ServiceNow – Reporting for the Geneva Generation

Venetia Rook - 9th May 2016

There was a lively discussion at the April 2016 UK SNUG, on the Reporting & Performance Analytics table. It’s no secret that early adopters of ServiceNow have often been
frustrated by the lack of reporting functionality, compared to the riches offered throughout the rest of the platform! From the conversation around the table, it appeared that the goodies unveiled in the Geneva release may well have been overlooked, so welcome to Reporting for the Geneva Generation.

A Big Hello to 4 New Report Types

 

Single Score

Great for Homepages, just note that it doesn’t support any threshold colour changes. Well, you can’t have everything.

 

Heat Map
Heat Map

Heat Map

Just set the minimum and maximum colours and let the system do the rest. The legend can be toggled on/off as required.

Bubble Chart

In this example, the chart shows open incidents, priority v state. The aggregation within the bubble (grouping) is the reassignment count. Another handy feature that has been introduced (not just for this chart type I hasten to add) is the ability to have multiple groupings on 1 chart.

Fanfare, drum roll, flag waving, a personal favourite…at last…the Multi-Level Pivot.

Multiple rows and columns to slice and dice your data, with the added bonus of conditional formatting to highlight figures above set values and, as if that wasn’t enough, multiple ordered rules for this, so you can control which one fires first.

Performance Analytics Perks

As we know, Performance Analytics provides visibility of trends, targets, threshold warnings, service performance etc, etc, but the PA Plugin also gives a couple of added benefits to Operational Reporting:

 

Multiple Data Series

You can now visualise up to 5 data series on one chart, combining different chart types (Column, Line, Area, Spline) with different tables (e.g. Problem and Incident) and you can display results against the 2nd Y Axis.

 

 

User Interactivity

This is a cracking feature. Basically, you add filters to a page for the end users to apply themselves and as long as you have ticked the box on the widget to follow the filter, as if by magic, all of the charts on the page will reflect the filtered value(s). No more building lots of reports for different dimensions!

 

Icing on the Cake

  • Donuts can now be legend-free, with a big fat number in the centre and making use of the hover over for the breakdowns.
  • Choose your chart colour schemes from the palette or go wild and define your own.
  • Add reports directly to Homepages without the need to create gauges first.

So what are you still doing here? Time to dust off those KPIs and jazz up your reporting.