Using Workspot Trends

Workspot Trends enables your organization to make data-driven decisions that optimize the performance of your Workspot deployment worldwide. Workspot Trends shows your users’ Workspot experience over time with user experience surveys, network performance, and system performance.

User-reported satisfaction is a flexible way of identifying which parts of your Workspot deployment are working best and which may need attention.

Note: This demonstration is from Workspot Trends 1.0. The current version has many additional features, documented below.

Current and Upcoming Releases

• Release 2.2.0 is in production.

• Trends is a standard feature, available to all Workspot customers.

• New features and bug fixes are expected to occur frequently.

Release 2.2.0

• A new “Desktop Pools > Forecast (Beta)” page now projects next week’s usage pattern for non-persistent desktop pools. This forecast is based on the trailing five weeks of usage data and can be used to construct Warmup Policies.

• The “Company > Summary” Page now shows usage in six statistics instead of four:

  • Number of unique users active at least once during the display period.

  • Number of sessions during the period.

  • Total session-hours during the period.

  • Average session-hours per user during the period.

  • Average session-hours per user per day, on days the user was active.

  • Number of days the average user was active during the period.

• Bug fixes and security improvements.

Release 2.1.0

• The “Users > Cloud Desktops” page has been added.

Release 2.0.0

• Trends navigation has been substantially changed. The schedule for updating the documentation below is TBD.

• When the same user or pool is shown in different charts, they will be represented by the same color when possible.

• The "Desktop Pools > Login Experience" and "Users > Login Experience" pages now shows the time spent in connecting, resuming VMs, and posture check.

• The landing page now shows the average user survey rating, chart of rating over time, total active users, total user session, total usage hours, average usage hours per user, active users over time, users with oversized and undersized desktops,

• Trends now has a "Desktop Pools > Usage Heat Map” page that shows desktop sessions in two different ways under: as a chart and as a heat map. The chart shows "Desktops in Use" (running desktops which may or may not have a signed-in user), "Paused Desktops", and so-called "Excess Desktops" (pool size - desktops in use - paused desktops). The heat map shows desktops in use.

• The new "Users > Client Activity" page shows activity for every Client device, listing the user's name, email, Client type and version, device OS and model, IP, location, cost center, date of most recent access, and whether the Client is still registered with Control.

Release 1.9.0

• The Home page now summarizes the contents of the other pages. In order, it lists Surveys, User Desktop Sizing, Cloud Desktop Usage, Cloud Apps Usage, and Cloud Desktop Pools Performance.

• The “End User Experience > User Experience” and “End User Experience > Pools Experience” pages now show charts of packet loss and packet retransmission, given in percent.

Release 1.8.0

• The Sizing page now lists desktops that are undersized or oversized in terms of CPU usage, memory usage, or both.

• The Sizing page can now show CPU and memory usage distributions for any selected desktop.

• Bug fixes.

Release 1.7.0

• A new “Sizing” tab shows reports on desktops suspected on being undersized or oversized for their workload. This is determined by memory and CPU load. See Desktop Sizing, below.

• Support for multiple Trends instances, initially https://trends.us.workspot.com and https://trends.eu.workspot.com, for data sovereignty.

• Bug fixes and usability improvements.

Known Issue

• Trends doesn't work if third-party cookies are blocked in the browser, as they are by default in Google Chrome's Incognito Mode. Workaround: Use a browser (or browser mode) that allows third-party cookies.

Introduction

Trends helps you understand:

• Are my users happy?

  • How is user experience satisfaction trending across groups/pools/users?

  • How many users are more satisfied vs. less satisfied?

• Compare performance between one or more users/pools.

• Understand user participation across pools.

• View detailed feedback provided by users.

• Examine potential sources of dissatisfaction or low performance.

Example Workspot Trends Displays

Signing into Workspot Trends

• Ensure that Trends permissions are granted to your Workspot account. Follow the procedure in Administering Workspot Watch in Control (Watch and Trends use the same permissions page).

• Sign-in option 1: Sign into Trends from Control via the “Reports > Workspot Trends > Open” button.

• Sign-in option 2: Sign into Trends from https://trends.us workspot.com/companyIdentifier or https://trends.eu workspot.com/companyIdentifier, where

  • companyIdentifier is specific to your company, as listed in Workspot Control under “Setup > Configuration > Access > Subdomain.”

  • US or EU are the location of your Workstation deployment. (Most current deployments are in the US region.)

• Once signed in, you will see the Trends dashboard, which defaults to the Usage page (shown above).

