This page outlines instructions to configure your Observer properties, as well as actions, in ServiceNow. Observer actions are a way to track any number of metrics on your ServiceNow instance. These metrics are packed into messages and sent through MBS that you can access through your Observer portal.
- Log into your ServiceNow instance and navigate to Perspectium > Observer > Properties.
- Select Enable all script actions when running Start All Jobs in order to enable all script actions when running Start All Jobs for Observer. If not selected, then any script actions that are disabled will not be automatically restarted when Start All Jobs is ran.
Enable/disable other properties as desired. Here's a description of available properties:
Property
Description
Enable a time period daily when Observer will not send data Only allows data to be sent over to your Observer at a specified time.
Enable limiting the maximum number of Observer messages in the Outbound Messages Limit the number of Observer messages in your outbound message with a specified number. Include usernames/email addresses in top ten health check results Allow user names and email addresses to be included in data sent to the Integration Mesh for displaying in the Observer Health Check.
Since the Health Check queries for metrics from your instance like top ten SQL queries ran, these queries can include your username or email address in there and will be sent to the Mesh if you select this feature.
Otherwise these metrics will be sent with a generic metric name such as Slow SQL query 3 if this feature is not selected.
- If you want certain script actions to not be recreated when running Start All Jobs, you can prepend "X_" to the tag of the corresponding Event Subscription
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To make changes to any Observer actions, follow these steps:
- Log into your ServiceNow instance and navigate to Perspectium > Observer > Actions.
- Click the name of the Observer action you want to modify.
- Actions will only execute if their active flag is set to true. You may de-activate the metrics which you do not care about without impacting any of the other metrics. Select or deselect the Active checkbox to make this change.
NOTE: Start All Jobs will re-active the scheduled jobs responsible for processing these actions, but it will NOT re-activate any of your de-activated actions. The same logic applies for the Stop All Jobs.
Find below a breakdown of all available Observer actions:
Tracking Tasks
Action | Description | Purpose | Interval |
|---|---|---|---|
Active Requests with Closed Items | Will poll the request table for those which have requested items which are no longer active. | Keep track of requests which are no longer valid/necessary. | Hourly |
Caller is deactivated on incidents | Will poll the incident table for active records whose caller is no longer active | To track the count of incidents where the caller is no longer valid | Hourly |
Approval on Closed Tasks | Will poll the Approval table for approval requests on an inactive task | Keep track of approvals which were not completed in time or properly. | Hourly |
Approver is deactivated | Will poll the Approval table for approval requests on where the assigned approver is inactive | Keep track of approvals which were not assigned properly. | Hourly |
Open Tasks with Assigned to Deactivated | Will poll the Task table for those which are assigned to an inactive user | To track when tasks are improperly assigned. Can also be easily modified to track the count of unassigned tasks. | Hourly |
Users and Access
Action | Description | Purpose | Interval |
|---|---|---|---|
Local User Accounts | Will poll the User table (sys_user) for a count of local users, by keying off the “source” column. | Track the growth of local users on an instance. | Daily |
External User Accounts | Will poll the User table (sys_user) for a count of external users, by keying off the “source” column. | Track the growth of external users on an instance. | Daily |
Inactive Users | Will poll the User table (sys_user) for a count of user's who have not logged in the last 60 days | Track user access/retention on an instance. | Daily |
Aggregate Active User Roles | Will aggregate the data for the count of user's who have been granted each role (sys_user_has_role) | To track how much access has been granted to certain areas of the instance. | Daily |
Application Access Count | Will aggregate the data for the count of user's who have accessed certain applications, per application. Done through polling the app usage table (ua_app_usage) | To track the traffic of each application | On Interval |
Activity and Response Metrics
Action | Description | Purpose | Interval |
|---|---|---|---|
Import Set Queue | Over the last 60 seconds how many import sets (sys_import_set) are in each state (processed/loading/loaded) | Track how “backed up” the instance is in processing its import sets. | On Interval |
Import Set Run Queue | Over the last 60 seconds track the counts of all the states of the current Import Set Runs (sys_import_set_runs) | Track the current processing of the Import Sets. | On Interval |
Customer Updates | Over the last 60 seconds how many customer updates were made (those which are tracked in sys_update_xml) | Track how much work is being performed on the instance. | On Interval |
Email Queue | Over the last 60 seconds track how many emails (sys_email) are in each state are in the instance. | Track how many emails you are generating compared to how quickly you are sending them out. | On Interval |
Observe Nodes | Track the computing/sql metrics of each node (as well as averaged) on the instance | Track the CPU usage, response metrics, SQL response metrics, available semaphores, worker threads, etc. Type “stats.do” in the filter navigator for an example. | On Interval |
Other
Action | Description | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
Run on Login Failed | Ran when the event “login.failure” is fired | Track login failures on an instance as well as the common users which see this. |
Daily Health Check | Ran nightly to capture a common set of data. | You can read more about the metrics here. |
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Next, you may want to customize the default settings in Observer.