Overview of Instance Observer

  • Release version: Zurich
  • Updated July 31, 2025
  • 4 minutes to read

    • 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
    Instance performance telemetry 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. Instance Observer features by package
    Feature Guided IO features add-on Total IO seats add-on
    5 users 10 users 10 users
    User configurable dashboard

    For more information, see Instance Observer user configurable dashboard.

    		 ✓ ✓
    Performance: KPI visualization

    For more information, see Performance.

    		 ✓ ✓
    Performance: Root cause analysis (Root cause correlation, Root cause summarization, and Root cause remediation) (Generative AI)

    For more information, see Generative AI powered Root cause analysis.

    		 ✓ ✓
    Performance: Anomaly detection (AI)

    For more information, see Anomalies detection

    		 ✓ ✓
    Performance: Lookback date range 45 days 6 months 6 months
    Availability: Instance availability

    For more information, see Instance Availability.

    		 ✓ ✓
    Availability: Known issues ✓ ✓
    Alerts: Alert console

    For more information, see Availability.

    		 ✓ ✓
    Alerts: Configure alerts

    For more information, see Configure Key Alerts.

    		 Starter alert types and conditions All alert types and conditions All alert types and conditions
    Alerts: Configure notifications

    For more information, see Instance Observer Notifications.

    		 ✓ (Email, SMS, ServiceNow, third-party integrations). Unlimited notifications ✓ (Email, SMS, ServiceNow, third-party integrations). Unlimited notifications
    Alerts: Root cause analysis history

    For more information, see Use the Root cause analysis history.

    		 ✓ ✓
    Analytics: Compare datasets ✓ ✓
    Analytics: Top transactions ✓ ✓
    Analytics: Query patterns ✓ ✓
    Analytics: User experience

    For more information, see User Experience.

    		 ✓ ✓
    Triage

    For more information, see Triage a ServiceNow instance.

    		 ✓ (10 per day per user per instance) ✓ (10 per day per user per instance)
    Reports: On demand

    For more information, see Instance performance telemetry reports.

    		 ✓ (Daily Performance Metrics Report, Custom Performance Report, Database Growth Report, Encryption Report) Performance Trends Report ✓ (also get Performance Trends Report)
    Reports: Scheduled ✓ ✓
    Reports: Lookback date range 45 days 6 months 6 months

    To access the Instance Observer page, navigate to Impact > Platform Health > Monitor > Instance Observer.

    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 currently not available in other regulated or on-premise environments.

    Instance Observer is applicable or available for ServiceNow Platform instances only.