Performance Analytics indicators for applications

  • Release version: Yokohama
  • Updated January 30, 2025
  • 2 minutes to read
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    Summary of Performance Analytics indicators for applications

    Performance Analytics (PA) indicators help ServiceNow customers track and analyze the count of incidents, problems, and changes logged against business applications. These metrics enable organizations to evaluate and improve the performance of their applications effectively by providing actionable insights sourced from PA.

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    Key Features

    • Indicator Types: Counts of incidents, problems, changes, and closed change requests related to business applications.
    • Scheduled Job Execution: PA jobs must be run in a specific sequence to generate accurate application performance scores:
      1. Daily Data Collection for Incidents, Changes, and Problems
      2. Enterprise Architecture job to load application indicators and compute scores
    • Historic Data Collection: For data older than six months, Performance Analytics Premium for Enterprise Architecture is required. Historic data jobs must run in a specific order to regenerate scores accurately.
    • Score Generation Frequency: Scores are generated based on the indicator frequency—monthly, quarterly, or yearly—aligned with calendar or fiscal periods in the system’s time zone.
    • Data Collection Frequency Alignment: The frequency of application indicators must be equal to or greater than that of the data source indicators. For example, monthly application indicators collect from monthly data sources, while yearly application indicators collect from monthly, quarterly, and yearly data sources.
    • Frequency Changes in Yokohama Release: The Daily frequency for PA data source indicators is removed and updated to Monthly via an automated fix script for customers upgraded to Yokohama release.
    • Limitations on Displaying Breakdown Elements: By default, the PA Scoresheet limits the number of business application breakdowns shown, controlled by system properties. Customers can increase these limits to display all their applications by modifying:
      • com.snc.pa.scoresheet.maxelements (maximum breakdown elements in Scoresheet)
      • com.snc.pa.scorecards.maxbreakdownelements (maximum breakdown elements in scorecards)
      Changes are made via Performance Analytics > System > Properties.

    Practical Application for ServiceNow Customers

    By following the prescribed job execution order and understanding the indicator frequencies, customers can reliably generate and interpret Performance Analytics scores to monitor application health. Adjusting system property limits ensures comprehensive visibility of all business applications in PA reports, enabling better decision-making. Additionally, customers upgrading to Yokohama should be aware of frequency updates affecting daily data collection.

    Use performance analytic (PA) indicators to know the count of incidents, problems, and changes logged against a business application and use this insight to improve the performance of your applications.

    Enterprise Architecture uses indicators that are sourced from Performance Analytics (PA). These indicators give a count of incidents, problems, changes, and the number of change requests that were closed on a given day. Follow the given order to run the PA jobs at the scheduled time, and get the scores of the indicators to evaluate the performance of your business applications.

    Order in which to run PA jobs and generate scores

    You should run the scheduled jobs in the following order:

    1. [PA Incident] Daily Data Collection.
    2. [PA Change] Daily Data Collection.
    3. [PA Problem] Daily Data Collection.
    4. [Enterprise Architecture Scheduled job] Load Application Indicators and compute Application Scores.

    If there are historic data, then run them in the following order:

    Note:

    You require Performance Analytics Premium for Enterprise Architecture (com.snc.pa.premium.apm) plugin to retrieve historic data that are older than six months.

    1. [PA Incident] Historic Data Collection.
    2. [PA Change] Historic Data Collection.
    3. [PA Problem] Historic Data Collection.
    4. Regenerate Enterprise Architecture scores for required time period. This action deletes the existing scores including daily scores and generates new scores instead of just updating the existing scores.

    Frequency at which indicator scores are generated

    Scores are generated as per the scheduled run of the job that executes the script. If the indicator frequency is:

    Monthly
    scores are generated only on the last day of a month.
    Quarter
    scores are generated only on the last day of a quarter.
    Yearly
    scores are generated only on the last day of a year.
    Note:
    Fiscal periods should be generated in the same time zone in which the scores are generated.

    Collection of PA indicator score data

    The period unit (days, weeks, or month) at which the PA indicator scores are collected and preserved depends on the frequency of the data source indicator. However, the frequency at which the application indicator collects the PA indicator data source scores varies.

    In Enterprise Architecture, the frequency of the application indicator must be greater than or equal to the frequency of the data source indicator.

    The following table describes the frequency at which Enterprise Architecture collects data from the data source indicators after the job runs:

    Table 1. APM data collection frequency
    Enterprise Architecture frequency Data source indicator frequency
    Monthly Monthly
    Quarterly Monthly and Quarterly
    Yearly Monthly, Quarterly, and Yearly

    If you are an Enterprise Architecture customer, who has upgraded to the Yokohama release, then the Daily frequency of Performance Analytics data source indicator is not available. RemoveDailyFreqAndUpdatePAIndicator fix script automatically removes the Daily frequency of PA indicators and updates the frequency to Monthly.

    Limitations to display application breakdowns in PA scoresheet

    If there is a large number of business applications installed, then all the breakdowns are not displayed in the Performance Analytics > Scoresheet, as there is a limitation set in the system properties: com.snc.pa.scoresheet.max_elements and com.snc.pa.scorecards.max_breakdown_elements. To reconfigure the property limitation:

    1. Navigate to Performance Analytics > System > Properties.
    2. Enter the maximum number in the Maximum number of elements of a breakdown in Scoresheet field. The number must be greater than or equal to the number of business applications installed in your system.
      Figure 1. Performance Analytics Scoresheet
      Display of application breakdowns in Performance Analytics Scoresheet
    3. Enter the maximum number in the Maximum number of breakdown elements in scorecard lists field.
    4. Click Save.