Instance performance telemetry reports

  • Release version: Australia
  • Updated March 12, 2026
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    Summary of Instance performance telemetry reports

    Instance performance telemetry reports enable ServiceNow customers to quickly generate detailed insights into their instance health, performance trends, and database growth. These reports help organizations become faster, smarter, and more effective in managing instance performance by visualizing telemetry data over time and facilitating easy sharing with stakeholders.

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    Key Features

    • Report Generation: Users can generate customizable reports by selecting the report type, instance, and date range via Instance Observer > Reports. Reports can be downloaded or scheduled for periodic execution.
    • Report Types:
      • Daily Performance Metrics Report: Provides six sub-reports showing daily snapshots of instance health such as platform health, health indicators, top slow transactions/queries, long-running jobs, and critical support cases.
      • Performance Trend Report: Offers detailed views on metrics like transaction times, database response, semaphore depth, event queues, jobs, memory, and user sessions.
      • Custom Performance Report: Allows selection of 1 to 20 metrics from over 90 available, enabling tailored performance insights with various visualizations. Reports can be exported via email, CSV, or PDF.
      • Database Growth Report: Tracks database size changes over time including primary database size, shard-inclusive size, and top 20 tables by size with growth rates.
    • Support Matrix: Reporting features vary by Impact package subscription level (Guided, Advanced, Total) with differences in report availability and data retention (45 days to 6 months).
    • Help and Metrics Access: Additional report information and metrics definitions are accessible through the Help > Metrics menu.

    Practical Benefits for ServiceNow Customers

    • Gain timely visibility into daily instance health and performance anomalies using threshold-based, color-coded indicators.
    • Identify and analyze top resource-consuming transactions, queries, and jobs to optimize system performance.
    • Understand database growth trends and manage capacity proactively.
    • Customize reports to match specific business needs, selecting relevant performance metrics to monitor.
    • Share actionable performance data easily with technical teams and business stakeholders through downloadable and schedulable reports.
    • Leverage subscription-level features aligned with organizational requirements and scale.

    Quickly generate reports to download and share with your business stakeholders, making  organizations faster, smarter, and better in their  instance performance management.

    Visualize instance performance  telemetry over time and quickly generate reports to share with your team and business stakeholders.

    Run a report on any instance to generate a downloadable summary on daily instance health, performance trend or database growth.

    Report options

    Tailor various reports specific to your business needs with a few steps.

    Navigate to Instance Observer > Reports. Select the Report Type, the Instance, and the Date Range for the report.

    Select Generate report and the report renders. On the report page, you have the option to download the report or to schedule the report to be run periodically.

    Report types.

    For additional information about a report, select Help > Metrics from the main menu and select the option from the right-hand menu.

    Support matrix per Impact package

    Some Instance Observer reporting features vary between the Impact package that you are subscribed to. Reference the support matrix for details.

    • ✓ = Supported
    • X = Not supported
    Table 1. Performance reports support matrix
    Guided Advanced Total
    Daily Performance Metrics report
    Performance Trend report X
    Database Growth report
    Data retention 45 days 6 months 6 months
    Self Service Alerts X
    Note:
    For more information on subscription support, see .

    Daily Performance Metrics Report

    There are six daily performance metrics sub-reports that are available that show a current snapshot of the health of the instance.

    Table 2. Sub-report and description
    Report Description
    ServiceNow Platform Health
    • Reflects node availability, response, and lag times.
    • Compares availability and anomalies from today and the last 30 days.
    • Reports are based on the system thresholds that are set in the system and color codes the anomalies accordingly, with Green, Yellow, or Red.
    Health Indicator
    • Displays number of slow transactions, queries, and long running jobs.
    • Compares the counts between today, yesterday, and the last 30 day average.
    • Reports are based on the system thresholds that are set in the system and color codes the counts accordingly, with Green, Yellow, or Red.
    Top 10 Slow Transactions
    • Finds the most executed transactions by total execution time and then takes the top 10 transactions that incur the highest average execution time.
    • Results list the instance page along with the average and total execution times, and the total count the page was executed.
    Note:
    Top 10 Slow Transactions is not available for Guided Impact customers in sub‑production instances.
    Top 10 Slow Queries
    • Finds the most executed queries by total execution time and then takes the top 10 queries that incur the highest average execution time.
    • Results list the query along with the average and total execution times, and the total count the query was executed.
    Note:
    Top 10 Slow Queries is not supported for Guided Impact customers in sub-production instances.
    Top 10 Long Running Jobs
    • Finds jobs that are incurring highest duration in minutes.
    • Results list the job name, node, worker, and the duration.
    Critical Support Cases
    • Lists the total number of severity 1 and 2 support cases in the report header.
    • Provides case numbers as links, the area, priority, and state, along with tracking who opened the issue.

    Performance Trend Report

    Drill into additional detail on selected performance metrics.

    The following report options are available in regards to system performance:
    • Transaction/Report Times
    • Database response
    • Semaphore depth
    • Event queues
    • Jobs recurring and running
    • Memory
    • User session summaries

    Custom Performance Report

    Generate Custom Performance report selecting a maximum of 20 metrics and a minimum of one metric from a wide range of 90 metrics available across the application. This report is almost the same as Performance Trend report, however offers you the flexibility to choose more metrics from the performance categories in the Performance page and build a dynamic report.

    To configure the Custom Performance Report:

    1. Navigate to the Instance Observer Dashboard page.
    2. Select the Reports tab and click On Demand Reports from the list.
    3. Select the Instance for which you want to run the report.
    4. From the list of report types, select Custom Performance Report.
    5. Select the time frame for the report's duration in the Date Range field.
    6. To add metrics from all the available metrics in the application, select All.
    7. To add metrics from the categories available in the Performance page, select the specific category from the list.
    8. Select Clear selection to remove any previous selected metric from the list.

      The selected metrics from the Available performance metrics column appear in the Selected performance metrics column on the right.

    9. Select Generate Report.

    Custom performance report offers more metrics to measure performance.

    Each metric render a different visualization, where many of them are based on time series rendering as charts, while some of them are tables where the key performance indicators are aggregated in a tabular format.

    You have the flexibility to build the report in any order that you prefer. Once the report is ready, you can email it, set as CSV file, or generate a PDF.

    Database Growth Report

    There are several database growth reports that are available that show how the instance database has increased over a selected date range.
    Note:
    Guided customers may select a range of up to 45 days.
    Table 3. Database report and description
    Report Description
    Primary Database Various metrics on how the database has either grown or decreased over the selected time frame. Total DBI size based on the sum of all tables, calculated every 4 hours.
    Database by Size (Including Shards) Various metrics on how the database has either grown or decreased over the selected, including shards. Total DBI Size align with primary shards, this is calculated every 4 hours and can be used to visualize database growth over time.
    Top 20 Tables (By Size) Lists table name, size (GB), 1 day growth and rate, and the 7 day growth rate.