Indexing multiple indicators in a formula

  • Release version: Yokohama
  • Updated January 30, 2025
  • 3 minutes to read
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    Summary of Indexing multiple indicators in a formula

    Index indicators enable ServiceNow customers to measure the overall performance gap to target by combining multiple individual indicators into a single weighted score. This approach simplifies performance monitoring for processes, services, and groups that rely on multiple metrics, providing a clearer, aggregated view of whether overall performance meets or exceeds desired targets.

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    Key Features

    • Index Indicator Concept: Aggregates multiple indicator scores into one indexed score based on a weighted average, standardized to a target value of 100.
    • Direction and Target Requirement: Only indicators with a defined direction (Maximize or Minimize) and a target or norm value (non-zero) can be included.
    • Indexed Score Calculation: For Maximize indicators: 100 + (((actual score - target) / target) 100); for Minimize indicators: 100 - (((actual score - target) / target) 100).
    • Overall Index Direction: Always set to Maximize, ensuring that improvements in any underlying indicator increase the index score.
    • Equal Weighting Option: Instead of indexing each indicator individually, you can index the overall weighted sum to 100.
    • Use of PAFormulaUtils API: Methods like pa.getGap() and pa.getGlobalTarget() simplify retrieving the gap and target values within formulas.

    Practical Example

    To create an index indicator aggregating three indicators (percentage of overdue incidents, average age of last update on open incidents, and total number of open incidents), you:

    • Create a new formula indicator in Performance Analytics and set its direction to Maximize.
    • Use PAFormulaUtils methods to calculate the gap-to-target ratio for each indicator.
    • Compute the overall indexed score as a weighted average (equal weights in the example), then index it to 100.

    This results in a single aggregated score reflecting the overall performance gap relative to the combined targets of the underlying indicators.

    Why This Matters

    Index indicators help ServiceNow customers quickly determine if combined performance metrics meet targets, clarifying ambiguous situations where individual indicators show mixed results. They enable actionable insights and simplified dashboards by presenting a consolidated performance score.

    Additional Considerations

    • Indicators without targets or with zero targets cannot be included to avoid division errors.
    • Index indicators measure the percentage of target achievement across multiple metrics.
    • Related tasks include creating formula indicators and handling breakdowns or time series in contributing indicators.

    You can write a formula to measure what the gap is to the overall target of multiple, combined indicators. Such a formula indicator is called an 'index indicator'.

    The performance of processes, services, groups, and other business entities are often tracked and monitored using more than one indicator. When viewing and analyzing performance of these processes, business services, or workgroups, the overall picture can be confusing and ambiguous. For example:
    • Although the scores for three indicators improved somewhat, the scores for 2 of them are still below target and 1 is above target.
    • The score for one indicator remained more or less the same and is still below target.
    • The score for one indicator did significantly deteriorate, but is fortunately just above target.
    Looking at this information, the answers to the following questions are not clear:
    • Is the overall performance of the process/service/group still at or above the desired level?
    • Did the overall performance improve?

    An index indicator can answer these questions. With an index indicator, the scores of multiple indicators are aggregated into one score. It is a weighted average of several indicators. If the weighted sum of these indicators is improving, the calculated score of the index formula goes up. As with any other indicator, the index indicator shows if the score is good or not and if the score has improved or not.

    The principle behind an index indicator is to calculate a score value indexed to 100 for each indicator. When you have these indexed scores, you are mathematically allowed to calculate an overall average of them.

    To be included in an index indicator, an indicator must have a direction and a target. The basic formula to calculate the indexed score for an indicator that has a Maximize direction is:
    100 + (((actual score - target) / target) * 100)
    For indicators that have a Minimize direction, the formula is:
    100 - (((actual score - target) / target) * 100)

    If you are weighting the indicators evenly, you can index the final aggregation to 100 instead of indexing the individual indicators to 100.

    You can use methods of the PAFormulaUtils() API to get the gap between score and target for the indicator from the Analytics Hub. For more information, see Get analytics methods in formulas:
    pa.getGap(indicator, On date) / pa.getGlobalTarget(indicator, On date)

    Because of the different operator for the different direction, if the score of an underlying indicator is improving (up or down), the index indicator score is increasing. Therefore, always set the direction of the index indicator to Maximize.

    If no target value is set for an indicator, use a norm value instead. Indicators that have a target or norm value equal to 0 cannot be used in the index indicator, because it would require dividing by 0.

    Set a target of 100 for each index indicator. This target is the calculated, overall, indexed score if all underlying indicators have an actual score equal to their target or norm value.

    An index indicator is measuring what the gap is to the overall target of multiple, combined indicators. It is measuring the 'Percentage of Target Achievement'.

    Index indicator using PAFormulaUtils() methods

    In the following example, you want a single index that aggregates the gap between score and global target for the following indicators:
    • The percentage of incidents that are overdue.
    • The average age of the last update of open incidents.
    • The total number of open incidents.
    To get this single index, you follow these steps to produce an index indicator:
    1. You navigate to Performance Analytics > Formula Indicators and click New. Index indicators are a use case of formula indicators.
    2. You give the indicator a meaningful name, such as Aggregate incident gap.
    3. Because you are creating an index indicator, you set the Direction to Maximize.
    4. In the Formula field, you use the Browse for a method and Browse for an indicator functions to create the following formula:
      var a = pa.getGap($[[% of open overdue incidents]], score_start) / pa.getGlobalTarget($[[% of open overdue incidents]],score_start);
var b = pa.getGap($[[Average age of last update of open incidents]], score_start) / pa.getGlobalTarget($[[Average age of last update of open incidents]], score_start);
var c = pa.getGap($[[Number of open incidents]], score_start) / pa.getGlobalTarget($[[Number of open incidents]], score_start);
var res = 100 - (100 * (a + b + c) / 3);
res;
      The three indicators are weighted equally, so the aggregation is indexed to 100 instead of the individual indicators.