Indicator form

  • Release version: Washingtondc
  • Updated February 1, 2024
  • 4 minutes to read
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    Summary of Indicator Form Application Portfolio Management

    The Indicator form in Application Portfolio Management (APM) enables customers to define and manage application indicators, which are essential business metrics that evaluate applications based on various criteria, including cost, quality, technical risk, investments, user satisfaction, and business value.

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    Key Features

    • Name: Identifies the application indicator.
    • Unit: Specifies the measurement unit, such as currency or time.
    • Frequency: Determines how often data is collected, with special considerations for Performance Analytics.
    • Target Maximum/Minimum: Sets the desired value range for the indicator, with conditions for availability based on data source selection.
    • Active: Enables the indicator.
    • CI Class: Defines the configuration item type related to the indicator.
    • Direction: Indicates whether to maximize or minimize values.
    • Datasource Configuration: Offers options for data sources, including Performance Analytics, Custom Script, and Assessments.
    • Consolidation: Describes how values are aggregated (e.g., sum, average).
    • Custom Script: Allows for personalized data collection through scripting.

    Key Outcomes

    By utilizing the Indicator form, ServiceNow customers can effectively monitor and assess their application portfolio, leading to improved decision-making and strategic planning. The metrics gathered can reveal insights into application performance, user satisfaction, and overall business impact, allowing for better resource allocation and prioritization of improvements. Proper configuration ensures accurate data collection and analysis tailored to organizational needs.

    Application indicators are business metrics that assess the applications across dimensions such as cost, quality, technical risk, investments, user satisfaction, and business value.

    Indicator form fields

    Field Description
    Name Name of the application indicator.
    Unit

    A number, currency, time, duration in minutes, hours, days, month, or quarter, or rate.

    You can also create units according to your requirements.
    Frequency Frequency determines the interval at which the data for the indicator source should be collected.

    The Frequency field isn’t available when Performance Analytics is selected from the Data source list.
    Target maximum Maximum value for the indicator.

    The Target maximum field isn’t available when Assessments is selected from the Data source list.
    Active Select the Active option to enable the indicator.
    CI Class CI type for which the score is generated.
    Direction Business application with maximum or minimum values. Select Minimize if lower values are better. Select Maximize if higher values are better.
    Target minimum Minimum value for the indicator.

    The Target minimum field isn’t available when Assessments is selected from the Data source list.
    Consider Absolute Values Option to consider values from the Target maximum and Target minimum fields.

    This field is available only when values are entered in the Target maximum and Target minimum fields.

    When the check box is cleared, values for target maximum and target minimum are considered based on the intelligent logic.
    Short description Short summary of the application indicator.
    Table 1. Datasource Configuration section fields
    Field Description
    Default breakdown Name of the Performance Analytics breakdown.
    Data source

    Defines the location from which the indicator receives data.

    • Performance Analytics: Collects scores from indicators created in Performance Analytics. See Performance Analytics indicators.
    • Custom Script: Allows you to write a script that collects data from another application.
    • Query Condition: Allows you to select a table to run filters on to obtain data.
    • Assessments: Allows you to evaluate, score, and rank records by assessing records in a table. See Create metric types and generate assessable records. To view results of survey assessments within APM, see Generate survey assessments and view results within APM.
    • Indicators: Allows you to add dependent child indicators. Through the child indicators, data is gathered to the parent indicator.

      For example, if the parent indicator is number of issues, the dependent indicators can be number of incident counts, number of problems, and changes. These dependent indicators are child indicators and the number of incidents, problems, and changes recorded are consolidated up to the parent indicator as the number of issues.
    Indicator The Indicator field appears when Performance Analytics is selected from the Data source list.

    Indicators are statistics that are used to measure current conditions and forecast trends.

    Note:
    If the collection frequency of the application indicator isn’t greater than the frequency at which the data of the Performance Analytic indicator is generated, then the system displays an error message: Frequency of the indicator must always be greater than or equal to the frequency of the datasource configuration indicator. For more information, see Collection of PA indicator score data.
    Consolidation Computational method for aggregating the values, a function such as sum, average, maximum, or minimum.

    Default is Average. For example, Average is the sum of the monthly values divided by the total number of months in a quarter.

    If you select Maximum or Minimum, then it’s the maximum value or the minimum value of a month in the quarter, respectively.

    If you select Sum, then it’s an aggregate of all monthly values in the quarter.
    Custom script The Custom Script field appears when Custom Script is selected from the Data source list.
    An example custom script is:
    var results = {};
 var applications = [];
 var incidentCount = 0;
 
 var applicationsGr = new GlideRecord("cmdb_ci_business_app");
 applicationsGr.addQuery('active', true);
 applicationsGr.query();
 //for each application get incident count at business service level
 while(applicationsGr.next()) {
    incidentCount = 0;
    
    var gr = new GlideRecord("incident");
    gr.addEncodedQuery("opened_atBETWEEN"  + startDate  + "@" +   endDate);
    gr.addQuery('cmdb_ci_business_app', applicationsGr.getUniqueValue());   
    gr.query();
    
    incidentCount = gr.getRowCount();
    var appInfo = {};
    appInfo.appId = applicationsGr.getUniqueValue();
    appInfo.weight = incidentCount;
    applications.push(appInfo);
    }
 results.applications = applications;
 results;
    Assessment Metric Type Type of metric that is used to assess the indicator.

    Assessment Metric Type field appears when the Data source is Assessments.
    Assessment Metric Category Category of the metric.
    Query table Table from which the queries are filtered.
    Query conditions The conditions based on which the query is filtered.
    Aggregate field The field from the selected table is displayed for the records that match the query conditions.
    Aggregate type Type of aggregation applied for calculation of indicator scores.

    The available options are:

    • Sum
    • Count
    • Avg
    • Min
    • Max
    Group by Categorize the data returned by the query, based on values of a specific field in the query table. For example, if you want to group the data by the life cycle stage status of applications, select Life Cycle Stage.
    Consolidation field The field from the query table on which the computational method for aggregating the values is applied.