Single Device Status and Benchmarking
Overview
In contrast to traditional summary dashboards, support teams sometimes just need to focus on one device to view its hardware configuration and see all that is happening on that device.
Problem
To efficiently diagnose a problematic device, support agents need the context of the device's current situation, such as its overall health and factual specifications.
But retrieving this information can take time. Often, this requires scheduling time directly with the end user to diagnose their device, taking up both the end user's and support agent's productivity time.
Solution
Access a dashboard that can be filtered on a single device to gain contextual insight during diagnosis. This includes factual specifications, device health status, and the ability to benchmark the device against all other devices in the environment to monitor any deviations from corporate standards.
Support teams can save countless hours by having key device health and benchmarking data points at their fingertips during diagnosis.
Key Features
Review of key device and hardware specifications.
Monitoring of key devices, applications, and connectivity health KPIs to support device diagnosis.
Benchmarking of the chosen device against all other devices to check deviation from corporate standards.
Advanced timeline to track more granular data points using data retrieved with remote action.
Changelog
v1.0.0.0 - 28 March 2023 - Initial Release
Pack Structure
The pack comprises a single dashboard with six tabs and three remote actions as dependencies.
Get Battery Status
Get Network Speed
Get Local Speed to Gateway
Remote Actions
Get Battery Status (Windows laptops only)
Returns the status of the battery installed on the laptop, in terms of the capacity that it can still hold. It also retrieves the currently active power plan. This is useful for identifying batteries that should be replaced and optimizing devices' power settings. The output used for this dashboard is:
Battery Health - Health ratio, expressed as a percentage
We recommend configuring this remote action to run regularly on all active Windows laptop devices.
Get Network Speed (Windows only)
Gets information about the speed of the network by measuring the Web RTT against an external URL and a business URL. If the target device's operating system is Windows, it will also check whether the connection is metered or not. The outputs used for this dashboard are:
Average Web RTT To Business URL
Average Web RTT To External URL
Times Business URL Above Web RTT Threshold
Times External URL Above Web RTT Threshold
We recommend configuring this remote action to run regularly on all active Windows devices.
Please note: this remote action requires configuration through its input parameters:
External URL: The external Web URL to be checked against the Web RTT threshold
Web RTT threshold: The RTT time threshold for the external Web URL
Business URL: The URL in the corporate environment to be checked against the threshold
Business web RTT threshold: The RTT time threshold for the business URL
Get Local Speed to Gateway (Windows only)
Retrieves the link speed and performs a latency and packet loss percentage test against the default gateway. The outputs used for this dashboard are:
Link Speed - The speed at which the device is linked to the gateway
Round Trip Time - Response time in milliseconds obtained from the gateway
Packet Loss Percentage - Percentage of packet loss
We recommend configuring this remote action to run regularly on all active Windows devices.
Single Device status and benchmarking dashboard
Filters
This dashboard was designed to focus on and provide insights about a single device. Therefore this dashboard includes only one filter on “device name”
To successfully make use of this dashboard, and for the displayed data to be actionable, a single device must be chosen through this filter.
Device summary
This dashboard provides a high-level overview of the health and specification of the chosen device to provide key context before continuing the diagnosis process.
Device Health
Five gauge charts provide a visual summary of the status of the selected device. These gauges show disk usage, memory usage, CPU usage, GPU usage, and finally, Wi-Fi signal strength.
These charts are followed by KPIs showing average boot and logon duration and a KPI showing the number of days since the last boot.
Device Specification
Two tables show a summary of the device (Entity, location, device type, operating system, collector version, etc) and the device hardware (manufacturer, CPU, installed memory, serial number, etc).
Resource and performance
This tab provides a more granular level of diagnosis insight about the device’s performance and resource utilization, boot and logon duration, device stability, and network connectivity.
Resource utilization
Gauge charts and timelines for disk, memory, CPU, and GPU usage provide at-a-glance information on the health status of the device hardware.
Boot and Logon overview
The average boot, logon, and extended logon duration are shown as KPIs with thresholds. If any of the measures are significantly greater than the threshold value, this could be checked against the average for all devices in the benchmarking section of this dashboard. Timeline graphs for each measure are fixed at 30 days, which allows any peak events to be identified and investigated.
Device stability
This section covers system crashes or hard resets. Recently installed Windows updates are listed, and should be investigated for known issues if there is a serious increase in system instability. Any system crashes that occur are listed by their corresponding error codes. Finally, a KPI shows the number of days since the last full boot. If it has been many days since the last boot and the device is showing signs of instability, then a reboot should be attempted as a first attempt to resolve these issues.
Connectivity
This section displays key networking information. The average Wi-Fi signal strength over the selected timeframe is shown together with a table summarizing the device’s Wi-Fi connection details (including Wi-Fi band, SSID, and transmission rates).
Application stability
This tab provides key insights into application stability and usage. KPIs for crashes and freezes with ratios for both are shown with tables showing the least stable applications within the selected timeframe.
Similar measures are shown for application memory usage; which will help in identifying the most memory-intensive applications in use on the device.
Failed connections
The number and ratio of failed connections are shown, with a breakdown by failure type. A table helps with identifying applications with the least reliable network performance.
Device benchmarking
This tab is split into two sections. All widgets on the left of the screen under “Filtered” headings show the hardware properties of the selected device. On the right, under “Benchmark” headings are the same measures but aggregated over all devices, and ordered by the most popular where possible.
This has been designed so that the currently selected device can be easily compared to the rest of the devices in the organization. The benchmarking measures are arranged in three sections; hardware, device, and boot/logon duration. Large differences; in free disk space, or boot duration, for example, could result in a poor Digital Experience for the end user and should be investigated.
Advanced Timeline
This tab contains historical trend data about the device that extends and complements what can be seen in Device View.
For each measure, key KPIs are provided, together with timeline graphs. In some cases, they refer to the output of remote actions, which will need to be scheduled regularly to populate this dashboard section with data. Please refer to the Remote Actions section of this document for more details.
With all of these measures, excessively high KPI values, or consistently high peaks in the timeline graphs should be investigated further.
Device measures available in this section include the DEX Endpoint score, memory swap rate, disk latency, and three CPU metrics.
Remote action insights are concentrated on networking measures such as link speed, RTT, and packet loss.
Nexthink services
This tab provides insights into the Nexthink services that have been applied to the selected device, to ensure that the device is properly sending and receiving data through Nexthink services, and understanding this employee’s interaction with Engage Campaigns.
Remote Action insights
This section shows the number and status of remote actions run on the device within the selected timeframe, with breakdowns to show the most frequently run queries, and the trigger methods used.
Campaign insights
This section shows how many campaigns have been run on the selected device and their response rates.
Nexthink collector insights
This section shows the collector version details and the stability of the collector in terms of crashes.
Browser extension insights
This section refers to the Application Experience browser extension. A single KPI shows NXTHOSTAPP executions. This is the underlying process behind the browser extension - so if it is running, it is likely, but not guaranteed, the browser extension will be active. A breakdown of web events by application, and over time, are also provided.
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