Processing activity overview page

Release version: Zurich

Updated March 12, 2026

2 minutes to read

Summarize

Summarized using AI

Summary of Processing activity overview page

The processing activity overview page in ServiceNow provides a comprehensive view of the privacy risk and compliance posture for data processing activities. It offers detailed insights such as compliance scores, criticality scores, risk postures, heatmaps, assessment statuses, issues, policy exceptions, and control assurance information. The page is designed with a vertical layout that presents the data processing lifecycle in a clear, sequential manner, enabling users to trace the flow of personal data through each step of the workflow. This structured visualization enhances usability, supports streamlined navigation, and improves compliance oversight.

Show full answer Show less

Required Roles

To access this overview page, users must have the snprivacy.manager and snprivacy.analyst roles.

Use Cases

Privacy managers and privacy analysts utilize this page to monitor and understand the privacy compliance posture of processing activities within the organization.

Key Features

State: Displays the current workflow state of the processing activity, such as New, Discover, Review, Monitor, and Retired.
Compliance Overview: Shows compliance score percentages, changes over time, criticality scores reflecting regulatory risk, and compliance status for controls by authority documents or policies with toggle views.
Risk Overview: Presents the residual risk score, inherent risk level, and control effectiveness. Includes a risk heatmap that distributes processing activities based on risk and control effectiveness, with filter options by risk classification.
Assessments: Tracks the number and status of risk and privacy assessments, including open, overdue, and upcoming due dates. Filters are available by assessment templates.
Priority Tracking: Monitors issues and policy exceptions by priority or risk rating, highlighting counts of open, overdue, and soon due items.
Control Assurance: Displays the state distribution of controls, as well as the status of attestations and indicators, including open, overdue, failed, and recent activities within the last six months.

The processing activity overview page provides the privacy risk and compliance posture for a processing activity. This page contains details, such as compliance score, criticality score, risk posture and heatmap, privacy and risk assessment status, issues and policy exceptions, and control assurance status.

The vertical layout of a processing activity provides a structured, top-down view that presents information in a clear and sequential manner. This design facilitates an intuitive understanding of the data processing lifecycle by visually representing each step of the workflow in a linear progression. You can easily trace the flow of information from initiation through to completion, enabling better insight into how personal data is collected, used, shared, and retained. This layout supports streamlined navigation and improves the ability to identify key elements and dependencies within the processing activity, enhancing both usability and compliance oversight.

Overview of the reports on a processing activity in Privacy management. — Figure 1. Processing activity overview page

Required roles

To view the home page, you must have sn_privacy.manager and the sn_privacy.analyst roles.

Use cases

For examples of how different people in your organization would use this home page, see the following use cases.


User	Dashboard use
Privacy manager and Privacy analyst	The privacy manager and the privacy analyst can view and understand the privacy compliance posture of the given processing activity.

Reports in a processing activity overview

The processing activity overview page is organized into six sections.

Table 1. State
Title	Description
State	Current state of the processing activity in the workflow: New, Discover, Review, Monitor, and Retired.

Table 2. Compliance overview
Title	Description
Compliance score	Compliance score percentage of the processing activity and the change since the last period.
Criticality score	Regulatory risk level of the processing activity.
Compliance status	Number of compliant and non-compliant controls for each applicable authority document or policy. Toggle between Authority documents and Policies to switch views.

Table 3. Risk overview
Title	Description
Risk posture	Residual risk score of the processing activity, along with the inherent risk level and control effectiveness.
Risk heatmap	Distribution of processing activities by residual/inherent risk and control effectiveness levels. You can filter by risk classification.

Table 4. Assessments
Title	Description
Risk assessments	Number of risk assessments by state, including counts for open, overdue, and due in 7 days. You can filter by RAM template.
Privacy assessments	Number of privacy assessments by state, including counts for open, overdue, and due in 7 days. You can filter by available assessment templates.

Table 5. Priority tracking
Title	Description
Issues	Number of issues by priority, including counts for open, overdue, and due in 7 days.
Policy exceptions	Number of policy exceptions by risk rating, with counts for open, overdue, and due in 7 days.

Table 6. Control assurance
Title	Description
Controls	Distribution of controls by state.
Attestations	Number of attestations that are open, overdue, and due in 7 days.
Indicators	Number of indicators that are open, overdue, and failed in the last 6 months.