In this video, we will describe the three indicators used in Performance Analytics, as
well as how to create them. In Performance Analytics,
indicators are metrics, or measurements that measure specific parameters of your operations,
such as services, activities, and behavioral performance.
These indicators show where these parameters stand at any given moment and over time, they
show trends to help you see where you're doing well and where you can improve.
To create an indicator you need one of three roles: PA power user, PA
admin, or admin.
You'll also need a paid-for Performance Analytics entitlement.
What types of indicators can you use? Performance Analytics
provides Automated, Manual, and Formula indicators. Automated indicators give you
scores directly from the ServiceNow database tables.
For example, Number of new incidents pulls data from the Incident table.
When we look at its properties, we see that data is being pulled every day in the Frequency
column. And the system is pulling source data from the Incidents dot New indicator source to
populate this indicator. The method of aggregation is Count,
meaning the score is a simple count of the new incident records, rather than a calculation.
Manual indicators let you enter scores manually.
You might do this when the source data is restricted-access or resides outside your
ServiceNow instance. When we create a manual
indicator, we can make it appear in Scorecards by selecting the Publish on Analytics Hub checkbox.
And we can control access to the indicator by making it visible to all roles or only
certain ones. Finally, we can specify the people who are
allowed to enter scores for the indicator.
These people will need the PA Contributor role.
The last type of indicator, formula, lets us calculate the score and performance data from
the scores of automated and manual indicators.
For example, the formula for the incident backlog growth indicator is the number of new
incidents minus the number of resolved incidents.
Here's our scenario, our HR department wants to know what percentage of their new cases are
opened by people visiting their office in person each day.
We'll start with creating a manual indicator for the number of new cases that were opened in
person. In our example, an HR manager will enter that
number manually every day, and the indicator will keep a running count.
This unit is a simple count.
The user who creates manual indicators must have the PA Admin or PA Power User roles.
Because HR data is sensitive, we don't want this indicator to appear in Analytics Hubs,
so we clear the Publish on Analytics Hubs check box. To specify role visibility,
select Visible to Everyone.
This enables you to select a role. You can specify individual user and group
visibility, but we want to specify that only users with the
admin role can see the values for this indicator.
Finally, we specify our HR Manager Linda as the Contributor.
We need to give her the PA Contributor role so that she can enter scores for the indicator.
Back in the Manual indicator,
the Scores for this indicator link takes us to the Scoresheet, where we can enter scores for
the past week, starting on November 21, including today.
These values are saved as soon as we enter them.
Next, we'll create an automated indicator.
Automated indicators are the most frequently used type of indicator.
They're used to calculate scores on a set of records from a table that stores information
about a business process.
The HR department uses the ServiceNow HR solution, which tracks all HR cases.
That means we can create an automated indicator for the total number of new cases because we
have a data source to pull from.
We can specify the source here on the Source tab.
Often we can find the Indicator Source by searching. But this time it doesn't exist.
So we'll add a new one and call it HR Cases New.
We're tracking our new cases daily, so we select Daily for Valid for Frequency.
Then we select the Facts table. The Facts table is the table whose records you
want to evaluate in your indicator.
In our example, it's the HR Case table.
Then we'll apply a condition for the HR Case. An indicator source must have at least one
condition to filter the records on the facts table.
We've created an automated indicator for the total number of new cases since November 21st, and
a manual indicator for the total number of new cases that were opened in person since the 21st.
Now, we can use those two indicators to calculate the percentage of new cases that were
opened in person. To do that, we'll create a new formula indicator,
and call it percent of HR cases opened in person.
We're calculating a percentage, so we'll select percent for the Unit.
We'll build our formula in the Formula field.
The percentage is the Number of HR cases opened in person
divided by the number of new HR cases.
And submit. That's it.
We created an Automated indicator, a Manual indicator, and a Formula indicator based on the
first two. Now HR knows the percentage of new cases opened
in person each day.
For more information, see our product documentation or knowledge base. Or ask a
question in the ServiceNow community.