Work with metrics

A metric is a quantifiable measure that you can use to evaluate and track the performance of your processes. Such quantifiable measures can be, for example:

  • durations like the average cycle time

  • percentages like the automation rate

  • amounts like the number of non-conformant cases

  • other aggregations like the net promoter score (NPS) for each activity

To calculate a metric value, SIGNAL code is used. The system executes the code of a metric as needed for the metric aggregation type.

Metric collection

Each process has a metric collection containing all metrics that are available for process analysis and mining. By default, the Average cycle time metric is available in every process.

You can add metrics to the metric collection by assigning them from the metric library or by creating your own metrics.

To access the metric collection, open your process and click Metrics in the side panel.

Metric library

Our metric library provides you with preconfigured metrics. Some of them are agnostic, others are tailored to specific business processes. Some metrics work out of the box, others can contain variables or SIGNAL code that you need to customize.

All metrics in the metric library are managed by SAP Signavio.

Requirements for working with metrics

You can set up and manage metrics for a process when the following requirements are met:

  • The process contains data. Without data, you can't set up metrics.

  • You have SIGNAL knowledge to create your own or customize existing metrics.

Who can work with metrics

All users who have access to your process in SAP Signavio Process Intelligence can work with metrics as follows:

  Manager Analyst Consumer Read more
Add metrics from the library yes yes -

Add from metric library

Edit and delete metrics yes yes -

Edit and delete metrics

Create custom metrics yes yes -

Create a custom metric

Export and import metrics yes yes -

Export and import metrics

Select a source system type in the process settings to provide default values for metric variables yes - - Auto-assign variable values based on the source system
Manage widgets in investigations and dashboards yes yes - Add widgets to a dashboard

Add widgets to an investigation

Add a metric bar with preconfigured widgets to an investigation yes yes - Add metrics to an investigation
Save a SIGNAL query as a new metric in the configuration dialog of the Value widget yes yes - Configure with a SIGNAL query
Show a metric as a value on the Variant Explorer widget yes yes yes

Explore the variants

Where to use metrics

You can configure widgets to display metric values. The widget in which a metric can be used depends on the metric aggregation type. The following table describes the different options.

You can only select metrics of an aggregation type supported by that widget. Metrics aggregated over cases will not appear in the list of available metrics for a widget supporting aggregation over events, and vice versa.

Aggregation type Where and how you can use the metric
Over cases

You can configure the following widgets to display metrics:

The metric is grouped by customer type and city.
Over events

Metrics of this type can be displayed as values in the Process Discovery widget. Read more in section Explore the variants.

When you click the activity, the NPS is shown with up to 2 decimal places. For example, the activity Receive Payment has an NPS of 7.14.

About aggregation types

The metric aggregation types determine how metrics are calculated and where they can be used.

Over cases

Metrics of this type return one value for a group of cases, for example, the average cycle time for all cases in the month of July.

Aggregation input is the standard case level event log, where each case is one record in the log.

When used with variants, for example in the Variant Explorer widget, the metric returns the value for the cases that make up a variant.

SIGNAL code: 

AVG((SELECT LAST(end_time)) - (SELECT FIRST(end_time)))

In this example, the average cycle time for all cases is 15 days and 2 hours.

Over events

Metrics of this type return one value for each event (activity) in the event log, for example, the average customer satisfaction for events.

Aggregation input is the flattened event log, where each event is represented as one record in the log.

When displaying an over events metric in the Process Discovery widget, the metric value is returned for each event in the process diagram.

SIGNAL code:

AVG(IF("Automation Status"='Automated',1,0))*100

In this example, 87% percent of the events are automated.


How filters affect metric results

If filters are applied to investigations, dashboards, or widgets, metrics return the value for the filtered set of cases. When you change a filter, metric values are immediately updated.

Next steps

The metric library

The metric collection

Add metrics to a process

Add metrics to an investigation

Add widgets to an investigation

Metrics overview