Demand Forecast components in Workforce Optimization for ITSM

  • Release version: Yokohama
  • Updated January 30, 2025
  • 4 minutes to read
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    Summary of Demand Forecast components in Workforce Optimization for ITSM

    The Demand Forecast components in Workforce Optimization for ITSM provide a comprehensive framework to predict IT service demand by collecting and analyzing historical data on incidents and interactions. This enables ServiceNow customers to plan and allocate IT support resources effectively based on forecasted workload patterns.

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    The solution installs necessary roles, properties, scheduled jobs, tables, forecast configurations, and a retention policy to support data collection, storage, and forecasting.

    Key Features

    • Forecast Configurations: Predefined configurations collect data separately for chat interactions, priority 1 (P1) and non-P1 incidents, and walk-up interactions. These configurations facilitate targeted forecasting by interaction type.
    • Metric Retention Policy: Stores forecast metric data at one-hour intervals for up to three years, ensuring sufficient historical data for accurate forecasting.
    • Resource Forecast Formulas: Formulas convert collected data into resource requirements for agents by accounting for average durations and agent work time. These formulas cover chat, incidents (P1 and non-P1), and walk-up interactions.
    • Forecast Parameters: Parameters such as average agent work time per day, average chat duration, and average work times for different incident types allow customization of forecast calculations. Custom parameters override default settings when configured.
    • Forecast Properties: Configurable properties control the historical data points used, seasonal frequency (e.g., daily, weekly), number of forecast periods, and the number of historical days displayed in Manager Workspace time-series charts.
    • Roles: Two roles manage access—Forecast Admin (with full create, read, update, delete rights) and Forecast User (read-only access) for forecast configuration tables.
    • Tables: Tables store forecast configurations, parameters, and associations with user groups to define data collection and resource conversion formulas.
    • Scheduled Jobs: Automated jobs collect historical data daily, store data in MetricBase, and calculate future resource forecasts based on collected data and configured parameters. Jobs run at scheduled times to ensure up-to-date forecasting data.

    Practical Benefits for ServiceNow Customers

    • Enables proactive IT workforce planning by forecasting demand for different interaction types, improving service desk efficiency.
    • Supports customization of forecasting parameters to align with organizational agent work patterns and incident characteristics.
    • Provides long-term data retention and configurable forecast horizons to analyze trends and seasonal patterns effectively.
    • Role-based access control ensures secure and appropriate management of forecast configurations and data.
    • Integration with Manager Workspace provides visual insights into demand trends via time-series charts.

    What to Expect

    Once implemented, customers can leverage automated, data-driven forecasts to better allocate IT support resources, anticipate workload fluctuations, and enhance service delivery. The system’s modular design with configurable parameters, roles, and scheduled jobs allows tailoring the forecasting process to specific organizational needs while ensuring data accuracy and timely updates.

    Workforce Optimization for ITSM installs roles to administer ITSM Manager Workspace Demand Forecast, properties to configure default behavior, scheduled jobs to collect data for the configurations, tables to store data, forecast configurations to collect data for incidents and interactions and a retention policy to store metric data.

    Forecast configurations

    Name Description
    Chat Interactions Created Collects data for chat interactions.
    Non P1 Incidents Created Collects data for all incidents that are not tagged as priority 1.
    P1 Incidents Created Collects data for priority 1 incidents.
    Walkup Interactions Created Collects data for walk up interactions.

    Metric retention policy

    The WFO Forecast time series metric retention policy is available by default for all forecast configurations. By default, this retention policy stores data at a one-hour interval for the past three years.

