Performance is paramount for any enterprise platform, and ServiceNow is no exception. Ensuring a fast, responsive user experience is critical for productivity and user satisfaction. However, like any complex system, ServiceNow instances can sometimes encounter performance challenges. This case study highlights how our team successfully navigated and resolved a critical performance issue for a customer, ensuring their regional users could work without disruption.
The Challenge: A Severity 1 Performance Incident
Our customer reported a Severity 1 issue impacting a specific team in one of their regional offices. Users in this region experienced significant problems with a key form in ServiceNow – it was either not loading completely, missing certain fields, or exhibiting extremely high response times that breached critical Service Level Agreements (SLAs). This directly impacted their ability to perform essential tasks, causing frustration and hindering business operations in that region.
Our technical team immediately began investigating, reviewing recent script changes and configurations that might impact form loading and performance. Initial checks, however, did not reveal an obvious cause for the localized performance degradation.
Investigation: Pinpointing the Source
The fact that the issue was confined to users in a specific region was a crucial clue. This suggested that the problem might not be a global configuration error or a widespread script issue, but potentially something related to the infrastructure serving that particular set of users.
Working closely with the customer’s IT team, we gathered more specific data on the affected users and the timings of the performance degradation. This regional pattern led us to suspect a potential issue with the ServiceNow infrastructure node serving that geographic area. We escalated the issue to ServiceNow support, providing them with the detailed observations, performance metrics, and the specific user group and form affected.
The Solution: ServiceNow Support Intervention
Collaborating with the ServiceNow support team proved to be the key to resolving this Severity 1 issue. After their own in-depth analysis of the infrastructure components serving the affected region, ServiceNow support identified and confirmed an issue with a specific node. They were able to perform the necessary maintenance and fixes on that node.
Once the fix was deployed by ServiceNow support, the performance for the regional team immediately returned to normal. The form loaded quickly and completely, and response times were back within acceptable limits, resolving the Severity 1 incident and restoring productivity for the affected users.
Broader Context: Understanding Performance Issues
While this specific case was resolved by a node fix, performance issues in ServiceNow can stem from various sources. Beyond infrastructure nodes, we have also experienced and addressed issues related to:
- Workspaces (New UI): Performance challenges specific to the newer Workspace interfaces.
- Memory Issues: Problems related to memory allocation and usage within the instance.
- Slow Queries: Inefficient database queries impacting the speed of data retrieval and form loading.
As highlighted by resources like the Perspectium blog on slow ServiceNow instances, other common symptoms of performance degradation can include slow dashboards, inability to connect, unresponsive instances, and generally slower operations across specific applications or the entire instance. Identifying the exact cause requires a systematic approach, considering everything from client-side scripts and browser issues to server-side logic, database performance, and underlying infrastructure.
Lessons Learned: Collaboration and Targeted Investigation
This case study underscores several key takeaways:
- Regional Focus is Key: When performance issues are isolated to a specific user group or region, investigate factors that might be geographically specific, including network paths and the ServiceNow infrastructure nodes serving that area.
- Leverage ServiceNow Support: For suspected infrastructure-level problems or issues that cannot be resolved through standard instance troubleshooting (scripts, queries, configuration), engaging ServiceNow support is crucial. They have the tools and visibility to diagnose and fix underlying platform issues.
- Thorough Investigation: While the solution was ultimately infrastructure-related, the initial steps of reviewing scripts and configurations were still necessary to rule out other potential causes. A systematic approach is vital.
Conclusion
Successfully resolving performance issues in ServiceNow requires a combination of in-house expertise and effective collaboration with ServiceNow support. In this instance, a critical regional performance problem was quickly and effectively addressed by identifying an infrastructure node issue. By understanding the potential sources of performance bottlenecks and knowing when to engage the platform vendor, organizations can ensure their ServiceNow instance remains a high-performing asset, delivering efficient digital workflows to all users.