Which Indicators Should Be Excluded from a Historical Collection?
Short answer
AD Average age of open incidents Number of incidents with no assignment group
Question
Key Takeaways
This question tests your ability to distinguish between trendable historical metrics and volatile real-time snapshots, commonly trapping candidates who confuse sliding time windows with cumulative counts.
Historical collections in ServiceNow Performance Analytics track stable, cumulative metrics for long-term trend analysis, explicitly excluding volatile or date-dependent indicators like average age and unassigned ticket counts. Community consensus and official PDI templates confirm that options A and D are unsuitable for historical data import jobs.
Common mistake: Many candidates select CD, mistakenly believing that any metric referencing a specific timeframe (like 'last 5 days') must be excluded, while incorrectly assuming unassigned incidents are stable enough for historical tracking.
Expert Analysis
Why the Answer Is Correct
Historical collections are optimized for capturing data points at fixed intervals to reveal long-term trends. Indicators like average age (Option A) constantly drift as time progresses, making historical aggregation meaningless and computationally expensive. Similarly, unassigned incident counts (Option D) fluctuate wildly based on real-time workload distribution and reassignment cycles, which destroys trend accuracy over time. Therefore, both are explicitly excluded from historical collections in favor of real-time or current-state evaluations.
Why the Other Options Are Wrong
New incidents (Option B) represent a cumulative count that grows predictably over time, making it ideal for historical trending. Metrics tracking updates within a recent window (Option C) are also routinely included in historical collections because they measure consistent activity patterns rather than absolute current states. Both B and C align with Performance Data Importer best practices for scheduled historical jobs.
Community Comment Notes
Multiple high-voted comments confirm that B and C are actively used in PDI with existing historical jobs, leaving A and D as the correct exclusions. As noted in the top-rated community feedback, age calculations rely solely on system timestamps and do not benefit from historical storage, while sliding-window metrics remain valuable for spotting recent activity shifts. Candidates consistently validate AD through hands-on PDI template review.
Official Reference
- https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/paris-performance-analytics/page/product/performance-analytics-administration/concept/c_HistoricalCollections.html
- https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/paris-performance-analytics/page/product/performance-analytics-administration/task/t_PerformanceDataImporterOverview.html
These links open the official vendor documentation in a new tab.
Exam Strategy
When evaluating PA collection types, always ask if the metric provides a meaningful long-term trend; if it relies on continuous time passage or real-time operational states, route it to a Real-Time Collection instead. Memorize the default PDI indicator sets to quickly recognize which metrics belong where during the exam.
Community Votes
50% of anonymous learners picked answer AD. Votes are pick records left by other test-takers — they are not the verified answer.
Discussion 3 contributions
Compiled from public community threads and reader submissions, lightly edited for clarity. Handles and vote tallies are shown as recorded, and comments reflect the views of individual contributors.
From public community threads 3
-
b3de868 👍 1The indicators that should NOT be included in a Historical Collection are those whose values are likely to change based on the current date or other variables that are not fixed in time. Based on the options provided: A. Average age of open incidents - This indicator's value is dependent on the current date and will change as time progresses, making historical collection inaccurate. C. Number of incidents not updated in the last 5 days - This is a time-sensitive indicator where the set of incidents meeting this criterion will vary from day to day. Both of these indicators rely on a dynamic condition that changes daily, which means their historical data would not be accurate if collected at a later date.
-
PawelK81 👍 1A - Age is just a number and can therefore be added and calulated from Created and Opened fields as per course materials PA Fundamentals - Data Collection B - Just a number of tickets, no associated breakdowns C - Update within 5d intervals would definitely be obscured in a long term time frame D - Risk of re-assignments in a long term time frame
-
xheniinehx 👍 1Number of new incidents Number of open incidents not updated in last 5 days These 2 indicators exist in my PDI and have a historical job associated to them. So the correct answer is AD
Reader comments & corrections
No reader corrections yet — spotted an error or have a note? Share it below.
Related Analysis
Practice All CAS-PA Questions
Access 79 questions with complete answers and detailed explanations.
View Full CAS-PA Practice Test →