Impact Instance Observer

  • Release version: Yokohama
  • Updated January 30, 2025
  • 3 minutes to read
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    Summary of Impact Instance Observer

    Impact Instance Observer (IO) is a cloud-based observability and performance monitoring tool designed to help ServiceNow customers monitor their instance health and performance in near real-time, with access to historical data. It is aimed at Instance administrators, Platform Owners, and DevOps teams to increase visibility, accelerate troubleshooting, and improve overall instance uptime and reliability. IO enables proactive management across multiple instances, helping organizations prevent end-user impact and drive faster, more confident innovation.

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    Key Features

    • 24/7 Monitoring and Alerting: Continuous instance performance monitoring with customizable alerts to notify teams before issues become critical.
    • Multi-instance Visualization: View performance telemetry across multiple instances to identify trends and potential issues proactively.
    • Triage and Troubleshooting: Access actionable point-in-time instance metadata that accelerates root cause analysis and issue resolution.
    • Off-Instance Access: IO is an off-instance, cloud-based application allowing access to performance data independently of instance availability.
    • Reporting and Analytics: Generate performance reports for stakeholders, compare metrics over time, and assess the impact of changes to optimize instance performance.
    • User-configurable Dashboard: Provides a snapshot of overall instance health and detailed drill-downs with recommended troubleshooting steps.

    Key Benefits

    • Improved Instance Performance: Real-time monitoring helps quickly detect and resolve performance issues before they affect end users.
    • Increased Uptime: Proactive alerts enable early intervention to avoid downtime.
    • Enhanced Troubleshooting Efficiency: Access to detailed metadata reduces time to identify and resolve issues.
    • Reduced Operational Distractions: Near real-time data availability allows teams to focus on driving business outcomes rather than searching for information.
    • Multi-instance Management: Visibility across multiple instances from a single interface supports better operational oversight.

    Feature Availability and Support

    IO features vary depending on the Impact package subscribed to:

    • Guided Package: Includes instance availability status, performance visualization, alerts (six predefined), and basic reporting with 45 days data retention.
    • Advanced Package: Adds full reporting capabilities and extended data retention (6 months).
    • Total Package: Offers full analytics, anomaly detection, comprehensive reporting, and 6 months data retention.

    Note that Instance Observer is accessible via web browsers but is not available on the ServiceNow mobile app. It supports customers in Commercial and Government Community Cloud (GCC) environments, but is not available in other regulated or on-premise environments.

    Instance Observer (IO) is an observability and performance monitoring tool that empowers you to track your instance health and performance in near real-time, while also providing historical insights.

    IO helps Instance administrators, Platform Owners, and DevOps teams accelerate value and drive their desired business outcomes by increasing visibility into instance performance, helping customers push innovation with speed and confidence.

    Features and Benefits

    Key features
    • 24/7 Monitoring: Instance performance monitoring provides awareness of issues within an instance before end users  are impacted.
    • 24/7 Alerting: Set up custom alerts to notify you when specific thresholds are crossed, so you can act before an issue becomes critical.
    • Multi-instance Availability: Proactively visualize performance  telemetry across instances. Empowering  organizations to identify trends before  end users are impacted.
    • Triage: Actionable point-in-time  instance metadata providing additional  context to instance performance and accelerating troubleshooting.
    • Off Instance Application: Access to instance performance  telemetry off instance. When an  issue does arise, organizations can  access actionable data independent of  instance availability.
    • Reporting: Visualize instance performance  telemetry over time and quickly generate reports to share with your business stakeholders, enabling organizations to manage instance performance faster, smarter, and better.
    • Analytics: Compare metrics over time to see how performance is trending in general or to assess the before and after impacts of certain changes.
    Key Benefits
    • 24/7 availability: Instance Observer is an off-instance, cloud-based application enabling customers to visualize instance telemetry across instances in a single application.
    • Improve Instance performance: By monitoring instance performance metrics in real time, you can quickly identify and resolve issues that might be causing poor performance impacting end users.
    • Increase uptime: Proactive monitoring through Instance Observer alerting you can be notified of potential issues before they cause downtime, enabling you to act before it affects your users.
    • Improve troubleshooting: When issues do arise, have actionable point-in-time metadata accelerating root cause analysis and time to relief.
    • Remove distractions: With near real-time data at your fingertips, you and your team can spend less time trying to find the information you need and more time driving your desired business outcomes
    Note:
    Instance Observer is not available with ServiceNow® mobile, however, may be accessed with a browser on your mobile device.

    Instance Observer features

    Table 1. Feature and description
    Feature Description
    Instance Observer user configurable dashboard Provides a snapshot of the overall health of your instance.
    Performance Overviews Instance Health and Performance Metrics, and enables drill down into specific datasets with recommended troubleshooting.
    Availability View live Instance Availability status tied to ServiceNow  monitoring— Up/Down Status
    Key alerts – activation and notifications Flexibility to set alerts with thresholds specific to your business needs, and configure who on your team receives notifications and the method.
    Analytics View comparisons for performance of key metrics over time.
    Triaged instance data Point-in-time instance snapshot providing metadata to troubleshoot live issues
    Reports Quickly generate reports to download and share with your team business stakeholders.​
    Help Get assistance with Instance Observer tools, terminology review, how-to videos, and relevant documents.

    Support matrix according to Impact package

    Some Instance Observer reporting features vary between the Impact packages that you’re subscribed to. Reference the support matrix chart or contact your account team for more information.

    • ✓ = Supported
    • X = Not supported
    Table 2. Feature and supported Impact package
    Feature Guided Advanced Total
    Instance availability (Up/Down status)

    See Availability for details.

    Performance Visualization Charts (KPIs)

    See Performance for more details.

    Reporting

    See Reports for details.

    Selective Full Full
    Alerts

    See Alerts in Instance Observer for details.

    Note:
    Six alerts are available. For more information, see Track instance performance with the top six timely alerts – Guided users.
    Analytics

    See Analytics for details.

    X X
    Anomalies Detection X X
    Data retention 45 days 6 months 6 months
    Note:
    For more information on subscription support, see Impact packages.

    Serviceability limitations

    Note:
    Instance Observer is available for customers in Commercial and Government Community Cloud (GCC) environments. IO is not currently available in other regulated or on-premise environments.