Time series widgets
Summarize
Summary of Time series widgets
Time series widgets in ServiceNow display how indicator scores change over time, helping you identify trends, patterns, outliers, and relationships among indicators. These widgets measure indicator scores at uniform intervals, making them ideal for tracking performance or impact over time. They are part of the Core UI front end and are not fully supported in Platform Analytics dashboards or UI Builder pages except in limited compatibility mode. Note that this feature is in maintenance mode, receiving only security updates.
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Key Features
- Visualizations to emphasize trends or specific score changes: Choose the visualization based on whether you want to highlight trends or discrete changes in indicator scores.
- Single or multiple indicators: Visualizations support showing one indicator or comparing several indicators side-by-side or stacked.
- Types of visualizations:
- Line: Connects data points with straight lines, ideal for emphasizing trends; recommended default for time series.
- Spline: Connects points with a smooth curve, useful to approximate values between known data points.
- Column: Uses vertical columns to show changes over time, suitable for single or multiple indicators side-by-side.
- Step: Highlights discrete changes at set points, useful when precise incremental changes matter more than smooth trends.
- Stacked Column: Divides columns into segments representing multiple indicators, showing cumulative results.
- Area: Similar to line but fills the area under the line with color, helpful for visualizing each indicator’s contribution.
- Relative Compare: Shows divergence among multiple indicators over time.
- Integration notes: Some other widget types include time series visualizations (e.g., breakdown widgets with stacked column views).
Practical Benefits for ServiceNow Customers
- Gain clear insights into how key metrics evolve, enabling data-driven decision making.
- Evaluate the impact of business changes or policies by spotting turning points in indicator trends.
- Compare multiple indicators effectively to understand their relationships and combined effects.
- Choose visualization types that best suit your reporting needs, whether emphasizing smooth trends or exact changes.
- Leverage these widgets in Core UI dashboards to monitor performance over time, while knowing Platform Analytics requires different visualization components.
Time series widgets show changes in an indicator score over time. Different visualizations emphasize the trend in the scores or the scores themselves, and can display one indicator or compare several indicators.
This feature is in maintenance mode and is no longer being augmented or changed. Only security fixes to this feature will be addressed.
A time series is an ordered sequence of metrics taken continuously over time. Indicator scores are measured over time at uniform intervals, which makes them an appropriate subject for time series widgets. The following business cases are some of the uses of a time series widget:
- Identifying trends, patterns, and outliers in indicator scores.
- Identifying turning points, such as whether a change in policy led to a change in indicator scores.
- Evaluating the relationships between indicators.
When you are selecting a visualization for a time series, consider whether you want to emphasize the trend in the scores or specific changes in the scores. Also consider whether you want to show one indicator or compare several related indicators.
| Visualization | Description and use case | |
|---|---|---|
| Visualizing trends in the scores of an indicator | ||
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Line | Shows how one or more values change over time by connecting a series of data
points with straight lines. Use a line visualization to emphasize the trend in the
scores. Consider line visualizations to be the default choice for displaying a time series. If you are unsure of which visualization to use, use a line. |
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Spline | Shows how one or more values change over time by connecting a series of data points with a fitted curve through the data points. Spline charts let you take a limited set of known data points and approximate intervening values. |
| Comparing scores in an indicator | ||
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Column | Shows changes between scores over time by displaying them as proportional vertical columns. Use either to visualize score changes in one indicator or to compare indicators. To compare indicators with a column visualization, either add indicators to the widget, or place several column visualization widgets next to each other in a dashboard. |
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Step | Emphasizes changes in indicator scores between discreet points in time. Use to show small incremental changes in scores, especially when a line visualization smudges the data. |
| Comparing scores or trends between indicators | ||
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Stacked Column | Each column is divided into a stack of slices representing different indicators. Use when you want to see the cumulative result of multiple indicators. |
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Area | Resembles a line visualization, but the area between the axis and line is emphasized with colors. Use with multiple indicators to highlight the relative contribution that each indicator makes to the whole. |
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Relative Compare | Shows how multiple indicators diverge over time. |