Analyzing idea metrics using Idea Manager dashboard

  • Release version: Zurich
  • Updated July 31, 2025
  • 3 minutes to read
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    Summary of Analyzing idea metrics using Idea Manager dashboard

    The Idea Manager dashboard in ServiceNow’s Project Portfolio Management (PPM) enables you to review, analyze, and manage ideas effectively by providing a comprehensive summary of idea metrics and trends. It tracks ideas across different states, their age, categories, and conversion into work entities such as demands or projects. The dashboard leverages Performance Analytics to present historical trends and regular reports, helping idea managers and users with read-only PPM roles monitor idea progress and make informed decisions.

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    Key Features

    • Access and Roles: Available in the Next experience UI Framework (version 2.0.0+), accessible via Analytics → Idea Manager. Idea Managers require the ideamanager role, and read-only users need snppmread to view the dashboard.
    • Data Scope: Displays ideas related to PPM with assigned categories, excluding ideas marked for deletion. By default, it shows one year of data, with interactive filters for monthly, quarterly, or yearly views.
    • Drill-down Capability: Users can drill down on dashboard indicators to view detailed idea records in the Idea Portal through the Analytics Hub, enabling deeper analysis of specific idea states or votes.
    • Key Indicators:
      • Open Ideas: Count of ideas in Submitted, Need More Information, or Under Review states for the current month.
      • Average Age of Open Ideas: Average duration (in days) that ideas remain open in specified states.
      • Ideas Converted: Number and percentage of ideas converted into work entities like demand, project, story, or epic.
      • Ideas Count by State: Counts of ideas in various states with time-based aggregations (week, month, quarter, year).
    • Data Visualizations:
      • Pie charts showing distribution of ideas by state and those converted into work entities.
      • Horizontal bar charts displaying top 10 ideas by votes and top 10 idea creators by submission count.
      • Line chart illustrating monthly trends of ideas submitted by category.
      • Horizontal bar chart of top 10 categories by number of ideas submitted.

    Practical Benefits

    ServiceNow customers using the Idea Manager dashboard can expect to gain clear visibility into the lifecycle and health of ideas within their PPM environment. This enables proactive management of idea pipelines, identification of popular or high-potential ideas through voting and creator activity, and tracking of conversion rates to actual work efforts. The dashboard’s detailed metrics and interactive filters support data-driven decision making and effective prioritization of innovation initiatives.

    Review, analyze, and manage your ideas effectively by using the Idea Dashboard manager.

    The Idea Manager dashboard provides summary of idea metrics and trends such as ideas in different states, age of ideas, categories, and ideas converted to different work entities.

    Note:
    Starting with version 2.0.0, the Idea Manager dashboard is available in the Next experience UI Framework which can be accessed from Analytics Idea Manager. The Ideas pane in Analysis tab is not supported in the Next experience.

    Idea Manager dashboard in Next experience UI

    The Idea Manager dashboard provides comprehensive reports to the idea manager and users with read-only roles for ppm (sn_ppm_read). The dashboard uses Performance Analytics to provide a trend of historical data as well as regular reports. It provides you an overview of ideas, number of ideas converted into work entities, and trends based on categories, idea submitters, and votes. It helps you to review and analyze ideas and enables you to take required actions for managing your ideas effectively.

    Animated tour of the Idea Manager Dashboard in Next experience UI

    End user and roles

    End user and goal Required role
    Idea Manager - Needs visibility into ideas in different states, number of ideas created, and age of ideas. idea_manager
    Read only roles for PPM - Needs visibility into ideas in different states, number of ideas created, and age of ideas. sn_ppm_read

    Use case

    The dashboard displays ideas related to Project Portfolio Management.

    Only ideas associated with categories are displayed in the dashboard. Ideas marked for deletion are not displayed. By default, the dashboard displays one-year data. Use the interactive date filter to view monthly, quarterly, or yearly data.

    You can drill down within an idea indicator data for further analysis by navigating to Idea Portal from the dashboard. For example, to view individual records of Open ideas in the Idea Portal, click the Open ideas indicator value to open the Analytics Hub. In the Analytics Hub, click Show Records to view the list of open ideas, open an idea in the form view, and then click the Idea Portal related link to view the idea record in the Idea Portal.

    Indicators

    The Summary and Analysis tabs in the dashboard contain the following indicators. The data for ideas is collected from the [idea] table.
    Open Ideas
    Count of the ideas that are in Submitted, Need more information, or Under Review state for the current month.
    Average Age of Open Ideas
    The average age of ideas that are in Submitted, Need more information, or Under Review state since their creation, in days, as calculated by the formula [[PPM:Total Age of Open Ideas]]/[[PPM:Open Ideas]]/24.
    Ideas Converted
    Count of ideas converted into different work entities such as demand, project, story, or epic based on other plugins.
    % of Ideas Converted
    The percentage of ideas converted into different work entities such as demand, project, story, or epic based on other plugins, as calculated by the formula [[PPM:Ideas Converted]/[PPM:Active Ideas]] *100.
    Ideas
    Count of ideas that are in different states. You can view the count of ideas, in different states, created in week, month, quarter, and year.
    Active Ideas
    Count of ideas in Submitted, Need more information, Under review, in backlog, planned and in development state. This indicator is not displayed in dashboard but is used in formula.
    Total Age of Open Ideas
    Total number of days an idea is in state Submitted, Need more information, and Under review before conversion to a work entity. This indicator is not displayed in dashboard but is used in formula.

    Breakdowns

    • PPM - Idea Category
    • PPM - Idea State

    Data visualizations

    The dashboard includes the following visualizations:
    Title Type Description
    Ideas by state Pie chart Pie chart Breakdown of the number of ideas in each of the different states.
    Ideas converted Pie chart Pie chart Breakdown of the number of ideas converted into work entities such as demand and project.
    Top 10 ideas by votes Horizontal bar chart Horizontal bar chart Top 10 ideas based on the total number of up-votes.
    Top 10 idea creators Horizontal bar chart Horizontal bar chart Top 10 users based on the number of ideas submitted.
    Ideas trended by categories Line chart Line chart Trend of the total number of ideas submitted under various categories. The trend is displayed on a monthly basis.
    Top 10 categories by ideas Horizontal bar chart Horizontal bar chart Top 10 categories based on the number of ideas submitted under each category.