Analyzing collaboration experience

To start using the Collaboration Tools module:

Review the Key concepts for collaboration tools monitoring on this page.
See guides on how to:

Key concepts for collaboration tools monitoring

Nexthink capabilities for monitoring and troubleshooting collaboration experience

The Collaboration Tools module allows you to see, diagnose and fix call quality issues more efficiently, thanks to the following:

Call quality dashboards

Collaboration experience dashboards help you detect and investigate issues at the organization, device, and call levels. The following dashboards are available:

Call quality: Integrates data from Microsoft Teams and Zoom APIs with contextual information on device performance, connectivity, application usage and events. This dashboard is accessible through the Collaboration tools module.
MS Teams Rooms: Provides insights into call quality issues occurring in Microsoft Teams Rooms, including problems related to the application, devices and associated components. This dashboard is accessible through the Collaboration tools module.
Call quality - selected device: Enables you to better understand and troubleshoot call quality issues for a specific device and collaboration application. This dashboard is accessible through Device View.
Call View: Enables you to assess the call quality experienced by individual participant during collaboration sessions. This dashboard is accessible from Investigations or Device View.

Collaboration tools and call quality metrics in Device View

Device View provides collaboration-related metrics and troubleshooting capabilities for individual devices. It includes collaboration metrics on the device timeline, access to related dashboards and Investigations, and the Collaboration Experience checklist with quality ratings and recommended remote actions to help identify and remediate call quality issues.

Call quality alerts

Call quality alerts help you proactively detect increases in poor Microsoft Teams and Zoom sessions across your environment. The system triggers an alert when the number of poor sessions in the last three hours exceeds the average observed over the previous seven days.

Monitors can be configured to track additional conditions, such as:

The number of poor sessions in the last 3 hours.
The number of employees with the issue in the last 3 hours.
The percentage of poor sessions in the last 3 hours.
The percentage of employees with the issue in the last 3 hours.

Refer to Configuring Collaboration Tools > Install content from Nexthink Library for more information.

Call quality classification

The key metrics used in Collaboration Tools refer to the call quality classification of an individual collaboration session as either good, poor or unclassified (unknown).

These classifications come directly from Microsoft Teams or Zoom and are based on a variety of factors.

The system calculates call.quality using the following logic:

Good quality: audio quality is good and video quality is good.
Bad quality: audio quality is poor or video quality is poor.

The system breaks down call quality into several elements, each with a specific threshold. If the threshold is breached, the quality of the call is affected.

Measure

Units

Threshold

Description

Jitter

Milliseconds

Less than 30ms

Jitter is a measure of the variation in packet delay for a data stream. When this is too high, audio can become choppy.

Packet loss

Percentage

Less than 10%

Packet loss occurs when data packets fail to reach their destination. The percentage of packets lost is based on the total number of packets sent.

Round trip time

Milliseconds

Less than 500ms

Round trip time (RTT) is the time it takes for a single packet to travel from the client to the remote endpoint and back to the client. High round trip time can cause delays in stream playback.

Frame rate (video calls only)

Frames per second

Less than 7

For outbound video streams, frame rate (FPS) is the number of frames per second of video the client is sending. Lower than expected values may suggest system resource constraints, insufficient network bandwidth or malfunctioning video capture devices.

Frame loss percentage (screen sharing)

Percentage

Greater than 50%

Frame loss percentage refers to the proportion of lost frames during screen sharing. When someone shares their screen, frames—individual images—are transmitted over the network. If any frames are lost or delayed, it affects the viewing experience.

The difference between Calls and Sessions

Each participant in a call has a separate collaboration session ID. A call always has a single call ID and comprises at least 2 sessions.

Microsoft Teams and Zoom determine the call quality at the collaboration session level. As a result, all metrics concerning call quality calculate collaboration based on session IDs.

The NQL references for these two measures are as follows:

Collaboration Session: collaboration.sesssions.id
Call: collaboration.sessions.call.id

Microsoft Teams call data update over time

Microsoft first publishes Teams call quality data shortly after the end of a call and then complements or updates the initial dataset over time.

Nexthink processes both the initial data and subsequent updates up to 48 hours after the call ends. Empty fields may be filled in later, and existing values may also change. As a result, the call quality rating can change after the call ends, and a call can be rated as bad at first and good later, or vice versa.

Impact of call quality data updates across the platform

Microsoft's stepwise approach to publishing call quality data has different impacts on other parts of the platform:

Data in Investigations, Live Dashboards, and Workspace may change for up to 48 hours after the call ends
Alerts may be triggered based on data that is later updated to non-critical values
DEX scores rely on the initial call quality assessment, even if call records are later updated
Data Exports reflect the latest available call data at the time of export
Custom trends store the latest available data once per day and are not updated retroactively if the data changes afterward

Tracking call quality data updates with NQL

The last_update field in the collaboration.sessions table indicates when the system most recently updated the call data for a specific session. It is first set when the initial call data is received and is updated each time new data is ingested for that call.

When a call record is updated, the last_update value is refreshed across all participating sessions. This allows you to identify when a session’s data was last modified.

You can use this field in different scenarios where understanding data accuracy or update timing is important.

For example, an alert may be triggered due to poor call quality, but when you review the data later, the values appear normal. If the last_update timestamp is more recent than the alert time, the alert was likely triggered by an earlier version of the data that was later updated to non-critical values.

Example query using the collaboration.sessions table

collaboration.sessions during past 7d | list session.call.start_time, session.call.end_time, session.call.id, last_update