Five ways ControlUp can reduce troubleshooting time

By Jeff Johnson
8 minutes April 30, 2024
ControlUp Real-Time DXTroubleshooting

In the fast-paced world of technology-driven businesses, ensuring smooth operations is paramount. However, managing and troubleshooting the array of issues that arise can be daunting. ControlUp offers solutions to streamline troubleshooting processes and enhance the digital employee experience.

Efficient troubleshooting begins with accurate and timely data collection. ControlUp sets the standard by recording critical troubleshooting metrics like CPU activity every 3 seconds, providing unparalleled insight into system performance. This real-time data enables IT teams to identify and address issues swiftly before they impact productivity.

 

Real-time data collection

ControlUp can troubleshoot any issue that hinders the digital employee experience. We do not have time to go over every use case, but instead, we will give you a vision of what can be done and provide a few examples of how to troubleshoot a desktop problem. Below are a few examples of what you can quickly troubleshoot with ControlUp’s physical desktop monitoring solution.

  • Troubleshoot networks
    • High latency
    • High network usage
    • Low bandwidth
    • TCP/IP and DNS issues
    • Wi-Fi signal
  • Troubleshoot hardware
    • High CPU temperature
    • High CPU usage
    • Low memory
    • Low disk space
    • Failing battery
  • Troubleshoot operating systems
    • BSOD and other stop errors
    • Excessive startup applications
    • Excessive logon duration
  • Troubleshoot local applications
    • Low MOS score for Unified Comms
    • Excessive Unified Comms cache
    • Application crash
  • Troubleshoot SaaS and Web applications
    • SaaS availability
    • SaaS performance
  • Troubleshoot geographical issues
    • Web service outage
    • Geo-latency issues

 

1. Proactive Notifications

Proactive problem identification is key to minimizing downtime. ControlUp empowers IT teams with proactive notifications, alerting them to potential issues such as application downtime or connectivity issues. Organizations can ensure a seamless digital experience for employees by addressing issues before they escalate.

Hard drive failure, slow application load time, weak battery, blue screen, and application crashes are annoying circumstances that cause people to try fixing an issue themselves or call the helpdesk to troubleshoot. Fortunately, what can be measured can be notified with ControlUp.

Examples of proactive notifications:

  • SaaS/Web app downtime: Automatically notifying users not to create a support ticket when a SaaS/Web app is down saves IT and end users time.
  • User connectivity: Notifying users to move closer to a router for better connectivity eliminates a helpdesk ticket.
  • VDI resource allocation: Notifying IT that a VDI instance needs more resources to serve a power user better.
  • Unified communications (UC) performance: Notifying users that a UC solution, like Teams or Zoom, is experiencing performance problems with the vendor.

 

Fig1CreateAlert
Create alert

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2. Problem Scoring

Prioritizing the issues that impact the digital employee experience can be daunting. That’s where ControlUp steps in, streamlining the process by presenting a consolidated score of performance metrics. This score highlights the most significant impact areas, guiding IT teams to direct their attention effectively.

ControlUp offers scoring dashboards across various domains, including VDI/DaaS, Physical Desktops (Windows, macOS, Linux), Desktop Applications, Vulnerabilities, Patch Management, Unified Communications, and SaaS/Web Applications. These dashboards are invaluable tools that provide a comprehensive overview of system health.

But ControlUp doesn’t stop there. It goes the extra mile by enabling users to “follow the red.” This means that users can click on problem areas highlighted in red on the dashboard and delve deeper to uncover detailed insights into why a particular device or application is experiencing issues.

By drilling into the specifics, troubleshooters can pinpoint the root cause exponentially faster than traditional methods, eliminating the need to rely solely on end-user reports for troubleshooting. ControlUp empowers IT teams to proactively identify and resolve issues, enhancing the digital employee experience.

Device score

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3. Gen AI

Collecting lots of troubleshooting data and representing it with scoring is powerful, but sometimes, you need help looking at the data differently. Yes, you can create custom reports, but sometimes you need to get answers on the fly. Gen AI enables you to ask questions about and represent data in unique ad hoc ways. ControlUp’s Gen AI Chatbot can access your troubleshooting data and natural language queries. Our Gen AI Chatbot helps find complex problems across many machines without creating a custom report.

ControlUp Chatbot

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4. Script Actions

Scripts are a great way to get detailed troubleshooting data from a remote device. Without a digital employee experience (DEX) management platform, getting the script to run on a remote device can be problematic. Fortunately, ControlUp has multiple ways to run a script on a remote device and various script languages that can run across Windows, macOS, and Linux.

With ControlUp, you can run a troubleshooting script on a remote device in three ways:

  1. From a remote computer’s shell.
  2. Display the results in the device events.
  3. Store results in a custom database.
Edge DX Script Actions

Script ActionsMore information:

 

5. Remote Assistance

The ControlUp Remote Assistance Feature is sometimes the quickest way to troubleshoot a problem by seeing what the user is experiencing. To make remote troubleshooting more efficient and help users get back up and running as quickly as possible, ControlUp has created multiple ways to remotely access a user’s computer: Remote Control, Remote Shadow, and Remote Shell.

  • Remote Control: Remotely controlling a user’s desktop, including keyboard and mouse interactions, can be used for mundane tasks, like locating an item on the dashboard, viewing an application behaving unexpectedly, or assisting them with using an application. It can also be used if you need to investigate further to solve an issue.
  • Remote Shadow: Troubleshooting tasks that do not require keyboard and mouse connectivity can be managed with  Remote Shadowing, such as helping a user locate an item on the dashboard, viewing an application behaving unexpectedly, or assisting a user with using an application.
  • Remote Shell: Using a remote shell, you can get much-needed troubleshooting data from a device. ControlUp connects to a remote shell without interfering or degrading the user experience. Scripts can be run, services can be restarted, and the troubleshooter can reactively or proactively work to fix issues without bothering the end user.
Edge DX Remote Assistance

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We started this blog with real-time data collection and discussed five ways to reduce troubleshooting times. Now, we will wrap up with automation. ControlUp’s view of automation combines proactive notifications with script actions. When a problem is detected through proactive notifications, a message can be sent to IT, and then a troubleshooting script can be executed to gather more data about the issue.

 

More troubleshooting blogs:

VDI

Desktop

SaaS applications

Unified Communications

 

 

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About the author

Jeff Johnson

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.