Dashboards for ServiceNow

For ServiceNow instances, Quality Clouds displays the results of the scans in the following dashboards:

Executive - Quality overview

This is an executive dashboard whose aim is to give at first sight the quality status of the platform with the Quality Clouds for ServiceNow KPIs.

The Executive dashboard covers the metrics for apps with issues and affected area (scalability, upgradeability, security, performance, maintainability, manageability). In the below image, notice the numbers in green colour within each widget. These are the results of the average of all the scans in the last quarter, excluding the most and least configured instances (i.e, the extremes).

Application overview 

The application overview dashboard is aimed to provide insights about the quality for each application developed/configured in ServiceNow.

Instance profiling 

High-level profile view of your instance, which includes all the relevant aggregated KPIs.

Open Source Libraries

This table displays a list of well-known Open Source packages that were detected in the instance.

Application Scoping

The table below displays information of ServiceNow application scoping, which protects applications by restricting access to their files and data:

• Global Scope: A special application scope that identifies applications intended to be accessible to all other global applications.
• Scoped App: Data restricted to a specific application.

Most configured areas 

When defining the testing strategy or understanding where the effort has been placed, this dashboard gives insights on this topic. It shows the number of configuration elements added or modified by application. It also helps companies to understand where they need more resources and which sort of them (e.g. if we see change management quite configured, we might need SMEs on that area) or which applications might need more maintenance work.

Time machine (evolution dashboard)

A Time Machine report shows the evolution of the quality in the platform.

In this dashboard you can find the following metrics:

• Details of the scan (date, target instance)

• Overall summary of tech debt, total number of issues and overall QoC

• Evolution of the technical debt over time

• Evolution of the QoC over time

• Evolution of new functionality over time (new configurations added/deleted)

Evolution of issues 

A report that shows the evolution of the quality in the platform viewed by the number of issues.

In this dashboard you can find the following metrics:

• Details of the scan (date, target instance)

• Overall summary of tech debt, total number of issues and overall QoC

• Issues introduced over time - it can be drilled-down by app or groups of apps

• Technical debt over time
• Issues grouped by last update

Team

The team dashboard is your existing data classified by developers or teams of developers. There are three main tables with an amplitude of information:

• List of items to review by ''Modified by'': a table with information about the developer(s) engagement with each issue type.
• Configuration Elements by type & created by: a table with a list of the developer(s) issued by CE type.
• Configuration Elements created / modified per developer: a filtered table with in-depth information filtered by developer(s).
• Number of Configuration Elements created per Developer (Productivity pie)
  
• Configuration Elements created over time (timeline)
  

Code monitor 

The code monitor dashboard is a parallel rendering of two instances. The aim for this dashboard is to draw a comparison between two instances. There is an option to export the data as a .csv file.

Compare issues

This report allows the comparison of findings across different scans. In successive scans, this dashboard is useful to easily comprehend which areas and best practices have been solved (or where issues have increased).

In this dashboard you can find the following metrics:

• Details of the scan (date, target instance)

• Overall summary of tech debt, total number of issues and overall QoC

• When selecting two or more dates and the best practices, it shows the graphic with the comparison (issues by type and dates)

Compare multiple instances

The multiple instances comparison dashboard for ServiceNow is the perfect command and control panel to ensure that your instances are aligned. This is the ideal tool for a release manager who wishes to manage multiple instances. It contains also information about the configuration elements added into each instance as well as the number of integrations for each of them. 

To understand the meaning of each metric, go to the section above about the Application overview dashboard.

Upgradeability 

The upgradeability dashboard is particularly useful to avoid problems during ServiceNow version upgrades. The dashboard shows a list of all Out of the Box elements which have been modified in your instance. These configuration elements may be affected in a future upgrade, in which case it will be necessary to manually review them, and decide on the appropriate action.

By monitoring the information displayed on this dashboard, you can question the need to modify an Out of the Box element as soon as such a modification is performed, rather than having to wait a few months until the next upgrade cycle.

