Work with Needs attention panels in Digital Portfolio Management

Release version: Yokohama

Updated January 30, 2025

6 minutes to read

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Summary of Work with Needs attention panels in Digital Portfolio Management

Digital Portfolio Management (DPM) provides Needs attention panels on each workspace page, enabling you to view items requiring attention within the context of your solutions. These panels help you monitor the status and severity of issues related to your portfolios and solutions, facilitating data-driven decisions. The categories shown in these panels vary by solution type, such as services, business applications, or application services.

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The Standard Needs attention panels, introduced in the Utah release (May 2023), offer greater flexibility compared to legacy versions. By default, this Standard version is enabled and new customers only have access to it. Existing customers can toggle between the Standard and legacy versions via a system property.

Key Features

Needs attention panel system property: Administrators with the DPM admin role can enable or disable the Standard Needs attention panels through the system property sndpm.standardneedsattention in the Digital Portfolio Management settings.
Problem tracking: From the August 2024 release onward, problems are visible in Needs attention panels for services, service offerings, business applications, and application services. Problems roll up appropriately to parent services and business applications for consolidated views.
Application services enhancements: Starting November 2024, incidents, problems, and changes linked via the Impacted services or Affected CIs related lists, in addition to the Configuration item field, appear in the Needs attention panels. This improves visibility and roll-up of records across application service hierarchies, portfolios, and taxonomy nodes.
Panel navigation and search: Each panel displays categories with item counts, supports searching by keywords or numbers, allows pagination through items, and provides direct drill-down to individual records.
Icons and actions: Needs attention panels include icons for toggling visibility, viewing team contacts, related knowledge articles, attachments, and catalog items depending on the solution type (services, business applications, or application services).
Incident and change management: Records related to services and offerings roll up from offerings to parent services, ensuring incidents or changes impacting multiple offerings are displayed once. Critical and major incidents are shown, with major incidents visible if the Major Incident Management plugin is installed.
Panel content varies by solution page: Needs attention panels show relevant records created "today" and include critical incidents, outages, changes, audits, risks, and alerts depending on the solution type and customer status (new, zBoot, or existing).
Risk data integration: Viewing risk items requires the Technology Portfolio Management plugin, which depends on Application Portfolio Management and Software Asset Management plugins.

Practical Implications for ServiceNow Customers

Use Needs attention panels within DPM Workspace pages to monitor issues affecting your digital portfolios and solutions in real-time, helping prioritize actions and resource allocation.
Ensure your administrators configure the sndpm.standardneedsattention system property appropriately to leverage the latest Standard panels.
Leverage problem and incident roll-ups to gain consolidated views at service, business application, and portfolio levels, improving situational awareness.
Utilize enhanced application service linkage (Configuration item, Impacted services, Affected CIs) to get comprehensive visibility into related incidents, problems, and changes.
Employ the search and navigation features within Needs attention panels to quickly find and investigate critical records.
Install required plugins such as Major Incident Management and Technology Portfolio Management to access extended functionality like major incidents and risk data.

Digital Portfolio Management (DPM) enables you to view items that need attention in the context of your solutions. Categories in each Needs attention panel differ based on the solution type. You may not act on an item that needs attention, but you can see its status and severity to make data-driven decisions about your solutions.

Each DPM Workspace page has a Needs attention panel that presents items that need attention in the context of the page. You can search items that need attention on the DPM home page but it's more useful to search while viewing a portfolio or a solution.

Important:

This topic applies to Standard Needs attention panels.

Standard Needs attention panels were introduced in the Utah release (May 2023). The Standard version is more flexible than its legacy counterpart. The Standard system property is set to true by default. Existing customers can set it to false to return to the former Needs attention functionality. There isn't a limit to changing the value from true to false (and back). New customers can't set the system property to false, so they only see the Standard version.

Standard Needs attention panels system property

Admins update the system property with the DPM admin [sn_dpm.dpm_admin] role.

Navigate to All > Digital Portfolio Management > Administration > Settings.
Enter *needs in the System Properties Name search field, and then press Enter.
Select the system property [sn_dpm.standard_needs_attention].
Release the record to edit it, and then set the property to false or true.
Select Update.

Problems option in the Needs attention panel

To see problems in the Needs attention panel, you must be using the DPM August 2024 release or a later release.

