Reviewing response time on forms

  • Release version: Xanadu
  • Updated January 30, 2025
  • 2 minutes to read
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    Summary of Reviewing response time on forms

    ServiceNow provides a response time indicator on many forms and lists that displays the processing time for completed transactions, including total time and time spent on each step. This feature helps you monitor and analyze the performance of your forms by showing detailed breakdowns of processing times such as network data transfer, server processing, and browser rendering.

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    Key Features

    • Response Time Indicator: A clock icon appears at the end of forms/lists showing total transaction time. Clicking the icon reveals detailed timing, while hovering provides a tooltip summary.
    • Detailed Breakdown: Time is divided into network transfer, server processing (calculated by subtracting browser and network times from client response time), and browser rendering/execution.
    • Exclusions: Simple operations like paging or sorting, and the first transaction in a session, do not display the response time indicator.
    • Configurable: Administrators can disable the response time indicator by setting the system property glide.ui.responsetime to false in sysproperties.
    • System Logs Review: Response times for various transactions can be reviewed in system logs (via All > System Logs). This helps identify periods of slow performance or specific transactions causing high load.
    • Client Transaction Timings Plugin: Provides enhanced insights by showing detailed timings for client, server, browser, and network, aiding in pinpointing the root cause of performance issues.

    Practical Use and Benefits

    By using the response time indicator and system logs, ServiceNow customers can quickly identify and diagnose performance bottlenecks on forms and lists. This allows for targeted troubleshooting, such as detecting heavy database loads or slow rendering processes. Disabling the indicator is straightforward if it is not needed. Additionally, the Client Transaction Timings plugin offers deeper visibility into transaction performance, supporting more effective optimization efforts.

    A response time indicator (clock) appears at the end of many forms and lists.

    This indicator provides the processing time for a completed transaction, including the total time and the time for each step. Select the icon to show and hide the response time details. Hover over the icon to see a tooltip with the details. The following example shows the response time for retrieving a filtered list in a demo instance.

    Figure 1. Response time
    Response time (ms): 3326, network: 75, server: 1963, browser: 1288
    In this example, the transaction took the following amount of processing time:
    • 3326 milliseconds total time
    • 75 milliseconds moving data across the network
    • 1963 milliseconds on the server
      Note:
      Server time is calculated using the following formula:
      server time = (client response time - browser time - client network time)
    • 1288 milliseconds in the browser, rendering the HTML and parsing and executing JavaScript

    A response time indicator doesn’t appear for simple operations, such as paging or changing a list sort order. The response time indicator also doesn't appear for the first transaction in a session.

    To view a detailed breakdown of the processing time on forms, select the response time indicator icon.

    Figure 2. Response time details
    Response statistics

    Administrators can disable the response time by setting the glide.ui.response_time property to false in the System Properties [sys_properties] table. In the navigation filter, enter sys_properties.list and search for glide.ui.response_time.

    Reviewing response times from system logs

    You can use the system logs to review a list of response times for different transactions. To view the log, navigating to All > System Logs and select the relevant log type. When you review response times, look for the following issues.
    1. A period where all transactions took an unusually long time. For example, transactions that normally took 1 second took 15 seconds between 11:00 AM and 11:20 AM. This issue can indicate that an unusual load, such as a large report, ran on that app server during that time.
    2. A specific transaction which repeatedly took an unusually long time. For example, the list of closed incidents sorted by short description took 30 seconds each time it was displayed. This issue can indicate that a particular transaction put an unusual database load on the system, such as sorting 500,000 records on an unindexed field.

    If you notice issues with form response times, see Improving response times on forms.

    Client transaction timings

    The Client Transaction Timings plugin provides extra information about the time spent on both the client and server sides, by the browser and the network. This feature not only helps find long-running processes, but also provides information about where in the process the performance issue is caused.

    For more information, see Client transaction timings.