Navigating breakdown elements with breakdown relations

  • Release version: Zurich
  • Updated July 31, 2025
  • 2 minutes to read
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    Summary of Navigating breakdown elements with breakdown relations

    Breakdown relations in Platform Analytics enable navigation between hierarchical breakdown elements within a single breakdown or between two related breakdowns. This functionality is specifically supported on indicator scorecards and requires the latest Data Visualizations application from the ServiceNow® Store. Breakdown relations enhance user experience by allowing Analytics Hub viewers to move seamlessly between parent, child, or sibling elements in breakdown hierarchies, such as navigating from a country to its cities and vice versa.

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    Key Features

    • Hierarchical Navigation: Supports moving between elements within the same breakdown based on parent-child relationships (e.g., Location breakdown with country and city).
    • Breakdown-to-Breakdown Relations: Enables navigation across two different but related breakdowns by mapping filter sources to scorecard breakdowns, allowing display of related elements at the same hierarchy level.
    • Dashboard Integration: Works with filters and indicator scorecards on Next Experience dashboards, where filters correspond to the breakdown source tables and scorecards show related breakdown elements.
    • Core UI Support: Breakdown widgets in Core UI can display parent, child, or sibling elements based on selected breakdown elements, facilitating intuitive navigation on breakdown dashboards.
    • Configuration Requirements: Requires a field in breakdown records to define hierarchical relationships for single breakdown navigation, or a reference table linking two breakdowns for breakdown-to-breakdown relations.

    Practical Application for ServiceNow Customers

    ServiceNow customers using Platform Analytics can leverage breakdown relations to create richer, more interactive dashboards and scorecards. By setting up hierarchical or related breakdown navigation, customers can enable users to drill down into detailed data or move across related data sets effortlessly. This improves data exploration and insight discovery in indicator scorecards and breakdown widgets.

    To implement, customers must ensure:

    • The latest Data Visualizations application is installed.
    • Breakdown records include fields defining hierarchical relationships or appropriate reference tables exist for related breakdowns.
    • Dashboard filters are properly configured to match breakdown sources for effective navigation.

    These capabilities are currently limited to indicator scorecards and are not supported in other Platform Analytics features.

    Breakdown relations open a new navigation path for viewing breakdown scores, by moving from one breakdown element to another element of the same breakdown. The elements should be in an hierarchical relationship.

    Important:
    Platform Analytics features other than indicator scorecards do not support breakdown relations.

    You can use breakdown relations to navigate between the elements of a single breakdown that are in a hierarchical relationship. For example, the Location breakdown has a hierarchy of 'parent' and 'child' elements, where a country can be the parent of cities. Breakdown relations let an Analytics Hub viewer navigate from a country down into a city, from a city to the country, or between cities in the same country.

    In Platform Analytics, breakdown relations can be applied only on indicator scorecards. The latest version of the Data Visualizations application from the ServiceNow® Store is required. In the Core UI, breakdown relations affect navigation on the Analytics Hub and in breakdown widgets.

    Breakdown relations on Next Experience dashboards

    An indicator scorecard on a Next Experience dashboard can show hierarchical or breakdown-to-breakdown relations. You must pair the indicator scorecard with a filter on the dashboard. The filter source is the table that is the breakdown source, and the filter applies to indicators with that breakdown. The filter acts as the source, and the scorecard breakdown acts as the target. The relation record defines how these two are connected. Within that connection, the breakdown elements from the filter are mapped to fields on the target scorecard's breakdown elements. That mapping is what the breakdown relation record defines. In short: filter → breakdown relation → scorecard breakdown, with element-level field mappings in between.

    For a hierarchy of elements on the same breakdown, the filter source must be the same as the breakdown source. For example, if the indicator scorecard shows indicators with the Assignment Group breakdown, the dashboard filter must filter on the Group table. It also must filter indicators with the Assignment Group breakdown.

    Figure 1. Indicator scorecard showing hierarchical relations
    Dashboard using an Assignment Group filter and an Indicator scorecard with the Assignment group breakdown to show the difference when breakdown relations are followed and between sibling and parent relations.
    Breakdown-to-breakdown relations define different primary and related breakdowns. To show such a relation on a Platform Analytics dashboard, the indicator scorecard uses the related breakdown. The filter is based on the primary breakdown, so is identical to what you create for a hierarchical relation. For example, you can filter on the Hardware assignment group and configure the indicator scorecard to use the Assigned To breakdown. As a result, the indicator scorecard shows the members of the Hardware group.
    Dashboard using an assignment group filter to show the members of an assignment group in an indicator scorecard with the Assigned To breakdown.

    Breakdown relations in Core UI breakdown widgets

    A Core UI breakdown widget can show the parent, child, or sibling elements of the element that was chosen for the breakdown dashboard. For more information about using breakdown relations on breakdown dashboards, see Showing breakdown relations on dashboards.
    Figure 2. Breakdown dashboard displaying children of the EMEA element
    A breakdown dashboard with a breakdown widget showing the child elements of the EMEA element