Item diagnostic report

  • Release version: Xanadu
  • Updated August 1, 2024
  • 2 minutes to read
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    Summary of Item Diagnostic Report

    The Item Diagnostic Report for catalog items in ServiceNow helps identify potential violations of recommended practices. It provides a health score for each item, with a lower score indicating fewer violations. The report also lists diagnostic results that detail specific violations along with their associated rules and counts.

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    Key Features

    • Score Measurement: A score is calculated to reflect the item's adherence to recommended practices, with 0 being ideal.
    • Diagnostic Rules: The report includes several default rules designed to assess catalog items, such as:
      • checkUserCriteriaUsage: Checks for the use of entitlements instead of user criteria.
      • checkBalancedContainers: Verifies if Container Start and End variables are balanced.
      • checkDuplicateVariables: Identifies duplicate variable names within catalog items.
      • checkDOMManipulation: Flags any DOM manipulation in client scripts that could cause issues during upgrades.
      • checkLookupVariableRowCount: Monitors Lookup variables for performance impact due to high record counts.
      • checkAJAX: Lists AJAX calls in client scripts, emphasizing the need for asynchronous calls.
      • checkSelectBoxUnique: Checks for unique entries in Select Box variables.
      • checkOrderGuideRuleBaseCount: Assesses the number of active rule bases in order guides to prevent slow load times.
      • checkFormatterVariablesUsage: Ensures that specific variable types are used correctly.

    Key Outcomes

    By utilizing the Item Diagnostic Report, ServiceNow customers can identify catalog items that do not adhere to best practices, enabling improvements in performance and user experience. Correcting violations will lead to more efficient catalog operations and help maintain expected behavior across the ServiceNow platform.

    For a catalog item data and configuration, you can identify possible violations from the ServiceNow recommended practices.

    The item diagnostic report includes a score that measures the health of the item, and a list of diagnostic result entries. These entries consist of a rule, a document (record that violates the rule), and a count (the number of violations in the record).

    Correct violations for best performance and to maintain expected behavior.

    The lower the score, the better (0 is ideal). A higher score means that an item has more violations from the ServiceNow recommended practices. Each rule has a different weight and level of importance. For example, a violation of duplicate variables is more likely to result in user issues. An AJAX usage violation is less likely to cause issues since the result could simply cause a delay in the UI.diagnostic results

    Default diagnostic rules

    These diagnostic rules are designed as per ServiceNow recommended practices.

    Table 1. Default diagnostic rules
    Rule Description
    checkUserCriteriaUsage Identifies if the item is using entitlements instead of user criteria
    checkBalancedContainers Checks if the Container Start and Container End variables are balanced.
    checkDuplicateVariables Identifies variables with the same name associated to a catalog item (or an associated variable set).
    checkDOMManipulation Identifies any DOM violation in catalog client scripts. The DOM is not guaranteed to be the same between releases and can affect catalog client scripts during upgrades. Therefore, it is not recommended for customers to do any kind of DOM manipulation.

    You can view detailed information for each client script by clicking the information icon.

    checkLookupVariableRowCount Checks if the Lookup variable is run on tables with many records as it can lead to slower load times.
    checkAJAX Identifies all AJAX calls in catalog client scripts because, although AJAX calls in catalog client scripts are allowed, they must be asynchronous. All AJAX calls are listed because even asynchronous calls can cause some delay.

    You can view detailed information for each client script by clicking the information icon.

    checkSelectBoxUnique Identifies Select Box type variables that have the attribute enabled to show only unique entries in the select box.
    checkOrderGuideRuleBaseCount Checks for high number of active rule bases in an order guide as higher number of rule bases can lead to slower load times
    checkFormatterVariablesUsage Checks if the item has the following variable types:
    • Macro
    • Macro with label
    • UI Page

    For information on the variable availability across various channels, see Variable support in various channels.

    diagnostic details