Proactive analytics insights on dashboards

  • Release version: Xanadu
  • Updated August 1, 2024
  • 5 minutes to read
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    Summary of Proactive analytics insights on dashboards

    Proactive analytics automates insight extraction from your Performance Analytics indicators, delivering notifications directly on Platform Analytics dashboards about notable changes and events in your processes. This feature helps ServiceNow customers monitor key performance indicators (KPIs) to detect trends, threshold breaches, and potential process bottlenecks, enabling timely decision-making and process optimization.

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    To use Proactive analytics, you must have Performance Analytics indicators configured and an active Performance Analytics subscription. Insights appear exclusively on Platform Analytics dashboards, including technical dashboards, but not on responsive dashboards or those migrated in compatibility mode.

    Types of Insights Available

    • Trends: Alert when an indicator trends opposite to its set goal (maximize or minimize).
    • Indicator Target or Threshold Events: Notifications when targets are missed, likely to be missed (predictive), thresholds breached, or likely to be breached. All-time highs or lows are specifically noted.
    • Process Mining Insights: Detects potential bottlenecks in process flows related to indicators and suggests Process Mining projects to improve processes. Requires the snprocessoptimizationanalyst role and the DA Process Mining Insights plugin.
    • KPI Signals Events: Uses statistical Process Behavior Charts to identify significant process changes such as outliers, short runs, long runs, and stable periods ("anti-signals"). KPI Signals must be activated for the indicator to generate these insights.
    • Key Contributor Guidance: Identifies factors contributing to indicator changes using KPI Signals configurations internally, without requiring KPI Signals activation on the indicator. Note that modifying data collection jobs can cause inconsistencies, which require manual correction in the PA Correlation Analyzer State table.
    • Custom Insights: Some dashboards may include custom insights specific to Platform Analytics Solutions or other applications.

    Using and Managing Insights

    • Viewing Insights: Click the Insights button on the dashboard to see insight cards grouped by event type. Cards remain visible for 30 days and provide direct links to relevant pages for follow-up actions.
    • Notification on Visualizations: When enabled, visualizations show notification icons if related indicators have insights. Insights can be accessed from the visualization’s More actions menu.
    • Grouped Insight Cards: Multiple insights of the same type aggregate into single cards, extended up to 14 days. Combined trend and target/threshold insights appear together without separate trend cards.
    • Configuration: Enable or disable Proactive analytics and select insight card types via dashboard settings.

    Limitations and Requirements

    • Proactive analytics applies only to Performance Analytics indicators.
    • Target and threshold insights require configured targets or thresholds on the indicator.
    • KPI Signals insights require KPI Signals to be activated for the indicator.
    • Key contributor guidance is available only for indicators with a daily data frequency and does not require KPI Signals activation.

    Practical Benefits for ServiceNow Customers

    This feature enables proactive monitoring by automatically surfacing significant events and trends related to KPIs without manual analysis. It supports faster identification of issues and opportunities for process improvement, enhancing operational efficiency and decision-making. Integration with Process Mining and KPI Signals further enriches analytical depth for IT process owners and analysts.

    Proactive analytics automates the extraction of insights from your Performance Analytics indicators. Receive notifications on your Platform Analytics dashboards of potentially interesting changes and events in your processes.

    Note:
    • Proactive insights are a utility for use with Performance Analytics indicators on Platform Analytics dashboards. To benefit from this feature, you need to have indicators set up. These can be indicators you created yourself or indicators that are included in Platform Analytics Solutions. For more information, see Performance Analytics (Indicator data sources).
    • You must have an active subscription to Performance Analytics to have Proactive analytics. For more information, see Activating your Performance Analytics subscription.
    • To activate or deactivate Proactive analytics and select which types of insight cards to show, open the dashboard settings. For more information, see Configure Platform Analytics dashboard settings.
      Insights settings on a dashboard.
    • Proactive analytics are available only on Platform Analytics dashboards, including technical dashboards. They are not available on responsive dashboards, including responsive dashboards that have been migrated to Platform Analytics in compatibility mode.

    Types of insights/analytics

    Proactive analytics consists of insight cards on your Platform Analytics dashboards. The system checks your indicators daily and generates insights cards for the following events:
    Trends
    If an indicator is set to maximize or minimize but is trending in the opposite direction, an insight card is generated.
    Indicator target or threshold event
    An insight card is created for the following events:
    • The target on a Performance Analytics indicator (KPI) is missed.
    • The target on an indicator is likely to be missed (Predictive target).
    • The threshold of an indicator is breached. If the breach is an all-time high or low, this fact is mentioned.
    • The threshold of an indicator is likely to be breached (Predictive threshold).

