Performance Analytic indicators to measure application performance

  • Release version: Xanadu
  • Updated August 1, 2024
  • 2 minutes to read
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    Summary of Performance Analytic indicators to measure application performance

    Performance Analytics (PA) indicators help ServiceNow customers monitor the performance of business applications by tracking the count of incidents, problems, changes, and closed change requests. These indicators provide insights that enable customers to evaluate and improve application performance effectively.

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    Key Features

    • PA Indicators Used: Metrics on incidents, problems, changes, and change request closures.
    • Scheduled Job Execution Order: To generate accurate scores, run PA jobs in this sequence:
      1. [PA Incident] Daily Data Collection
      2. [PA Change] Daily Data Collection
      3. [PA Problem] Daily Data Collection
      4. [Enterprise Architecture Scheduled Job] Load Application Indicators and compute Application Scores
    • Historic Data Collection: For data older than six months, Performance Analytics Premium plugin is required. Run historic data collection jobs in the same order as daily jobs, then regenerate Enterprise Architecture scores for the desired timeframe.
    • Score Generation Frequency: Scores are generated according to the indicator frequency:
      • Monthly scores: generated on the last day of each month.
      • Quarterly scores: generated on the last day of each quarter.
      • Yearly scores: generated on the last day of each year.

      Note: Fiscal periods should align with the time zone used for score generation.

    • Data Collection Frequency: The frequency at which Enterprise Architecture collects PA data must be equal to or greater than the data source indicator frequency. For example:
      • If Enterprise Architecture frequency is Monthly, it collects data from Monthly indicators.
      • Quarterly frequency collects from Monthly and Quarterly indicators.
      • Yearly frequency collects from Monthly, Quarterly, and Yearly indicators.
    • Change in Xanadu Release: Daily frequency for PA data source indicators is no longer available; a fix script automatically updates these to Monthly frequency.
    • System Property Limits: Display of application breakdowns in PA scoresheets is limited by system properties:
      • com.snc.pa.scoresheet.maxelements: Maximum elements shown in scoresheet breakdowns.
      • com.snc.pa.scorecards.maxbreakdownelements: Maximum breakdown elements shown in scorecard lists.

      Customers can adjust these limits via Performance Analytics > System > Properties to accommodate the number of business applications installed.

    Practical Benefits for ServiceNow Customers

    • Enables proactive monitoring of application-related incidents, problems, and changes to improve application health.
    • Allows customers to schedule and automate data collection for timely and accurate performance insights.
    • Supports analysis of historical performance data when using the appropriate plugin, aiding trend analysis and long-term planning.
    • Ensures score generation aligns with business periods such as monthly, quarterly, and yearly cycles to fit reporting needs.
    • Customizable display settings help manage large volumes of applications, ensuring meaningful and manageable reporting views.

    Use performance analytic (PA) indicators to know the count of incidents, problems, and changes logged against a business application and use this insight to improve the performance of your applications.

    Enterprise Architecture uses indicators that are sourced from Performance Analytics (PA). These indicators give a count of incidents, problems, changes, and the number of change requests that were closed on a given day. Follow the given order to run the PA jobs at the scheduled time, and get the scores of the indicators to evaluate the performance of your business applications.

    Order in which to run PA jobs and generate scores

    You should run the scheduled jobs in the following order:

    1. [PA Incident] Daily Data Collection.
    2. [PA Change] Daily Data Collection.
    3. [PA Problem] Daily Data Collection.
    4. [Enterprise Architecture Scheduled job] Load Application Indicators and compute Application Scores.

    If there are historic data, then run them in the following order:

    Note:

    You require Performance Analytics Premium for Enterprise Architecture (com.snc.pa.premium.apm) plugin to retrieve historic data that are older than six months.

    1. [PA Incident] Historic Data Collection.
    2. [PA Change] Historic Data Collection.
    3. [PA Problem] Historic Data Collection.
    4. Regenerate Enterprise Architecture scores for required time period. This action deletes the existing scores including daily scores and generates new scores instead of just updating the existing scores.

    Frequency at which indicator scores are generated

    Scores are generated as per the scheduled run of the job that executes the script. If the indicator frequency is:

    Monthly
    scores are generated only on the last day of a month.
    Quarter
    scores are generated only on the last day of a quarter.
    Yearly
    scores are generated only on the last day of a year.
    Note:
    Fiscal periods should be generated in the same time zone in which the scores are generated.

    Collection of PA indicator score data

    The period unit (days, weeks, or month) at which the PA indicator scores are collected and preserved depends on the frequency of the data source indicator. However, the frequency at which the application indicator collects the PA indicator data source scores varies.

    In Enterprise Architecture, the frequency of the application indicator must be greater than or equal to the frequency of the data source indicator.

    The following table describes the frequency at which Enterprise Architecture collects data from the data source indicators after the job runs:

    Table 1. APM data collection frequency
    Enterprise Architecture frequency Data source indicator frequency
    Monthly Monthly
    Quarterly Monthly and Quarterly
    Yearly Monthly, Quarterly, and Yearly

    If you are an Enterprise Architecture customer, who has upgraded to the Xanadu release, then the Daily frequency of Performance Analytics data source indicator is not available. RemoveDailyFreqAndUpdatePAIndicator fix script automatically removes the Daily frequency of PA indicators and updates the frequency to Monthly.

    Limitations to display application breakdowns in PA scoresheet

    If there is a large number of business applications installed, then all the breakdowns are not displayed in the Performance Analytics > Scoresheet, as there is a limitation set in the system properties: com.snc.pa.scoresheet.max_elements and com.snc.pa.scorecards.max_breakdown_elements. To reconfigure the property limitation:

    1. Navigate to Performance Analytics > System > Properties.
    2. Enter the maximum number in the Maximum number of elements of a breakdown in Scoresheet field. The number must be greater than or equal to the number of business applications installed in your system.
      Figure 1. Performance Analytics Scoresheet
      Display of application breakdowns in Performance Analytics Scoresheet
    3. Enter the maximum number in the Maximum number of breakdown elements in scorecard lists field.
    4. Click Save.