Administration and Solutions
About 4% of the CIS-PA exam — see all 6 domains.
Light but real on the exam.
- Roles: Performance Analytics ships dedicated roles. The administrator role (commonly
pa_admin) can configure indicators, sources, breakdowns, jobs, and dashboards; a power-user/analyst role can create personal/shared analytics; a viewer can consume dashboards. Always grant the least privilege that meets the need. Platform Analytics workspace introduces its own role set layered on top of the classic PA roles. - Admin console: the Performance Analytics Admin Console is the central place to manage indicators, sources, breakdowns, jobs, and properties, and to monitor collection health.
- Properties: PA system properties control collection behavior, retention, and feature toggles.
- Solutions/content packs (administration side): installing, activating, and maintaining content packs; understanding that solutions bundle the full set of PA artifacts for a domain.
- Maintenance: monitor job logs, manage score/snapshot retention, and govern who can create content to keep the instance performant.
Sample questions from this domain
Three of the 12 in this domain, with the reasoning. The full set is in the question bank.
What is a Performance Analytics solution (content pack) primarily intended to do?
- A. Manage hardware assets
- B. Configure email servers
- C. Replace the platform's authentication
- D. Deliver preconfigured indicators, breakdowns, widgets, and dashboards for an application area ✓
Why: A PA solution/content pack ships ready-made analytics content (indicators, breakdowns, widgets, dashboards) for a given application, accelerating value. It has nothing to do with authentication, hardware assets, or email servers.
After installing a content pack, an administrator wants the indicators to start showing trends. What administrative step is typically required?
- A. Remove the pa_admin role
- B. Disable all dashboards
- C. Delete the content pack
- D. Activate/configure the indicators and run data collection (including historical collection) ✓
Why: Installed indicators must be activated/configured and collected (often with historical collection) to populate trends. Deleting the pack, disabling dashboards, or removing the admin role would prevent the content from working.
Where do administrators manage Performance Analytics components such as solutions, jobs, and diagnostics in a centralized place?
- A. The MID Server configuration
- B. The Service Portal theme designer
- C. The Performance Analytics admin console / Analytics administration area ✓
- D. The incident form
Why: The PA admin console (Analytics administration area) centralizes management of solutions, jobs, and diagnostics. The incident form, portal theme designer, and MID Server configuration serve unrelated functions.