The dashboard is made up of the following sections:

Graph for out of the box modifications 

This section summarizes the OOTB modifications detected in the instance over time. 

Detailed information for out of the box modifications 

This section visualizes the OOTB modifications detected in the instance - per developer, per type and per application.

List of detected Out of the Box changes

This list shows the details of the Out of the Box Configuration Elements which have been modified in the instance. It is possible to filter the list by Configuration Element Type and by the user id of the developer who last modified the Configuration Element.

The graph for out of the box elements affected in future upgrades

List of out of the box elements affected in future upgrades

This list shows the OOTB modifications which will be affected in upcoming upgrades. Note that this list is based on a ServiceNow instance with the following plugins installed. So you may see some skipped records in your instance if it includes plugins not in the above list. Also, Configuration Element types not included in a scan will not be highlighted in this list, but they should be or priority 3 or below, since all the code Configuration Elements are included.

The list contains the following columns:

• CE Type: The configuration Element type.

• Application: The Service Now plugin which is associated with the Configuration Element.

• CE Name: The name of the Configuration Element. 
• Updated By: The id of the developer who last modified the Configuration Element. 
• Updated On: The date and time at which the Configuration Element was last modified.
• Update Action: The action which will be performed by the Upgrade. Normally this will be either Update, Delete, or Revert.
• CE Upgrade Priority: The priority which ServiceNow assigns to the change, with 1 being the highest priority and 5 being lowest. This link describes the criteria which ServiceNow use to assign the Upgrade priority based on the Configuration Element Type.

Integrations 

This report lists the web services defined in your instance with the date and developer. It can be used to do housekeeping as well as to understand the configuration when we want to compare with other instances. It contains all SOAP and REST messages defined in the platform.

• SOAP message: Simple Object Access Protocol. It is an XML-based messaging protocol for exchanging information among computers.
  
• REST message: REST Web Services make use of HTTP protocols as a medium of communication between client and server.

Best Practices analysis 

This dashboard provides you with a comprehensive list of violations by type, which can be filtered by 4 levels of severity issues, Impact Area and specific Best Practices.

Application Governance 

The Application Governance dashboard monitors the information for every individual set of applications. 

Some of the definitions for key metric categories can be appreciated here: 

New LoC analyzed: New lines of code are the lines of code added to the instance without considering any OOB (out-of-the-box) changes. The comparison is according to the scan date selected in the box above.

Global scope: this category is the result of scan instance(s) that doesn't apply to a single application.

The different categories of applications listed provide you information about the number of CE and LoC analyzed. 

In the Select app section of the dashboard, you can filter through the different applications and view the CE types in a table. Additional information with a list of CEs can be viewed in the last table with an option to export files in .csv format.

Performance 

The performance dashboard aggregates information about the performance related issues in the code together with slow transactions in server and client side.  It is used to pin point issues by using static code analysis and data from the ServiceNow transaction tables. The Client Slow transactions is the dataset of 1 month transactions that took longer than 1 second to complete. 

Data Privacy 

The data privacy dashboard can provide an assemblage of collected or processed personal data for use.

In the Data Privacy dashboard you can view the ServiceNow application and view the Affected Element Name by browsing through the following table. 

The categories in the table are defined in the following sections:

• ServiceNow Application: List of applications with the issues raised. The applications are any of the functions (communication and movement of data) between the platform and external applications, data sources, and/or services.
• Affected Element Name: A conflicting code factor that is a single part of the application.
• Line Number: Number of the line that you can view the affected element.
• Link to Element: URL linking to the issue. 
• Best Practice: Useful principle of recommendations to solve the issue(s). 
• Configuration Element Type: Displays of the result of completed scans in your instance by type.