Top-Level Navigation

The top-level navigation strip has four tabs in addition to other elements:

The tabs are:

1. Company Tab.

2. Desktop Pools Tab.

3. App Pools Tab.

4. Users Tab.

5. Feeback page.

6. User Page.

7. More Features (kebab) menu.

8. Filters Sidebar.

These are described below.

Note: The UI structure changed significantly in release 1.9.0 and this documentation has not caught up yet. Some sections below are blank.

Company Tab

The Company page provides a series of summaries across your whole Workspot deployment, as opposed to being focused specifically on desktop pools, app pools, or users.

Company > Summary

Gives an overall summary user sentiment (user survey results), desktop pools, app pools, and desktop sizing (desktops with low or high RAM or disk usage).

Company > Sentiment

Summarizes the numeric results of User Surveys.

Company > Cloud Desktop Usage

Provides company-wide summary graphs of:

• User sessions

• Usage hours

• Daily average hours per desktop user.

Company > Cloud Desktop Sizing

Lists desktops that appear oversized or undersized in terms of CPU usage or RAM usage, with user-selectable thresholds.

Note: Trends assumes that high CPU or RAM usage is a VM sizing issue, though it is often a software issue. Similarly, it assumes that a desktop with little CPU or RAM usage is not underused, but oversized.

The “Sizing” tab reveals desktops that may be undersized or oversized for their usage, which can indicate problems with the programs running on the VM or that the user needs to be migrated a different VM size.

• An undersized desktop has consistently high CPU or memory usage.

  • The user may benefit from being migrated to a more capable VM.

  • Alternatively, a runaway process or memory leak may be consuming resources pointlessly.

• An oversized desktop has consistently low CPU and memory usage.

  • Migrating the user to a lower-cost VM may be possible without a noticeable reduction in performance.

  • Alternatively, if power management is enabled for the desktop, it may not be entering a power-saving state as expected.

Samples are taken periodically across the sampling window to evaluate four thresholds:

• High CPU Threshold: detects undersized VMs. If at least 80% of the CPU usage samples (in percentage of CPU load) are above the user-selected threshold, the desktop is undersized.

• Low CPU Threshold: detects oversized VMs.  If at least 80% of the CPU usage samples (in percentage of CPU load) are below the user-selected threshold, the desktop is oversized.

• High Memory Threshold: detects undersized VMs. If at least 80% of the memory usage samples (in percentage of memory in use) are above the user-selected threshold, the desktop is undersized.

• Low Memory Threshold: detects oversized VMs.  If at least 80% of the memory usage samples (in percentage of memory in use) are below the user-selected threshold, the desktop is oversized.

The CPU and Memory Thresholds are set in the filter sidebar.

Undersized Desktops, Oversized Desktops Tabs

These tabs choose between showing Undersized or Oversized desktops. The total of all desktops exceeding the threshold is given. The list of these desktops is shown according to the next set of subtabs.

By CPU, By Memory, By CPU and Memory Subtabs

The list of undersized or oversized desktops is filtered by CPU, memory, or both according to the selected subtab and displayed below, along with user, pool, desktop, session, usage, and rating statistics.

Selecting an individual desktop in the table shows its memory and CPU usage by quintile and graphs its usage over time:

Company > Cloud App Usage

Provides company-wide summary graphs of:

• Daily user sessions.

• Daily usage hours.

• Daily average hours per user.

• Daily unique users per app.

• Daily usage hours per app.

• CPU usage per app over time.

• Memory usage per app over time.

Company > Clients

• Summarizes the following company-wide Client information:

• Total active (registered) Client devices.

• Total inactive Client devices (devices that used to be registered but no longer are).

• Client type distribution (Windows Client, Mac Client, etc.)

• Client population by Client release and OS type.

Desktop Pools Tab.

Information based on desktop pools.

Desktop Pools > Summary

Shows a summary of:

• Sentiment (user survey ratings) per pool.

• Cloud Desktop Usage per pool, with total and active users and average usage per user per day.

• Cloud Application (Application Server Pool) Usage per server pool, with active users average usage per user per day.

• Network Performance per pool, with average and maximum latency and average bandwidth per user per pool.

• CPU and Memory Performance per pool, with average CPU and memory usage in percent.

• Oversized Desktops and Undersized Desktops using a fixed period of the last 30 days.

Desktop Pools > Sentiment

Shows a graph of average user survey ratings per pool over time.

