Consolidate IT troubleshooting tools

Does your team hoard troubleshooting tools? Does each tool have its own licensing plan? We all have our favorite tools and become experts at them, and they help us do our job better and faster. But we often are collectors of troubleshooting tools, looking for new tools that do something better than the last.

ControlUp is different. We are a troubleshooting platform for networks, hypervisors, VDI/DaaS, endpoint devices, operating systems, security, local applications, and SaaS/Web applications. In this blog, I will discuss tools that can be consolidated into ControlUp’s troubleshooting digital employee experience (DEX) platform.

Network tools

ControlUp does not replace tools for managed networks like Cisco, Ubiquity, or Broadcom. Instead, ControlUp captures metrics from unmanaged remote networks like coffee shops, libraries, hotels, and home offices.

Below is an example of two people communicating over Microsoft Teams (or Zoom). As you can see, ControlUp detects each caller’s remote Wi-Fi signal strength and call quality via the MOS and Jitter score.

ControlUp also captures remote network usage, latency, Wi-Fi signal strength, and remote network metrics for devices connecting to VDI/DaaS or published apps. ControlUp also automatically captures trace routes from client devices to your most valued web services.

As shown below, ControlUp captures Network Usage, Latency, and Wi-Fi Signal strength.

More information: Prevent Tickets: Network Performance Dashboard

Operating system tools

Tools for hypervisors, Windows, macOS, or Linux are another category where every employee has a preference, but training and licensing can be inefficient and expensive. When you look at the core competencies of SCCM, Intune, and BigFix, you soon discover those tools are great for asset management, deployment, and patch management but do not provide much guidance for troubleshooting.

ControlUp’s DEX monitoring platform gathers performance data such as CPU, memory, disk, network, context switching, and user input delay. In addition, ControlUp collects information on active processes, stopped processes, services, and sessions. ControlUp can also run scripts on remote devices to gather more troubleshooting information without affecting the employee experience.

More information:

• Five ways ControlUp can reduce troubleshooting time
• Improving DEX: Step Two – Troubleshooting
• Make troubleshooting VDI & DaaS easier with Real-Time DX 9.0

Application troubleshooting tools

When local applications take too long to load or crash, productivity is impacted, and users are frustrated. Also, we do not know that employees are having issues until they call the service desk.

ControlUp monitors critical application metrics that allow IT to know what applications are giving employees the most problems proactively and, once a fix is discovered, a way to remediate the problem. ControlUp gathers important application metrics such as application load time, application performance statistics, installed applications, and application crashes.

More information:

• Slow Applications Plague Businesses Worldwide – a ControlUp Research
• Accurately Monitoring Network Applications
• Three New Dashboards to Proactively Monitor the Health of Your Desktops and Applications

SaaS and Web app monitoring tools

We rely on SaaS and Web apps to do our work, but thousands of employees call the company service desk when the website slows down or crawls. This rush of people flooding the service desk for an issue with the SaaS vendor results in lost productivity for everybody.

ControlUp’s synthetic monitoring of SaaS and Web applications alerts IT and employees when they have slowed down or are unavailable. ControlUp’s synthetic testing can be run from almost any location worldwide, even from a client’s endpoint devices.

More information:

• Synthetic Monitoring of Unified Communications Applications
• The ControlUp Scoutbees API – Integration with CI/CD pipeline
• 4 Reasons ControlUp Proactive Synthetic Monitoring Improves DEX
• A Quick and Easy Way to Test Web-Based Applications Availability

Remote Control Tools

Sometimes, to quickly fix an issue, IT needs to see what the employee is doing or take control of the operating system. Organizations around the world have purchased different software tools for remote control.

ControlUp includes remote control capability in our DEX platform and extends the capabilities to remote into the device without impacting employee productivity. With ControlUp’s remote assistance, the service desk has multiple options to provide support: Send Message, Remote Shell, Remote Control, and Remote Shadow. These options allow IT to fix problems without losing productivity.

More information: Simplify Remote User Support

Survey tools

Every time I refresh my email, it seems like there’s another survey for me to complete. But surveys aren’t always bad. All the tools we’ve discussed so far accurately represent what’s happening to the operating system, the device, and the application. But how does the human feel about how the device is running? It can be an entirely different experience.

Control Up has built-in surveys that can be sent to all employees or triggered by a computer event. This gives your organization full control over who gets a survey, how often they get it, and even what languages it is in. It provides a complete breakdown of responses, surveys sent, and even NPS scores so you can fully understand the employee sentiment.

More information: Optimize your digital workplace with ControlUp experience scoring & sentiment, AI chatbot, and cost insights

Conclusion

The landscape of IT troubleshooting tools is vast and often cluttered with numerous point solutions, each serving a specific purpose. ControlUp offers a unique approach by providing a comprehensive troubleshooting platform that consolidates various tools into a single, integrated solution.

ControlUp’s Digital Employee Experience (DEX) platform covers a wide array of IT troubleshooting needs, including network monitoring, operating system diagnostics, application troubleshooting, SaaS and web app monitoring, remote control capabilities, and human capital management. By gathering crucial performance data and metrics across different layers of the IT infrastructure, ControlUp empowers IT teams to proactively identify and resolve issues before they impact productivity.

Moreover, ControlUp’s remote assistance features ensure that IT support can efficiently troubleshoot and resolve issues without causing disruptions to employees’ workflow. Additionally, the inclusion of built-in surveys provides valuable insights into the human aspect of the digital experience, allowing organizations to gauge employee satisfaction and make data-driven decisions to enhance their IT environment further.

In essence, ControlUp not only streamlines IT troubleshooting processes but also fosters a more autonomous, proactive, and employee-centric approach to managing digital experiences within organizations. By consolidating disparate tools into a unified platform, ControlUp enables IT teams to optimize performance, enhance productivity, and deliver exceptional user experiences across the board.

To learn more about how our innovations can help your team, check out our solutions pages or book a meeting.