Concepts

This section defines concepts and metrics specific to Insights. For general Itential terminology, see the following resources:

• Workflows, jobs, and tasks: See Workflows in Studio
• Trigger types (API, Manual, Event, Schedule): See Triggers in Operations Manager
• Environments: See Environments in Cloud Hub
• Job statuses (Running, Completed, Canceled, Error): See Status definitions in Job Viewer

Root jobs vs child jobs

Insights distinguishes between root jobs and child jobs to provide business-focused analytics.

Root job

A root job is the top-level job in an execution hierarchy. Root jobs are not triggered by other jobs and represent complete business operations.

Why root jobs matter: The Summary Dashboard focuses exclusively on root jobs because these represent the operations your stakeholders care about. Filtering out child jobs provides clean, business-focused metrics rather than technical implementation details.

Child job

A child job is a job triggered by another job as part of a workflow's execution. Child jobs are technical substeps that support the root job's objective.

Example hierarchy:

Root Job: "Provision New Customer" ← Counted in Summary Dashboard metrics
  ├─ Child Job: "Create Database Account" ← Filtered out of Summary Dashboard
  │   └─ Child Job: "Validate Database Connection" ← Nested child job
  ├─ Child Job: "Configure Network Access" ← Filtered out of Summary Dashboard
  └─ Child Job: "Send Welcome Email" ← Filtered out of Summary Dashboard

In Insights: The Summary Dashboard shows root jobs only. The Workflows Overview and Workflow Details pages enable you to toggle between "Root Jobs Only" and "All Jobs" views to analyze both business operations and technical implementation.

Pre-automation time

Pre-automation time is the estimated time required to perform a workflow's tasks manually without automation. You configure this value in Studio at the workflow level.

Pre-automation time enables Insights to:

• Calculate time saved by automation
• Demonstrate ROI with concrete metrics
• Quantify business value for executive reporting

Performance metrics

The following metrics are specific to Insights analytics.

Jobs Run

The total count of jobs executed during the selected time period.

Business value: Measures platform adoption and usage growth. Upward trends indicate increasing automation, while downward trends may signal reliability concerns or reduced confidence.

Completion rate

The percentage of jobs that completed successfully versus those that were canceled.

Jobs in error or running states are not included. This metric measures execution completion, not whether jobs accomplished their intended business outcomes.

Calculation: (Completed jobs / Total jobs) × 100
Where Total jobs = Completed jobs + Canceled jobs

Jobs can reach completion by either completing successfully through their intended path or completing through a defined error transition or failure path.

A declining completion rate indicates that more jobs are being canceled before reaching completion. This may signal workflow design issues, timeout problems, or infrastructure constraints.

Business value: Tracks job completion reliability and identifies when cancellations are increasing, helping you spot workflow issues before they impact operations.

Total runtime

The cumulative execution time of all jobs in the selected time period.

Business value: This metric helps identify performance trends. Runtime increasing with stable job volume indicates performance degradation requiring investigation. Runtime and job volume both increasing proportionally shows healthy growth. Runtime decreasing with stable or increasing job volume proves successful optimization.

Time saved

The cumulative manual effort avoided through automation, calculated by summing pre-automation time for all jobs.

Time saved represents the manual effort eliminated, not the difference between manual time and automation execution time. The value of automation is in eliminating manual work, regardless of how long the automation takes to run.

Calculation: Σ(Pre-automation Time for each job)

Business value: Directly quantifies ROI. Essential for executive reporting, renewal conversations, and justifying automation investments.

P50 runtime

The 50th percentile execution time. Half of all job executions complete faster than this time, and half take longer.

Business value: Median execution times provides more accurate typical performance than average because it's not skewed by outliers. A workflow with a P50 of 60 seconds performs consistently even if occasional jobs take 5 minutes.

Use cases:

• Understanding typical workflow performance
• Setting performance baselines
• Identifying when typical performance degrades

P90 runtime

The 90th percentile execution time. 90% of job executions complete faster than this time.

Business value: Reveals performance consistency and catches edge cases that median misses. The gap between P50 and P90 shows performance variability.

Use cases:

• Setting realistic SLAs (e.g., "90% of jobs complete within P90 time")
• Identifying workflows with occasional performance spikes
• Prioritizing workflows for optimization when P90 is significantly higher than P50

Example:

• P50 = 60 seconds (typical performance is good)
• P90 = 180 seconds (but 10% of jobs take 3x longer)
• Action: Investigate what causes the 10% of slow executions

Time-based concepts

Time bucket and completion time methodology

Jobs are counted in time periods based on their completion time, not their start time.

Why this matters: If you select "Last 30 days," only jobs that completed within those 30 days appear in results.

Implication: When reviewing metrics for a time period, counts reflect when work finished, not when it started.

Percentage change (Δ)

Most metrics display a percentage change indicator, referred to as the "delta" (Δ), comparing the current period to the equivalent previous period.

Symbols:

• Up arrow (▲): Metric increased
  • Green for desirable increases (completion rate, time saved)
  • Gray for neutral metrics (jobs run, runtime)
• Down arrow (▼): Metric decreased
  • Red for undesirable decreases (completion rate, time saved)
  • Gray for neutral metrics (jobs run, runtime)
• Dash (—): No change (0%)
• N/A: No previous period data available for comparison
• New: Previous period value was zero (avoids showing infinity)

Example: Viewing "Last 30 days" compares to the 30 days immediately before that period.