You can identify problems on the following solutions.

Services and service offerings. Problems are related to the service offering via the service offering record on the form, impacted services related list, and on the affected CIs related list. Problems are then rolled up to the parent service and should be deduplicated at the parent service level.
Business applications. Problems are related to the application service via the configuration item field on the form. Problems are then rolled up from the application service to the business application and should be deduplicated at the parent service level.
Application services. Problems are related to the application service via the configuration item field on the form.

Application service considerations

Prior to the November 2024 Store release, you could see the records of incidents, problems, and changes in the Needs attention panel only if the application service is added to the Configuration item field of a related item (for example, to an incident record).

As of the November 2024 Store release, items or records are reflected in the Needs attention panel when an incident, problem, or change includes the application service in the Impacted services or the Affected CIs related list, in addition to the Configuration item field.

After the application services are added to the Configuration item field, Impacted services, or the Affected CIs related list, you can see them under the Needs attention section in the base level (application service). The data also rolls up to the following levels in the DPM Workspace:

Business application
Taxonomy node
Portfolio

Also, after the application services are added, the data is rolled up in the following areas when you:

Select View details on any affected solution page.
View the Run tab of any solution page to view the key performance indicators (KPIs).

This functionality applies to enterprise business application portfolios, enterprise application service portfolios, and to any business application or application service added to your personal portfolios.

Panel attributes and icons

Even though the Needs attention panel categories differ for each portfolio and solution, the basic navigation is the same. All panels enable you to search, see a list of Needs attention cards, paginate through the cards, and drill down to a record from the card list.

Needs attention panel example. — Figure 1. Needs attention panel example using an application service

Each Needs attention category includes a number that indicates the number of items in that category. If there are no Needs attention items in a category, then the number is zero (0).
Select the forward arrow (>) next to a number in the category to see a list of record cards that need attention. From the card list, you can select a card to access its record. You can also go back by selecting the Needs attention back arrow (<).

The Needs attention Search field enables you to enter a number, a part of a word, or a whole word to find Needs attention items that contain your search criteria. After you view and open a record that needs attention, you can return to the Search field. Your search criteria remain in the Search field until you clear the field.

The following table shows the Needs attention panel icons that display for each solution type.

Table 1. Needs attention panel icons per solution type
Solution type	Needs attention panel icons
Services and service offerings	Needs attention icon () to show or hide the Needs attention panels. This toggle isn't on the DPM Workspace home page. Contacts icon () to view team members and the all the teams that support the service offering. Knowledge articles icon() to search for related knowledge articles. Attachments icon () to view and add attachments to the record. Catalog items icon () to search for catalog items on a service or service offering record.
Business applications and application services	Needs attention icon () to show or hide the Needs attention panels. This toggle isn't on the DPM Workspace home page. Contacts icon () to view team members and all the teams that support the business application or the application service. Attachments icon () to view and add attachments to the record.

Service considerations

A record is linked to the offering and rolled up to the service. You can see incidents, outages, and changes when the incident is linked directly to the service (not to the offering).
An incident, outage, or change can impact multiple offerings.
A record is first displayed on the offering, and then it's rolled up to the parent service.
An incident displays once (not twice) if two offerings are added to an incident and they roll up to the same service.

Service offering considerations

Critical incidents, outages, and changes are linked to the offering to display in the Needs attention panel when the offering is:

Listed in the service offering field on the incident record or the change record.
Included in the affected services or the affected CI related lists, or both.
Rolled up to the parent service level when an incident or change is related to an offering (via a related list or directly on the form).

Note:

By default, you see critical incidents. To see critical and major incidents, the Major Incident Management plugin (com.snc.incident.mim) must be installed.

Panel options for each DPM solution

Records included on each DPM solution page are the ones created "today."

Table 2. Needs attention panels for each DPM solution page
Services and service offerings	Application services	Business applications
Critical and major incidents Outages Changes For new and zBoot customers, all the above plus Audit and Risks.	Critical and major incidents Outages Changes Alerts Risks For new and zBoot customers, all the above plus Audits.	Critical and major incidents Changes Risks Audits
Note: To see Risk data, you must have the Technology Portfolio Management plugin installed [sn_apm_tpm]. This plugin has two dependency plugins: Application Portfolio Management [com.snc.apn] Software Asset Management [com.snc.sams]