CAS-PA Sample Questions & Answers
Three areas tie for the heaviest weight: setting up indicators and sources, configuring breakdowns and their mappings, and building visualizations and dashboards, alongside platform architecture, collecting the underlying data, and advanced administration.
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- Question 1Intermediate
Administration and Advanced Implementation Solutions · Content Pack Management
True or False: After deploying a Performance Analytics content pack, such as 'Incident Management - Premium', any modifications made to the out-of-the-box indicators, breakdowns, or widgets will be overwritten during the next platform upgrade.
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Correct answer: B
False. ServiceNow's development best practices recommend copying and customizing (or extending) out-of-the-box components rather than modifying them directly. However, even if you do modify a content pack component, the platform upgrade process tracks these changes as 'Customer Updates'. During an upgrade, you can review conflicts and choose to retain your customizations rather than having them overwritten by the new version.
- Question 2Beginner
Configure Breakdowns and Breakdown Sources · Bucket Groups
A business analyst needs to create a breakdown on the 'Incident' table using the 'Category' field. However, they want to group several granular categories into broader business-facing buckets. For example, 'Hardware', 'Mouse', and 'Keyboard' should all be grouped into an 'IT Hardware' bucket. Which Performance Analytics feature is designed for this type of grouping?
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Correct answer: C
Bucket Groups are specifically designed to group multiple values from a field into a single, logical bucket for reporting and analysis. This allows for creating higher-level categorizations without altering the source data or writing complex scripts.
- Question 3Intermediate
Administration and Advanced Implementation Solutions · Spotlight Configuration
The Spotlight feature is being configured to rank assignment groups based on their incident resolution performance. The criteria involve a weighted score based on three indicators: '# of Breached SLAs', 'Average Resolution Time', and 'Reassignment Count'. Which component within the Spotlight configuration is used to define the relative importance of these three indicators in the final ranking score?
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Correct answer: B
Within a Spotlight Group, you define multiple criteria, each based on an indicator. Each criterion has a 'Weight' field. This weight determines how much that specific indicator contributes to the overall calculated score for the ranked items. A higher weight means the indicator has more influence on the final ranking.
- Question 4Advanced
Configure Indicators and Indicator Sources · Indicator Aggregation
A PA administrator needs to create an indicator that counts the number of distinct users who have approved a change request each month. The source table is 'sysapproval_approver'. Which combination of settings on the automated indicator record would achieve this?
Show answer & explanation
Correct answer: C
To count the number of unique or distinct values in a field, the
COUNT DISTINCTaggregate function is used. By applying this aggregate to the 'approver' field (which references the user record), the data collection job will count each unique user only once within the specified time period, correctly calculating the number of distinct approvers. - Question 5Intermediate
Architecture and Deployment · Custom Business Calendars
A hospital is using Performance Analytics to track patient admission cycle times. They follow a custom 4-4-5 accounting calendar (two 4-week periods followed by one 5-week period per quarter) which does not align with the standard Gregorian calendar. To analyze trends based on their fiscal periods, what must be configured?
Show answer & explanation
Correct answer: B
The Performance Analytics application provides the ability to create Custom Business Calendars. This feature allows organizations to define their own time periods, such as a 4-4-5 fiscal calendar. Once the custom calendar and its periods are defined, indicators can be associated with it, enabling score collection and analysis that aligns perfectly with the organization's fiscal reporting structure.
- Question 6BeginnerSelect 2
Data Visualization and Dashboards · Widget Configuration
A PA admin is building a dashboard and adds a time series widget. The admin wants to display a dynamic trendline that shows the average score over the visible period. Which two settings within the widget configuration are used to enable and style this trendline? (Select TWO)
Show answer & explanation
Correct answers: A, C
The 'Show average' checkbox is the primary control for enabling the display of the average line on the time series chart.
Once the average line is enabled, the 'Average line color' setting allows the administrator to customize its appearance to fit the dashboard's color scheme.
- Question 7Advanced
Configure Breakdowns and Breakdown Sources · Breakdown Mapping
You are tasked with creating a breakdown for an incident indicator based on the user's continent. The user's location is on their user record [sys_user], and the location record [cmn_location] contains the continent. The incident table's 'caller_id' field links to the user record. What is the most efficient way to configure the breakdown mapping?
Here is the data relationship:
[incident] table -> 'caller_id' field -> [sys_user] table -> 'location' field -> [cmn_location] table -> 'continent' fieldShow answer & explanation
Correct answer: C
Breakdown mappings support dot-walking to traverse relationships between tables. This is the most efficient and maintainable method, as it directly uses the platform's existing data relationships without requiring custom fields, business rules, or performance-intensive scripts. The mapping would be configured on the Incident table, using the field path
caller_id.location.continent. - Question 8Beginner
Data Visualization and Dashboards · Analytics Hub
A manager reviews a time series chart for 'New Critical Incidents' and sees a significant, unexpected spike last Tuesday. They want to understand the root cause of this anomaly. In the Analytics Hub, which feature allows the manager to view the individual records that contributed to the score for that specific day?
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Correct answer: C
A key feature of the Analytics Hub is the ability to interact with data visualizations. Clicking on a specific data point (like the score for a single day on a time series chart) will 'drill down' and display the underlying list of records that were used to calculate that score, allowing for direct investigation of anomalies.
- Question 9Intermediate
Architecture and Deployment · PA vs. Reporting
What is the primary architectural difference between a standard ServiceNow report and a Performance Analytics indicator?
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Correct answer: B
This is the fundamental architectural distinction. A report runs a query against the live, transactional source tables every time it is viewed. A Performance Analytics indicator runs a data collection job that calculates scores and stores them, along with breakdown scores, in dedicated PA score tables. Visualizations then query these optimized score tables, enabling rapid trend analysis without impacting the performance of the source tables.
- Question 10Intermediate
Data Collection · Collection Configuration
A PA data collection job is configured to run daily. However, the business requires that scores for indicators based on financial data should only be collected on the last day of each month. What is the most appropriate way to configure this specific collection requirement?
Show answer & explanation
Correct answer: C
The ServiceNow scheduler, which is used for PA data collection jobs, has flexible scheduling options. To run a job only on the last day of the month, you can configure the job's schedule by setting the 'Run' type to 'Monthly' and then selecting the specific day, including an option for the 'Last day'.
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