Domain separation and Performance Analytics

  • Release version: Zurich
  • Updated July 31, 2025
  • 2 minutes to read
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    Summary of Domain separation and Performance Analytics

    Domain separation in Performance Analytics allows ServiceNow customers to segment data, processes, and administrative tasks into logical domains. This separation controls user access and visibility, ensuring that users only see data relevant to their domains. Performance Analytics supports collecting and managing scores from multiple domains and enables domain-specific administration, which is particularly useful in multi-tenant or shared environments.

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    This feature is available in a fully enabled subscription version of Performance Analytics and requires the Domain Support — Domain Extension Installer plugin. Customers with complex domain requirements can leverage extended domain separation functionality designed for hierarchical and aggregate score management.

    Key Features

    • Multiple Approaches to Domain Separation:
      • Global: Performance Analytics records are global, but score collection respects domain visibility. This is the most common approach.
      • Domain-specific: Performance Analytics records are separated by domain, each managed by assigned domain admins.
      • Hybrid: Combines global low-level records with domain-separated high-level records, allowing differentiated admin roles.
    • Extended Functionality for Complex Domains: Supports hierarchical multi-domain configurations, aggregation of scores across domains, and domain-based dashboard filtering. This functionality is provided via the Performance Analytics — Domain Separation Support plugin and is limited to the global approach.
    • Tenant Customization: Tenants in shared environments can modify business logic and parameters such as impact, urgency, or priority matrices within their domains without affecting others.
    • Reusable Domain Configurations: Enables grouping of domains for user groups to facilitate score collection, aggregation, and dashboard filtering.
    • PADomainUtils API: Allows copying of Performance Analytics records between domains on the same instance, supporting data management and migration tasks.

    Key Outcomes

    • Customers can effectively segregate Performance Analytics data and administration according to their domain structure, enhancing data security and governance in multi-tenant environments.
    • Improved control over data visibility ensures users only access relevant domain data, supporting compliance and operational efficiency.
    • Extended domain separation features provide advanced capabilities for customers managing complex domain hierarchies, enabling aggregated reporting and streamlined administration.
    • Tenants have the flexibility to customize essential performance analytics parameters independently, ensuring that configurations align with their specific operational needs.
    • Performance considerations apply for instances with many domains; customers should consult ServiceNow support for optimization guidance.

    Domain separation is supported for Performance Analytics. Domain separation enables you to separate data, processes, and administrative tasks into logical groupings called domains. You can control several aspects of this separation, including which users can see and access data. Performance Analytics supports collecting scores from multiple domains and can be configured to enable domain-specific administration. Extended domain configuration functionality is available for customers with complex domains.

    Support level: Enhanced

    • Includes all aspects of Basic and Standard levels of support.
    • Data-driven process enables service provider customers to modify business logic that is based on defined use cases. These configurations are UI-based and fail-safe so that configurations by one customer cannot affect another.
    • Tenants of the instance must be able to configure minimum viable product (MVP) business logic and data parameters for themselves. This logic and parameters would be expected for the application's normal function.

    Sample use case: Tenant-customers of a shared environment must be able to modify the impact, urgency, or priority matrix to set priority within their domain.

    For more information on support levels, see Application support for domain separation.

    Requirements

    Warning:
    Instances with a large number of domains, as is typical for multiple service providers (MSPs), can experience performance degradation when retrieving Performance Analytics scores. For a potential solution, see KB1516963. Access to Now Support is required.

    Approaches to domain separation

    There are three approaches to domain separation in Performance Analytics:
    Global
    The Performance Analytics records, such as indicators and breakdowns, are all in the global domain. Data collection jobs respect the domains of facts table records, such as incidents, when they collect indicator scores. Users see scores only from domains they have visibility into. Platform Analytics Solutions use this approach. It is the most suitable approach in most cases.
    Domain-specific
    The Performance Analytics records themselves are domain-separated. Each domain has users with pa_admin and other roles for managing Performance Analytics.
    Hybrid
    Low-level Performance Analytics records, such as indicator sources, are global. High-level Performance Analytics records, such as widgets, are domain-separated. The pa_admin users manage the low-level, global records. Each domain has users with roles like pa_power_user to manage high-level records. This approach is advanced.

    Extended functionality for complex domains

    You can extend the domain separation support for Performance Analytics with the following features, designed especially for customers with complex domains to manage:

    Hierarchical multi-domain configurations
    Group domains together, based on their visibility to a user group or on other conditions. Collect scores on some, all, or none of the child domains of these domains. Decide whether to roll up child domain scores to the parent domain, and whether for all children or only those explicitly in the configuration.
    Collect aggregate scores
    Combine scores from the multiple domains in a domain configuration to create an aggregate score.
    Dashboard filtering by domain
    Filter dashboards to show scores by domain or domain aggregate, as you would by breakdown.

    The extended functionality is available in the Performance Analytics — Domain Separation Support plugin. The general requirements for domain separation in Performance Analytics also apply.

    Extended functionality supports only the global approach to domain separation.

    For more information about this extended functionality, see: Grouping domains in Performance Analytics domain configurations