Desktop Pools > Metrics

Shows graphs showing per-pool statistics over time:

VM Resource Usage

• Average CPU Utilization

• Average Memory Utilization

• Average Disk Latency

• Average Disk Throughput

• Average GPU Utilization

• Average GPU Memory Utilization

Network Statistics

• Average TCP Bandwidth

• Average UDP Bandwidth

• Average TCP RTT (packet round-trip time)

• Average UDP RTT

• Average Packet Loss Rate

• Average Retransmission Rate

Desktop Pools > Usage

Shows graphs of number of users and usage hours per pool over time.

• Unique Daily Users per Pool

• Overall Usage Hours per Pool

• Daily Average Hours per User per Pool

Desktop Pools > Sizing

See “Company > Cloud Desktop Sizing.” The difference is that “Desktop Pools > Sizing” allows you to select only the desired desktop pools.

Desktop Pools > Usage Heat Map

This page shows:

• A graph of “Excess” desktops vs in-use and paused desktops.

• A heat map showing the average numbers of desktops in use by time of day and day of week.

“Excess” vs. Usage Graph

This graph shows three lines per selected pool over time:

• In use: Running desktops with a signed-in (but possibly disconnected) user.

• Paused: Desktops that are in a power-saving state (sleep, hibernation, or shutdown).

• “Excess”: This is the total number of desktops in the pool minus the two other categories: desktops that are neither in use nor in a power-saving state.

Usage Heat Map

This is a table showing the average number of active desktops (desktops that are running and have a signed-in user) by time of day and day of week. The table has the same layout as the one on Control’s Warmup Policies page.

Desktop Pools > Login Experience

Shows graphs of these daily averages for selected pools:

• How long it takes to connect to a desktop once any posture checks have completed and they have provided their sign-in credentials.

• How long it takes to resume from a power-saving state or for a new desktop to be created (provisioned).

• How long it takes posture check to complete.

Desktop Pools > Forecast

App Pools Tab

App Pools > Sessions

Shows a graph of the number of user sessions per day for the selected Application Pools and Application Server. The default is to show the number of user sessions per day for all these combined.

App Pools > Servers

Shows graphs of usage over time for the selected Application Pools and Application Servers.

The graphs are:

• Average CPU Utilization.

• Average Memory Utilization.

• Average Disk Latency in ms.

• Average Disk Throughput in I/O Operations per Second.

• Average Disk Transfer Rate in Kilobytes per second.

App Pools > Apps

Shows graphs of the resource consumption over time of your Applications:

• CPU Utilization per Application.

• Memory Utilization per Application.

App Pools > Users

Shows a daily graph of the selected Application Pools and Servers:

• Unique Daily Users.

• Overall Usage Hours in session-hours per day.

Users Tab

The Users section gives reports centered around users rather than Pools or Applications.

Users > Summary

This page gives a series of tables:

• Sentiment – Top 10 Happy Users. The users with the highest average feedback ratings.

• Sentiment – Top 10 Unhappy Users. The users with the lowest average feedback ratings.

• Sentiment – Feedback. All feedback comments.

• Top 10 Users with Best Network. The users with the best network performance.

• Top 10 Users with Worst Network. The users with the worst network performance.

• Top 10 Most Active Users, by average daily usage.

• Top 10 Least Active Users, by daily average usage.

• Top 10 Oversized Desktops, by average CPU usage.

• Top 10 Undersized Desktops, by average CPU usage.

Users > Metrics

Users > Usage

Users > Cloud Desktops

Users > Cloud Apps

Users > Client Activity

Users > Login Experience

Filters Sidebar

The filter sidebar is on the left side of the screen and is initially closed. Its scope changes somewhat depending on which tab is active, with the Survey Summary tab having the complete set of filters. These are:

• Date range. Defaults to the past week.

• Company name (shown only if your Workspot account has multiple companies).

• Pool name. Defaults to all pools.

• User name. Defaults to all users.

• Desktop name. Defaults to all desktops.

• Rating. Defaults to all ratings.

Using a filter can declutter the graphs and tables and increase responsiveness.

When setting a filter, you can select more than one entry per category. The example below shows that three users have been selected:

Filter Notes

• Investigating small groups of users works best when no more than five users are selected.

• When you navigate to a tab that doesn’t use a given filter, your selection is remembered when you return to a tab where it is available.

• Filters are not applied until you press the (easily overlooked) “Apply Filters” button at the bottom of the page.

Related Documents

• Using Workspot Watch.

• Workspot Client User Surveys.