Reporting incidents
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Summary of Reporting incidents
ServiceNow enables service desk and IT managers to monitor and track incidents effectively using dashboards and reports. The Incident > Overview dashboard provides a real-time snapshot of open incidents, highlighting key statuses such as critical, unassigned, and overdue incidents. The dashboard features interactive and configurable charts that group incidents by priority, state, and other factors, helping managers quickly assess incident conditions.
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Incident Reports
ServiceNow offers a variety of base system incident reports accessible via the Reports > View / Run menu. Customers can modify existing reports or create new ones tailored to their needs. Key report types include:
- Basic bar or pie charts: Analyze incidents by assignment group, location, priority, or state to evaluate resource allocation and workload distribution.
- Time series reports: For example, Incident Trend by Configuration Item helps identify recurring issues linked to specific configuration items.
- Multidimensional reports: Such as Incidents by Priority and State older than 30 Days, which help detect service level gaps, for instance, incidents lingering in the New state beyond expected timelines.
Incident Metric Definition
Metrics are critical for measuring and improving IT service management processes. By activating the Metric Definition plugin (com.glide.metrics), customers can define and monitor key incident metrics within ServiceNow. These metrics enable creation of detailed reports and dashboards, support automated report generation and distribution, and inform refinements to incident assignment rules, SLAs, and inactivity monitors. Encouraging end users to consult the knowledge base before incident creation reduces unnecessary tickets, supported by the related search results function on the Incident form.
Performance Analytics for Incident Management
ServiceNow includes Complimentary Performance Analytics for Incident Management by default, which aggregates incident data over time and provides a dashboard with 15 indicators to evaluate organizational performance. Additionally, subscribing to Performance Analytics unlocks In-form Analytics that embed performance insights directly within incident records to aid decision-making.
Legacy Platform Analytics Solutions offer preconfigured dashboards and actionable data visualizations for Incident Management and Incident SLA Management, designed to help customers optimize their business processes.
Service desk and other IT managers can use dashboards and reports to monitor and track incident status and service levels.
Incident Overview
The dashboard provides a quick glance at the current state of open incidents. At the top, single score widgets enumerate the open incident statuses, such as critical incidents, unassigned incidents, and overdue incidents. Charts in the dashboard group incidents by factors such as priority and state. The incident overview is fully interactive and configurable.
Incident reports
Various incident reports are available in the base system, and you can modify the existing reports or create new ones. Navigate to and enter incident in the search box to view all incident reports. Base system reports include the following:
- Basic bar or pie chart reports, such as incidents by assignment group, location, priority, or state. These reports help you analyze a specific data point, for example, whether enough staff is allocated to an assignment group.
- Time series reports, such as Incident Trend by Configuration Item. This report lets you analyze closed incidents by configuration item (CI) to identify potential problems.
- Multidimensional reports, such as Incidents by Priority and State older than 30 Days. This report can help you identify gaps in service levels. For example, if a high number of low-priority incidents are still in New state after being open more than 30 days.
Incident metric definition
A metric measures and evaluates the effectiveness of IT service management processes. The service desk can improve the incident management process using information gathered within the platform. You can activate the Metric Definition plugin (com.glide.metrics) and define the metrics to monitor within the system. With these metrics, and the information within the database, it is possible to generate reports that can be added to dashboards or automatically generated and distributed.
Using this information, it is possible to refine automatic rules such as the assignment rules, service level agreements, or inactivity monitors to better suit the unique environment of the service desk. Unnecessary incidents can be avoided by encouraging users to consult the knowledge base before creating an incident. The related search results function in the Incident form assists with this strategy.
Complimentary Performance Analytics for Incident Management
Complimentary Performance Analytics for Incident Management and aggregates data over time, and is enabled by default for Incident Management. Complimentary Performance Analytics for Incident Management provides an Incident Management dashboard with 15 indicators to help you assess organizational performance. For more information, see Performance Analytics for Incident Management.
A subscription to Performance Analytics also gives you access to In-form analytics. In-form analytics integrate performance insights into Incident records so that users can access important metrics in context and make better decisions.