Tap into a wealth of knowledge from your peers, industry experts, and the ControlUp team, deepening your understanding of ControlUp products and solutions.
Tap into a wealth of knowledge from your peers, industry experts, and the ControlUp team, deepening your understanding of ControlUp products and solutions.
Sometimes, when I work with customers, I think of a famous quote: “What are you gonna do today Napoleon?” Napoleon answers, “Whatever I feel like I want to do, GOSH.” I know Edge DX can detect and fix any desktop issue, but where do you start? This blog series will discuss how to find, prevent, and fix desktop computer problems to improve the Digital Employee Experience (DEX).
In a previous blog, Understanding the Employee Digital Experience, l discussed gathering performance data to understand the digital employee experience. This series will build on that understanding to improve the Digital Employee Experience.
Improving the Digital Employee Experience blog series:
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When people call the IT help desk for a problem with their computer, they want IT to meet expectations and handle the escalation so they can get back to work. However, one study shows that employees spend an average of three hours per week troubleshooting work-related computer problems themselves because they don’t want to deal with a helpdesk queue or do not believe the helpdesk can fix their problem. With Edge DX, alerts are used to know if employees have problems affecting the digital employee experience before a helpdesk is generated. Being alerted to problems is the first step to improving the digital employee experience.
Creating your first alert
Being alerted to network, device, OS, or application degradation is the first step to improving the digital employee experience. ControlUp’s Edge DX collects real-time network, device, OS, and application performance data to notify IT or users of issues immediately. The easiest way to configure alerts is from the device’s detailed dashboard. A bell icon is in the upper right of the performance graph, such as CPU Usage (%). In Figure 1, you can see performance data from a device details dashboard.
Figure 1, Edge-DX Device Details
Easily create an alert by clicking the bell icon in the upper right of a graph. Edge DX will automatically configure the default parameters to setup an alert. Alert parameters can then be customized, such as device type (OS), frequency, and anything you would like the alert to do, such as an email, custom action, or creating a ServiceNow ticket. Figure 2 shows an alert when a computer’s CPU is higher than 80%, five times in ten minutes (600 seconds).
Figure 2. Edge DX CPU Alert
Alerts can be highly customizable to make accurate decisions while preventing false positives. Customize alerts by Device Platforms such as Windows, macOS, and Linux, and conditions such as Time Window, Number of Hits, Retrigger Delay, and Data Index, with multiple conditions use and Boolean operators.
Creating your first custom alerts
When creating a custom alert, you need to know the name of the database (index) and the condition name to configure a value. The database is available for browsing in Edge DX, and the naming convention is straightforward. For example, device_status has data such as cpuload, wifi_signal, and ping_avg. I first look in the database to understand where the data is and the metric used to measure it, such as whether it is in milliseconds or seconds. After examining the data, I set my condition, such as cpuload > 80.
Figure 3. Edge DX Index
Tom Fenton has a great blog that further explains our database structure called, “Building Custom Edge DX Dashboards Using Microsoft Excel & Power Query.”
Below are the default parameters when creating Edge DX alerts.
Device Platform (Windows, macOS, Linux, All Platforms)
Time Window (Default 600 seconds)
Number of Hits (Default 5)
Retrigger Delay (Default 3600)
Data Index
Condition
Condition (optional)
Condition (optional)
The sample below is an alert for excessive CPU load. This alert is for Windows devices where the CPU is over 90%, five times in fifteen minutes.
Device Platform = Windows
Time Window = 900
Number of Hits = 5
Retrigger Delay = 3600
Data Index = device_status
Condition = cpuload > 80
Below are my favorite alerts to configure on new deployments. I have broken them down into Hardware, OS & Application alerts. The table below is a great starting point; however, you may want to tweak the values to fit your needs.
Hardware
Available Memory
device_status
memory_available_percentage
<20
Battery Health
_devices
hw_battery_health_percentage
<70
BSOD
win_event_log
event_id
1001 and 1003
CPU Queue Length
device_status
cpuqueuelength
>2
CPU Temp
cpu_temp
currenttemperaturec
>65
Disk Queue Length
device_status
totaldiskqueuelength
>5
Network Latency
device_status
latency_result_1
>200
Wi-Fi Signal
device_status
wifi_signal
device_status
<65
>1
OS & Application
App Crash
device_status
app_crashes
=1
App Launch Time
device_status
app_launch_times_avg
>5s
Group Policy Duration
mswin_logons
grouppolicysesduration_ms
>7000
Logon Duration
mswin_logons
logonduration_ms
>30000
Unified Comms Call Failure
edgedx_ucc_sessions
failure_info_reason
=1
Unified Comms Jitter
edgedx_ucc_sessions
average_jitter
>10000
Unified Comms Mos
edgedx_ucc_sessions
average_mos_score
<3000
User Input Delay
device_status
userinputdelay_max_long1000
>70
User Profile Duration
mswin_logons
userprofileduration_ms
>500
Creating alerts is just the first step in improving the digital employee experience. Once you get a handle on what is causing the alerts, and how to fix them, we can automate the remediation of the alert. Please keep reading the blog series for a complete picture of improving DEX with ControlUp for Desktops.
More information on Edge DX alerting:
Edge DX is a powerful troubleshooting and remediation tool that detects and fixes a desktop’s most complex issues. Being alerted to a problem is the first step toward remediation.
Improving the Digital Employee Experience blog series:
Jeff is a product marketing manager for ControlUp. He is responsible for evangelizing the Digital Employee Experience on physical endpoints such as Windows, macOS, and Linux. Jeff has spent his career specializing in enterprise strategies for client computing, application delivery, virtualization, and systems management. Jeff was one of the key architects of the Consumerization of IT Strategy for Microsoft, which has redefined how enterprises allow unmanaged devices to access corporate intellectual property.
Get help with alerts in the ControlUp Community.
