User input delay

Determining performance degradations based solely on standard system health metrics like CPU, memory, and disk input or output is a difficult task. For example, on virtual desktops, the standard metrics do not often correlate with perceived performance.

The Nexthink solution measures the responsiveness of a Windows session by monitoring the user input delay per session, a Windows performance counter. That counter measures how long any user input using a mouse or a keyboard waits before a process picks it. That value is available for local and remote sessions.

Configuration

By default, Collector reports the user input delay values as part of the user activity metrics. You can stop monitoring that by disabling the user activity reporting. Find the procedure on the Configuring Collector level anonymization page.

Supported operating systems

All supported Windows versions:

Windows 11
Windows Server 2022

NQL example

CODE

devices during past 24h
| with session.events
| compute
    medium_ratio = duration_with_medium_user_input_delay.sum()/user_interaction_time.sum(),
    high_ratio = duration_with_high_user_input_delay.sum() / user_interaction_time.sum()
| where medium_ratio > 0.10 or high_ratio > 0.05
| list device.name, medium_ratio, high_ratio