Improving DEX: Step Two – Troubleshooting

A recent study showed that only 20% of employees felt they would be supported by IT when troubleshooting technology, and if finding problems with your computer isn’t hard enough, how about finding problems on computers hundreds of miles away? Fortunately, ControlUp Edge DX gathers data from computers anywhere in the world, caches data when the computer is offline, and submits the data when re-connected to the internet. This blog does not teach you how to troubleshoot (I assume you have your methodology) but shows you a few ways to troubleshoot faster with Edge DX.

The following blog is a four-part series about improving the digital employee experience.

Improving the Digital Employee Experience blog series:

• Step One: Alerting
• Step Two: Troubleshooting
• Step Three: Remediating
• Step Four: Maintaining

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In the first blog, Improving DEX Step One: Alerting, I discussed why alerts are critical to improving the Digital Employee Experience. In this blog, I discuss how to use Edge DX to troubleshoot.

Troubleshooting with Edge DX use cases

Edge DX can troubleshoot any issue that hinders the digital employee experience. In this blog, I do not have time to go over every use case but instead give you a vision of what we can do and provide a few examples of how to troubleshoot a desktop problem. Below are a few examples of what you can quickly troubleshoot with Edge DX.

Troubleshooting with the UI

Edge DX device details dashboard displays critical data about desktop performance to help troubleshoot many device problems. But as we can see in Figure 1, there was a historical problem with CPU and RAM until 8:20, but where do I start troubleshooting the problem?

Often, when we troubleshoot performance, we unclog bottlenecks and then find another bottleneck, so performance troubleshooting areas can be just symptoms of other problems to find the root cause. In the chart below, I list out Edge DX default performance charts in the device details section and identify when a value needs troubleshooting and where to start troubleshooting.

Troubleshooting with scripts

There are multiple ways Edge DX can use scripts to help find problems with computers.

• Run a troubleshooting script from a remote computer’s shell.
• Run a troubleshooting script and have the results displayed in the device events.
• Run a troubleshooting script and have the results displayed in a custom Edge DX database.

To add and create scripts in Edge DX, click the configuration icon in the upper right corner of the screen and then click Scripts.

You can delete scripts From the Scripts pain, add scripts from the ControlUp library, and create new ones. Edge DX supports all major scripting languages such as PowerShell, VBScript, Jscript, Command Script, Python, Python 3Bash, Swift, and Shell Script. When creating a script, you need to identify the platform, the scripting language, if an alert can trigger the script, any grouping permissions, timeout, and data collection, which we will discuss later.

Create a script to run on a remote computer.

Edge DX can run a remote shell in a system context on Windows, macOS, and Linux computers by selecting Remote Shell from the assist drop-down menu on a device’s detail dashboard. For more information on the remote shell, see Remote control options for Edge DX.

Let’s say you have a user who complains the computer takes an extraordinary time to startup. You have determined that the problem could be the number of applications automatically starting up. I’m not very good at scripting; however, I can use ChatGPT to create a PowerShell script to list the startup applications for a Windows computer, as seen below.

# Get a list of startup applications using WMI
$StartupApps = Get-CimInstance -Namespace "Root\CIMv2" -Class Win32_StartupCommand
# List the startup applications
Write-Host "Startup Applications:"
foreach ($app in $StartupApps) {
Write-Host "Name: $($app.Name)"
Write-Host "Command: $($app.Command)"
Write-Host "Location: $($app.Location)"
Write-Host "User: $($app.User)"
Write-Host ""
Write-Host "------------------"
}

Figure 2 shows the script running in a remote shell against a Windows PC. The script’s output shows three programs that run at start-up, OneDrive, MicrosoftEdgeAutoLaunch, and SecuirtyHealth, along with the user context, such as username or public for all computer users.

Running a troubleshooting script in the background of a remote computer is a great way to find the root cause of a problem without affecting the employee’s productivity.

For more information on excessive logon time, see Tom Fenton’s blog: Got Slow Logons? Fix Them Fast With ControlUp For Physical Endpoints & Apps! – ControlUp

Create a script to output results to Edge DX events.