    Formulas to create resource forecast configurations

    Name Formula to create this resource forecast configuration
    Chat Interactions to Agent Conversion ([FC:Chat Interactions Created] * [FP:Average Chat Duration]) / [FP:Average Agent Work Time Per Day]
    Incident and Interaction Resources [FC:Incidents Created to Agent Conversion] + [FC:Chat Interactions to Agent Conversion] + [FC:Walkup Interactions to Agent Conversion]
    Incidents Created to Agent Conversion (([FC:P1 Incidents Created] * [FP:Average P1 Incident Work Time]) / [FP:Average Agent Work Time Per Day]) + (([FC:Non P1 Incidents Created] * [FP:Average Non P1 Incident Work Time]) / [FP:Average Agent Work Time Per Day])
    Walkup Interactions to Agent Conversion ([FC:Walkup Interactions Created] * [FP:Average Walkup Duration]) / [FP:Average Agent Work Time Per Day]

    Forecast parameters

    Name Description
    Average Agent Work Time Per Day Average time an agent works in a given day.
    Average Chat Duration Average duration of an agent chat for each incident or interaction.
    Average Non P1 Incident Work Time Average time an agents spends working on all incidents that are not categorized as Priority 1.
    Average P1 Incident Work Time Average time an agents spends working on all incidents that are categorized as Priority 1.
    Average Walkup Duration Average duration an agent spends on a walkup interaction.

    If you create forecast parameters for a forecast configuration, the values set in the configuration are used instead of the default forecast parameters listed in the forecast properties section. For information on configuring forecast parameters, see Modify forecast parameters to visualize forecast data

    Forecast properties

    Name Description Example
    sn_agent_forecast.historical_data_points

    The hourly historical data points to be used for the forecast.

    The maximum allowed data points is 26280. The default value is 8760 and represents the hourly data points for a one year time period (24 hours x 365 days x 1 year).

    For example: 24 hours x 365 days x 3 years = 26280
    sn_agent_forecast.seasonal_frequency The seasonal frequency of a repeated pattern. The default value is 168.
    For example:
    • Daily data pattern = 1*24 = 24
    • Weekly data pattern = 7 * 24 = 168
    • Monthly data pattern = 30 * 24 = 720
    sn_agent_forecast.forecast_periods The number of periods/seasons to forecast. A period is the length of a season.The default value is 5.
    For example:
    • If the length of a season is daily which is equal to 24 hours (1 day) and the forecast period is 30, then the number of periods to forecast is equal to 24 * 30 = 720 hours.
    • If the length of a season is weekly which is equal to 168 hours (1 week) and the forecast period is 5, then the number of periods to forecast is equal to 168 * 5 = 840 hours.
    sn_agent_forecast.number_of_historical_days_in_timeseries_chart The number of historical days that will be plotted in the time-series chart in Manager Workspace. For example, if the number is set to 90,then the number of days is counted from the current day to 90 days ago.

    Roles for Demand Forecast

    Role title [name] Description Contains roles
    Forecast admin [sn_agent_forecast.admin] Grants administrative rights to create, read, update, and delete (CRUD) forecast configuration tables.
    • sn_agent_forecast.users
    • clotho_admin
    Forecast user [sn_agent_forecast.user] Grants read access to forecast configuration tables.

    Tables for Demand Forecast

    Table Description
    Forecast Configuration [sn_agent_forecast_configuration] Define data collection definition and resource conversion formula configurations.
    Forecast Parameter [sn_agent_forecast_parameter] Define forecast parameters required for the formula.
    Forecast Configuration group [sn_agent_forecast_configuration_m2m_sys_user_group] Associate resource conversion formula with assignment groups.

    Forecast configurations available by default

    By default, forecast configurations are available for the following groups:
    • Deskside Support
    • IT Service Desk
    • Application Support
    • Technical Support

    Schedule jobs for Demand Forecast

    Name Description
    Collect historical data for automated forecast configurations
    • On-demand job to collect historical data​
    • Collects historical data daily for every hour for the past three years
    Collect daily data for automated forecast configurations
    • Runs daily at 2 am
    • For each table defined in the Data Collection Definition configuration, it fetches the records from the previous day for each hour for every group and stores it in the MetricBase
    • You can access the time series for the collected data using the MetricBase list command on the Group [sys_user_group] table
    • Uses the WFO Forecast retention policy for data retention
    Forecast resources for future Calculates the forecast resources for the future based on the collected data.
    • Runs daily at 3 am
    • Collects hourly data every day for the formula forecast configuration
    • Stores the data in the Agent Forecast metric in MetricBase
    • Uses forecast properties to set the data collection frequency or time period to store the data. The forecast properties will not be used if a published forecast parameter exists for a data collection definition.