ServiceNow Yokohama – Breaking the Two-Dimensional Barrier: a new era for KPI analysis in ServiceNow.
By Mike Turner– Calitii.
Yokohama introduces a new Performance Analytics data model that allows organisations to slice and dice KPIs with more than two concurrent breakdowns. But is it as simple as it sounds?
The Problem:
For years, Performance Analytics (PA) users in ServiceNow have faced a frustrating limitation. While KPIs supported multiple dimensional breakdowns, only two could ever be applied concurrently. This constraint often forced teams to deviate from best practices, requiring them to create multiple redundant indicators instead of designing efficient, multi-purpose KPIs.
A common scenario can be illustrated through a set of simple use cases:
- “I want to trend the volume of tickets resolved”
- “I want to trend the volume of tickets resolved by priority”
- “I want to trend the volume of priority 3 tickets resolved by the Server Team, grouped by contact type (channel)”
Ideally, a PA Admin would create a single indicator with breakdowns for priority, assignment group and contact type (channel). To future-proof the indicator design, they might also include other key reference or choice fields, ensuring the data model is robust enough to anticipate future reporting needs. This setup would provide users with the flexibility to create different combinations based on their specific requirements.
However, although a KPI could include all necessary breakdowns, the limitation of only applying two concurrent breakdown filters prevented teams from achieving the third use case above.
The Workaround and Its Challenges:
To circumvent this limitation, teams resorted to duplicating indicator configurations, leading to unnecessary overhead. Instead of maintaining a single indicator for ‘Number of tickets resolved’, organisations ended up with multiple variations:
- ‘Number of tickets resolved
- ‘Number of P1 tickets resolved
- ‘Number of P2 tickets resolved’
- … and so on.
The challenge compounded when dealing with percentage-based KPIs requiring formula indicators. For example, calculating ‘% of tickets resolved within SLA’, typically requires three indicators. The two-dimensional limitation meant exponentially multiplying these indicators to support different combinations.
At Calitii, our Analytics team emphasises best practices, including clear naming conventions and minimizing unnecessary configurations. However, many organizations attempt to deploy Performance Analytics without maintaining proper configuration hygiene, resulting in redundant KPIs, user confusion, inefficiencies, and increased maintenance costs.
By addressing this limitation, ServiceNow’s new PA enhancement provides a long overdue solution, allowing teams to streamline their KPI management and improve data-driven decision-making.
The ServiceNow Yokohama Solution:
Yokohama introduces a new data architecture model for Performance Analytics based on a Change Data Capture (CDC) process. The goal of the CDC process is to capture data changes from configurable tables optimised for generating scores and time series at run-time.
ServiceNow is transitioning CDC using a phased approach. In Yokohama, the CDC model can run in parallel with the traditional scores-based approach, enabling organisations to slice and dice KPIs by multiple combinations, simultaneously, whilst still retaining familiarity with the previous architecture. In future releases, we will see CDC taking a more front-stage presence.
But What’s The Catch? While this is a major advancement, there are a few caveats:
- Requires migration to the new RaptorDB PRO – The high-performance database designed for speed and scale.
- Only available in Platform Analytics– not Classic Analytics Hub or PA Widgets.
- Activation required– both at the plugin and indicator level.
- Historical data limitations– data in the new model is only stored from the activation date forward.
- No support for domain-separated instances.
- Scripted indicators are not supported.
Analytics in ServiceNow is evolving rapidly. Maximising your investment and leveraging tools like Performance Analytics, KPI Signals, Process Mining and GenAI to unlock cost-saving insights is crucial. As with the broader transition of classic reporting to Platform Analytics, staying informed about new enhancements is essential to understanding their impact on your organisation.
Our experts at Calitii work closely with the ServiceNow product management team and can help your organisation unlock the full power of analytics. Stay tuned for more insights by following our articles at Calitii or get in touch directly if we can help.