Edge DX can run a predefined script on one or many computers and output the results to the Device Events tab of the computer details. To manage scripts, click the configuration icon in the upper right corner of Edge DX, then click Scripts. From there, you can add scripts from ControlUp’s script library or add and remove scripts, as seen in Figure 3.

In this example, we took the same script that we ran on a remote shell but changed the output to be displayed in the events tab in Figure 4.

# Get a list of startup applications using WMI
$StartupApps = Get-CimInstance -Namespace "Root\CIMv2" -Class Win32_StartupCommand

# List the startup applications
Write-Host "Startup Applications:"
Write-Output("### SIP EVENT BEGINS ###")
foreach ($app in $StartupApps) {
Write-Host "Name: $($app.Name)"
Write-Host "Command: $($app.Command)"
Write-Host "Location: $($app.Location)"
Write-Host "User: $($app.User)"
Write-Host ""
Write-Host "------------------"
}
# Set output encoding to ensure non-ASCII characters are captured
[Console]::OutputEncoding = [System.Text.Encoding]::UTF8

# Write output

Write-Output $arrPrinters
Write-Output("### SIP EVENT ENDS ###")
Exit 0
catch {
Write-Output("### SIP EVENT BEGINS ###")
Write-Output -InputObject "There was a problem retrieving the startup apps."
Write-Output("### SIP EVENT ENDS ###")
Exit 1
}

Once the above script is saved in the script library, it can be run simultaneously on one or many devices. In Figure Five, you can see the output of the above script in the Device Events for the computer called JJ-NUC-B-11. In the DESCRIPTION column, we can see the output of the startup applications.

Saving troubleshooting scripts to the Edge DX script library is a great way to share troubleshooting scripts to other IT support technicians.

Create a script to output results to an Edge DX database.

When troubleshooting reoccurring problems, the output can be written to the Edge DX database. When writing data to a custom index, you must select the Sends Data checkbox and then specify the name of the Data Index where the data will be written. In Figure Six, you can see the script configuration area of Edge DX, where the Platform is Microsoft Windows, the Language is PowerShell, the Trigger is set for Custom-Action – System, the Timeout is set for 60 seconds, and the Sends Data is selected as well as the Data Index is set for startup_apps.

The code below will gather all the startup applications and prepare the output for an entry into the Edge DX Data Index startup_apps as defined in the script’s configuration.

try {
# Get a list of startup applications using WMI
$StartupApps = Get-CimInstance -Namespace "Root\CIMv2" -Class Win32_StartupCommand# Prepare data for Edge DX
$DataOutput = @()
foreach ($app in $StartupApps) {
$DataOutput += @{
Name = $app.Name
Command = $app.Command
Location = $app.Location
User = $app.User
}
}# Write data
Write-Output "### SIP DATA BEGINS ###"
Write-Output ($DataOutput | ConvertTo-Json -Depth 10)
Write-Output "### SIP DATA ENDS ###"# Write event (optional)
Write-Output "### SIP EVENT BEGINS ###"
Write-Output "Startup applications list retrieved successfully."
Write-Output "### SIP EVENT ENDS ###"
Exit 0} catch {
# Handle exceptions and write error event
Write-Output "### SIP EVENT BEGINS ###"
Write-Output "There was an error retrieving the startup applications."
Write-Output $_.Exception.Message
Write-Output "### SIP EVENT ENDS ###"
Exit 1
}

Like in the previous example, we ran the above code on a computer, but this time, the results are stored in an index called startup-apps, as seen below in figure 6.

IT professionals must find the root cause of desktop computers to keep people productive. Edge DX helps IT identify the root cause of problems with standard procedures, an intuitive user interface, and the ability to use scripts to get more information.

Keep reading to understand how ControlUp Edge DX is used to remediate issues, even with automated remediation.

More information:

• Desktop Support Problems – Part One
• Improved Access Control for Script Actions in ControlUp Edge DX
• How to Use Traceroute + Edge DX to Help Deliver a Great Digital Employee Experience
• Make Managing Physical Endpoints Easier with the ControlUp Edge DX Database

Improving the Digital Employee Experience blog series:

• Step One: Alerting
• Step Two: Troubleshooting
• Step Three: Remediating
• Step Four: Maintaining