    For information about setting targets and thresholds on an indicator, see Performance Analytics targets and thresholds. You can also set targets and thresholds in a KPI Details page.

    Process mining
    If you are using Process Mining, an insight card can be generated for any potential bottleneck in the process flows related to the indicator. These insights are intended to help IT process owners. You can also receive suggestions for Process Mining projects to create, and such projects will also generate insights. For more information, see Creating Process Mining projects from Proactive Analytics suggestions.
    Note:
    • The sn_process_optimization_analyst role is necessary to see these insights.
    • Process mining insights are included in the DA Process Mining Insights plugin.
    KPI Signals event
    A signal as defined in KPI Signals is generated. KPI Signals uses standard statistical Process Behavior Charts to identify significant changes in processes. The following signals generate Insights cards:
    • Outlier: A score beyond the three standard deviation (3-sigma) upper or lower limit.
    • Short run: Four consecutive scores all greater than or all less than the average value, with three of the scores outside two standard deviations.
    • Long run: Seven consecutive scores all greater than or all less than the average value.
    • "Anti-signal": Informational message that the indicator has been stable for a long time.
    Important:
    KPI Signals must be configured for an indicator to generate KPI Signals events for that indicator. For more information, see Signal, no signal, and anti-signal and Activate KPI Signals monitoring for an indicator (KPI).
    Key contributor guidance
    A key contributor is a breakdown on a Performance Analytics indicator that the system identifies as having a particular impact. The system uses KPI Signals to make this determination, but you do not have to activate KPI Signals for the indicators. The system uses its own KPI Signals configuration.
    Warning:
    Be careful when you modify a Performance Analytics data collection job after the system has started to identify key contributors. You might alter the KPI Signals baseline or the evaluation interval or both. Consequently, you can have inconsistencies in the insights. If you notice such inconsistencies, identify the UUID for the affected indicator-breakdown combination. Then delete the corresponding record from the PA Correlation Analyzer State [pa_correlation_analyzer_state] table. For more information, see KPI Details UUIDs.
    Custom insights
    Some dashboards that are included with Platform Analytics Solutions or other applications might have custom insights. For information about such insights, see the documentation for the relevant Platform Analytics Solution or application.

    Viewing insights cards on dashboards

    To see the insights cards, select the Insights button next to the Edit button. If there are new insights to view, the button is marked by an orange circle.
    The dashboard view insights button.
    A panel opens displaying insights cards. These cards have a lifespan of 30 days. You can scroll through the cards. Insights of the same type are grouped onto a single card.
    The Dashboard Insights panel showing insights cards. These cards show indicators that have missed their targets.
    Each card shows the type of event that has occurred and the event details. Each card also has a button that opens the appropriate page for follow-up, depending on the insight type:
    Insight type Page opened
    Target or threshold KPI Details
    Signal KPI Details with KPI Signals pane open
    Key contributor KPI Details (you have to set the filter on the key contributor manually)
    Process Mining finding Analyst Workbench

    Insights notifications in data visualizations

    If Show notifications on visualizations is toggled on for a dashboard, visualizations on that dashboard will have a notification icon if there are any insights related to the indicators shown in that visualization. You can open the Insights pane from the More actions menu on that visualization.
    Data visualization showing an insight notification and an action under More Actions to open the Insights and suggestions panel.

    Grouped insights cards

    Multiple insights of the same type are aggregated into a single card. If more insights of the type are generated before the card expires (14 days), they are added to the existing card. If a dashboard shows both trend and either target or threshold insights, the trend is shown on any target or threshold insight cards. No separate trend cards are generated in this case.

    Limitations and requirements

    The Xanadu version of Proactive analytics applies only to Performance Analytics indicators.

    Target and threshold events are shown only when a target or threshold has been set on the indicator. For more information, see Performance Analytics targets and thresholds.

    KPI Signals events are shown only for indicators with KPI Signals activated. For more information, see Activate KPI Signals monitoring for an indicator (KPI).

    Key contributor guidance is provided only for Performance Analytics indicators with a daily frequency.

    While key contributor events are also based on KPI Signals, they do not require KPI Signals to be activated on the indicator.