The Data Privacy dashboard covers the following metrics:

• Analysis date: Date of the last systematic examination and evaluation of data or information.
• Lines of code analyzed: Lines of source code measurement evaluated. 
• New lines of code: The recent number of new lines of source code measurement.
• CE analyzed: Number of Configuration Elements (CE) evaluated. Configuration Elements are business rules, client scripts, dictionary entries, dictionary entries overrides, email notifications, UI actions, access controls, UI policies and data policies.
• Potential number of PII data: The total number of viable use of PII or Personally Identifiable Information. PII is data that can be used to contact, identify or locate a specific individual, either by itself or combined with other sources that are easily accessed. 
• Potential use of private data: This is the viable use of information that are not made available to the general public, such as passwords and financial account details. Traffic is kept secure by carving out a virtual private data network with addressing, encryption and authentication features.
• Severity issues: Several topics may trigger severity issues in the calculation (results) of the Quality of Cloud indicator. The different levels of severity issues are calculated on the global count of issues associated with each scan. For more information please click on the URL link about the different levels of severity and what some of the causes may be here. 
  
  

Catalog Overview 

The Catalog Overview dashboard provides an overview of all the Catalogs configured in the ServiceNow instance. All the main Configuration Element types and issues related to Catalog elements are included in this dashboard.

The main indicators in this dashboard include:

Aggregate Indicators

• Number of Active and Inactive Catalogs.
• Number of Active and Inactive Catalog Items, including a breakdown of items created from the Item Designer tool.
• Number of Active and Inactive Catalog Categories.
• Number of Variables and Variable Sets.

Catalog Item Type Breakdown

A breakdown of all Items by Catalog and Item type is also provided, including again the number of items created from the Item Designer tool. Note: Any Item which is not associated with a Catalog is listed under the "Orphaned Items Catalog", and should be investigated.  

Code Element Type Breakdown

The Catalog-specific code elements (Catalog Client Scripts, Catalog UI Policies, Catalog UI Policy Actions, Record Producers and Workflows) are also highlighted in the Overview Dashboard.

Duplicate Variables

Catalog Variables whose names match or are similar are shown, grouped by the first member of the group (using a lexicographic sort on the variable name). Many groups, or groups with a lot of members, indicate that some refactoring could be beneficial, using Catalog Variable Sets.

Issues

Any issue detected on a Catalog-specific Configuration Element is also shown in this dashboard.

Catalog Details 

The Catalog Details dashboard provides a detailed view of each of the Catalogs configured in the ServiceNow instance.

The main indicators in this dashboard include:

Maximum Category Depth. This indicates the number of nested Categories present in the selected Catalog. A depth higher than 3 does not contribute to a good user experience, and is highlighted in red.

Catalog Categories. For the selected Catalog, all its categories are shown, including their parent category, and the number of active / inactive items in each category. The use of Item Designer items is also highlighted. 

Catalog Items. Each item in the selected Catalog is shown individually. A link is provided so that the definition of the Item can be accessed on the ServiceNow instance.

Cumulative number of Items. This chart shows the cumulative number of items in the selected Catalog, over time. 

Customization vs configuration

The dashboard helps you identify the extent to which your instance is customized versus configured. The more customized an instance is, the more difficult is its maintenance. 

Customizations are material modifications to the out of the box behavior of the system, usually through the introduction of code which modifies default system functionality and which can introduce technical debt if best practices are not followed. 

Configurations are changes to the behavior of the system in ways which are less likely to introduce technical debt (i.e. clicks, not code) and that do not impact its upgradeability.

The dashboard also highlights which customized items are modifications to out-of-the-box (OOTB) elements. These impact the instance upgradeability directly, and should always be avoided. 

Scoped applications, whether developed in-house or downloaded from the ServiceNow store are also shown in the dashboard, but they do not influence the customization vs configuration ratio, since they extend the capabilities of the instance rather than modifying them.

Lines of code by type shows the distribution of the number of lines of code between customization - i.e. the out of the box modifications and the others, and the extensions.

Alerts overview

The Alerts dashboard provides an overview of all the operational alerts defined on the instance, highlighting the alerts that have been triggered.