Reports

  • Release version: Yokohama
  • Updated January 30, 2025
  • 3 minutes to read
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    Summary of Reports

    Reports in Instance Observer enable ServiceNow customers to quickly generate and share detailed instance performance summaries. These reports provide insights into daily instance health, performance trends, and database growth, helping organizations improve instance management by visualizing telemetry data over time. Customers can download reports or schedule them to run periodically, tailored to their business needs.

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    Report Options and Usage

    To create a report, navigate to Instance Observer > Reports, select the Report Type, Instance, and Date Range, then generate the report. Additional metric information is accessible via the Help > Metrics menu. Support for reporting features varies depending on the Impact package subscription, with options for Guided, Advanced, and Total packages offering different retention periods and feature availability.

    Key Reports

    • Daily Performance Metrics Report: Provides six sub-reports that offer a snapshot of instance health, including platform health, health indicators, top slow transactions, queries, long-running jobs, and critical support cases. These reports use color-coded thresholds to highlight anomalies and performance issues.
    • Database Growth Report: Shows how the instance database size has changed over time, including primary database growth, database size including shards, and the top 20 tables by size and growth rates. Guided customers are limited to a 45-day date range for these reports.
    • Performance Trend Report: Offers detailed analysis on selected system performance metrics such as transaction and report times, database response, semaphore depth, event queues, job execution, memory usage, and user session summaries.

    Support Matrix by Impact Package

    The availability and data retention duration of reports depend on the Impact package:

    • Guided: Supports Daily Performance Metrics, Database Growth reports, with 45 days data retention; does not support Performance Trend reports or Self Service Alerts.
    • Advanced: Supports Daily Performance Metrics, Performance Trend, Database Growth reports, and Self Service Alerts with 6 months data retention.
    • Total: Supports all reporting features with 6 months data retention.

    This matrix helps customers understand which reporting capabilities are included in their subscription and plan accordingly.

    Quickly generate reports to download and share with your business stakeholders, making  organizations faster, smarter, and better in their  instance performance management.

    Visualize instance performance  telemetry over time and quickly generate reports to share with your team and business stakeholders.

    Run a report on any instance to generate a downloadable summary on daily instance health, performance trend or database growth.

    Report options

    Tailor various reports specific to your business needs with a few steps.

    Navigate to Instance Observer > Reports > . Select the Report Type, the Instance, and the Date Range for the report.

    Select Generate report and the report renders. On the report page, you have the option to download the report or to schedule the report to be run periodically.

    Report types

    For additional information about a report, select Help > Metrics from the main menu and select the option from the right-hand menu.

    Support matrix per Impact package

    Some Instance Observer reporting features vary between the Impact package that you are subscribed to. Reference the support matrix for details.

    • ✓ = Supported
    • X = Not supported
    Table 1. Performance reports support matrix
    Guided Advanced Total
    Daily Performance Metrics report ✓ ✓ ✓
    Performance Trend report X ✓ ✓
    Database Growth report ✓ ✓ ✓
    Data retention 45 days 6 months 6 months
    Self Service Alerts X ✓ ✓
    Note:
    For more information on subscription support, see Impact packages.

    Daily Performance Metrics Report

    There are six daily performance metrics sub-reports that are available that show a current snapshot of the health of the instance.

    Table 2. Sub-report and description
    Report Description
    ServiceNow Platform Health
    • Reflects node availability, response, and lag times.
    • Compares availability and anomalies from today and the last 30 days.
    • Reports are based on the system thresholds that are set in the system and color codes the anomalies accordingly, with Green, Yellow, or Red.
    Health Indicator
    • Displays number of slow transactions, queries, and long running jobs.
    • Compares the counts between today, yesterday, and the last 30 day average.
    • Reports are based on the system thresholds that are set in the system and color codes the counts accordingly, with Green, Yellow, or Red.
    Top 10 Slow Transactions
    • Finds the most executed transactions by total execution time and then takes the top 10 transactions that incur the highest average execution time.
    • Results list the instance page along with the average and total execution times, and the total count the page was executed.
    Top 10 Slow Queries
    • Finds the most executed queries by total execution time and then takes the top 10 queries that incur the highest average execution time.
    • Results list the query along with the average and total execution times, and the total count the query was executed.
    Top 10 Long Running Jobs
    • Finds jobs that are incurring highest duration in minutes.
    • Results list the job name, node, worker, and the duration.
    Critical Support Cases
    • Lists the total number of severity 1 and 2 support cases in the report header.
    • Provides case numbers as links, the area, priority, and state, along with tracking who opened the issue.

    Database Growth Report

    There are several database growth reports that are available that show how the instance database has increased over a selected date range.
    Note:
    Guided customers may select a range of up to 45 days.
    Table 3. Database report and description
    Report Description
    Primary Database Various metrics on how the database has either grown or decreased over the selected time frame. Total DBI size based on the sum of all tables, calculated every 4 hours.
    Database by Size (Including Shards) Various metrics on how the database has either grown or decreased over the selected, including shards. Total DBI Size align with primary shards, this is calculated every 4 hours and can be used to visualize database growth over time.
    Top 20 Tables (By Size) Lists table name, size (GB), 1 day growth and rate, and the 7 day growth rate.

    Performance Trend Report

    Drill into additional detail on selected performance metrics.

    The following report options are available in regards to system performance:
    • Transaction/Report Times
    • Database response
    • Semaphore depth
    • Event queues
    • Jobs recurring and running
    • Memory
    • User session summaries