Writing effective prompts for Search and Workspace
The quality of responses you receive in Workspace depends on how you frame your questions. Well-crafted prompts deliver precise, actionable insights on the first try, while vague questions often require multiple rounds of clarification. This page provides proven techniques to help you get the most value from every interaction with Assist, along with examples of what it can help you with.
Best practices
Be detailed rather than brief
Investing time upfront to craft a comprehensive question saves multiple rounds of clarification. Include all relevant context in your initial query, by, for example, describing the scenario you are working on. Mention the issue, metric, or area of interest.
Components of detailed prompts:
What to analyze: specific applications, metrics, devices, or systems
What output format: charts, tables, lists, or comparisons
What breakdowns: by location, department, device type, or time period
What recommendations: standardization, optimization, fixes, or next steps
Include specific thresholds
Adding numeric criteria eliminates ambiguity and triggers precise analysis. Rather than asking about low disk space or poor performance, specify exact thresholds.
Examples of effective thresholds:
Devices with < 10GB free disk space
Applications using > 90% CPU
Boot times exceeding 2 minutes
Crash rates > 5 per day
This approach provides results categorized by severity levels with device counts and targeted recommendations.
Specify time boundaries
Using a time frame with a request gives you more precise results tailored to the timeframe that matters most to you.
Effective patterns:
"in the last 48 hours"
"this week"
"since Monday"
Example: "Identify devices with performance degradation in the last 48 hours and provide step-by-step troubleshooting actions."
Specify desired output format
Explicitly requesting visualizations, breakdowns, or comparisons ensures you receive data in the most useful format. Also, stating why you are asking the question can help the system tailor the analysis or recommendation.
Effective output specifications:
Visualizations: "plot distribution", "create chart", "show graph"
Breakdowns: "by region", "by department", "by operating system"
Comparisons: "compare against baseline", "highlight outliers"
Rankings: "top 10", "bottom performers", "highest/lowest"
Examples of well-structured prompts
Show me devices with DEX scores below 30 in the last 24 hours, grouped by department. Include:
Total device count and percentage per department
Average DEX score breakdown by performance categories (endpoint score, applications score, collaboration score). Highlight any devices with scores <20 as critical outliers requiring immediate attention. Provide actionable remediation steps for the most common root causes and estimated business impact in terms of potential productivity loss hours per affected user.
Which applications crashed most frequently for the Sales team in the last 7 days? Please provide:
Top 10 applications by crash count and crash rate per user
Breakdown by device type, OS version, and geographic region
Peak crash times and patterns
Users experiencing >5 crashes weekly,
Root cause indicators (memory usage >8GB, CPU >90%, disk space <10GB),
Specific remediation steps for each problematic application
What are the logon duration trends by location over the last 2 weeks, including:
Average logon times for each office/region
Which locations show logon times > 1 minute indicating performance issues
Breakdown by device type and OS version
Root cause analysis for locations with degraded performance (network latency, hardware issues)
What you can ask
Workspace supports a broad range of digital employee experience, analytics, and IT operations scenarios. Use the examples below as guidance when crafting your own prompts.
Data analysis and reporting
Workspace can analyze datasets, identify trends, and provide summaries.
Retrieve the list of Outlook installations across all devices, compare the versions, and report the number of users on the latest release. Plot the distribution of versions and highlight outdated builds with recommended next steps.
Analyze the device inventory to count how many devices have Microsoft Teams installed. Highlight version inconsistencies or missing installations and suggest actions to standardize or upgrade Teams usage.
Review application crash data and identify applications with recurring stability issues. Provide crash frequency trends, affected user groups, and recommendations to reduce instability.
Identify devices missing antivirus protection or using outdated definitions. Provide affected users, counts, and suggested actions to enforce compliance.
Calculate and summarize the average device performance score across the organization. Highlight outliers and show trends by region or department.
IT operations and troubleshooting
Workspace can help identify operational issues and provide guidance on remediation.
What is the status (configuration, device performance, network connectivity, application crashes, web application performance and reliability, certificates) of the device KAN-BOSTON-77FL61 over the last 24 hours? The result should be color-coded good/average/poor for each item.
Identify devices that have not been rebooted recently or show degraded performance that could be resolved by a reboot. Provide a list and recommend automation options.
Find devices that experienced repeated Blue Screen errors. Provide frequency, probable causes, and recommended actions to stabilize the devices.
Retrieve devices experiencing recurring slow logon issues. Identify patterns and root causes and recommend targeted remedial actions.
List devices that have not rebooted for more than seven days. Highlight potential performance impacts and suggest actions or automation to address them.
Identify devices with unusually long boot times today. Provide average durations, compare against baselines, and recommend steps to improve performance.
Strategic planning and optimization
Workspace can help identify opportunities to optimize IT operations and reduce costs.
Identify common issues based on current device health and environment trends. Recommend the most impactful automations to address them and explain expected results.
Provide recommendations for fleet management and software license optimization. Suggest actions that reduce costs alongside a clear plan.
Retrieve devices that have not been active or connected recently. Provide inactivity duration, ownership details, and recommendations for decommissioning or reallocation.
Platform guidance and best practices
Workspace can explain Nexthink features and help you apply platform capabilities effectively.
Provide a clear explanation of Remote Actions, their use cases, and examples of how IT teams use them to resolve or prevent issues.
Explain how Nexthink monitors and analyzes adoption of business applications. Identify who is actively using new tools, who is not, and determine the reasons why. Recommend metrics, dashboards, and Engage campaigns to increase adoption.
Describe how to use Nexthink automations to perform disk cleanups at scale. Include recommended automations, scheduling guidance, and verification steps.
Explain how Nexthink can help investigate and resolve Microsoft Teams quality issues. Provide methods to analyze call and meeting performance, identify patterns such as high latency or packet loss, and correlate findings with user experience data. Recommend concrete remediation actions.
Explain how Nexthink supports faster IT incident resolution. Show how to identify affected users, root causes, and business impact, and how to use Remote Actions and insights to accelerate remediation.
What the Nexthink Assist AI cannot do
Nexthink Assist cannot:
Execute actions that modify system configurations or data
Access external systems or data sources outside Nexthink
Make changes to user permissions or system settings
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