myself, an instance I rarely work in to be honest. I mean just the list view options can create a large number of preferences (separate ones for each table for things like column to sort on, direction of sort, whether the filter is pinned or not, etc...).

I think if your job deletes records for any inactive user should at the very least help you out there. Deleting them for active users will affect their user experience. You might get a large number on your first execution, but then far less if you run it on a daily or weekly basis. I'd probably run it daily as it shouldn't affect the platform much, especially off-hours.

Re: User Preference table clean-up to prevent system performance degradation

Luiz Lucena — Mon, 14 Nov 2022 17:52:36 GMT

I do have the same question regarding that number. Is not clear if it is total (counting all user preferences) or just system wide preferences.

We have around 700 users with backend access and everytime (as you said) sort a list, modify columns, that creates a user preference. Also, we have users around the globe, so, if they switch languages, that is another user preference record.

I could not find though a relationship to the user preference count to poor performance, wish ServiceNow could be more clear on that.