See How a Process Is Doing
Goal
Find out why a process is slow, where its runs get stuck, and how its decisions usually go.
The difference between this and Runs
Runs answers what happened in this one. Insights answers what keeps happening. Open Runs when somebody says "this request has not moved"; open Insights when somebody says "approvals take forever".
Opening it
From a process, choose Insights on the rail. Pick a period at the top right — the last 7, 30 or 90 days. Everything on the screen is about that window.
The four numbers at the top
How much this process got through: how many runs started, how many finished, how many are running now, and how long a run usually takes end to end.
Started and finished do not have to match. A run that began last month and finished this week counts in finished only, which is the honest answer to "how much did we get through".
Where work waits
The most useful part of the screen, and the reason it separates two numbers that most reports add together:
| Column | What it means |
|---|---|
| Usually waits | From the task appearing in somebody's list to somebody picking it up. |
| Slowest tenth waits | The same, for the slowest one in ten — how bad the tail is. |
| Usually takes | From picking it up to finishing it. |
Slow waiting and slow working need opposite fixes. A step that is picked up straight away and then takes four hours is a hard step — a long form, a report to read, a decision that needs thought; the fix is to simplify it or split it. A step that sits for two days and is then done in ten minutes is a busy or absent person — the fix is to widen who it goes to, add a deadline, or find out who is away. One "how long did it take" number would call both of them slow and point at neither fix.
Beside them: how many are open now, when the oldest open one appeared, how many are done, how many ran late, and how many were escalated.
Why these are medians, not averages
One approval left over a holiday weekend moves an average far enough to make a healthy step look broken. The median says what usually happens; the 90th percentile says how bad it gets. Those are the two you can act on.
Showing people instead of steps
The screen opens grouped by step, and it names nobody. A step that waits three days is something you can fix, and finding that out should not hand you a ranking of your colleagues.
Tick Show people instead of steps when you need it — someone is away, a queue is stuck on one person, work is unevenly spread. The same columns, asked of people instead of steps. A task offered to four people appears under all four, because it was in all four lists.
Where runs stall
Runs that are still going with nobody holding them and no timer to wake them. Each row carries the step it stopped at and the reason, so you can tell from the list whether you need to open it.
A run waiting on a timer is not here. A process told to wait a day looks exactly like a stuck one from the outside, and listing it as broken every night is how a list like this gets ignored.
Click a row's date to open that run.
How decisions go
Which button each step ends by, and how many times. This is what answers "how often does this get rejected".
By the clock is the column to read next to it: how many of those the deadline pressed rather than a person. "Rejected because somebody decided to" and "rejected because nobody looked at it in three days" are the same outcome and completely different facts — a step with a high number here needs a longer deadline or more people, not a different decision.
Where the numbers come from
Nothing is scheduled and nothing is copied. Every number is worked out from what a run already recorded — when each task appeared, was taken and was finished; when each run started and ended. That means a report is never out of date, and it also means a process that has not run yet has nothing to show.
Troubleshooting
- Everything is empty. Nothing has run in this period. Widen it, or start a run.
- A step shows "—" for its times. Nothing at that step has been finished yet, so there is no usual time to report. A dash is deliberate: a zero there would read as "instant".
- Waiting looks enormous on one step. Check whether it is assigned to anybody — a task offered to nobody waits until an administrator gives it to somebody. The Runs screen for one of those runs will say so.
Related scenarios
- Watch a process run.
- Design a process.