In today’s fast-paced digital era, organizations rely on mobile devices to empower their workforce and drive operational efficiency. Frontline industries — such as healthcare, retail, and hospitality — heavily depend on corporate devices to deliver seamless customer experiences and streamline daily operations. However, ensuring a flawless digital experience for employees across a vast array of devices presents a formidable challenge for IT teams.
The Workspace ONE Intelligence SDK is built to address this challenge. It is a game-changing solution designed to empower IT teams and enhance the digital experience for employees.
By focusing on collecting app performance data, the Intelligence SDK provides valuable app analytics for mobile devices. However, a comprehensive understanding of device-level issues is crucial to identify the root causes behind a subpar employee experience for mobile device users. To bridge this gap, we have launched version 24.1.0 of the Intelligence SDK, delivering a solution that goes beyond app-centric data collection. With this new release, we can now collect advanced device, network, and battery telemetry, which provides comprehensive insights into device performance and empowers IT teams to proactively enhance the digital experience for mobile device users.
Understanding device telemetry
The Intelligence SDK gathers essential device performance data, including battery usage, network connectivity, storage metrics, and more. By harnessing this comprehensive data, IT admins gain profound insights into the challenges faced by mobile devices in real-world scenarios. Armed with these valuable analytics, IT teams can pinpoint the exact factors hampering employee productivity and resolve issues proactively. Subsequently, businesses can elevate the digital experience for their employees, paving the way for optimized workflows and enhanced productivity.
Use cases and benefits
The new telemetry captures three broad areas: device, network, and battery attributes for Android and iOS devices. Let’s examine some of the use cases that our customers can solve by opting into the new telemetry.
Battery-related use cases
Battery telemetry captures the attributes required to understand the following use cases: optimization of battery performance, management of faulty or nonfunctional batteries for your device fleet, and automation of the battery procurement process.
The new telemetry helps customers to identify batteries that exhibit these issues.
- Too hot or too high voltage. IT teams need to track the battery temperature to ensure devices are operating within safe ranges. Elevated temperatures or voltages can lead to battery damage and reduced performance.
- Abnormal discharge rates. Devices running critical apps throughout the day can experience rapid battery drain. Employees may struggle to complete their shifts without access to essential applications, necessitating frequent device charging and potentially causing work interruptions.
- Failure to charge to their full capacity. By tracking battery capacity and health, customers can proactively replace deteriorating batteries, reducing the risk of unexpected shutdowns during critical tasks.
- Unplugged. IT admins need to monitor the device plugged-in status to optimize device utilization and reduce employee downtime due to device unavailability.
Network-related use cases
Network telemetry includes a wide range of attributes to cover the mobile and Wi-Fi networks your deployed devices are connected to.
- Network connectivity type. This capability provides an organization-level overview of the type of networks the devices are on.
- Wi-Fi connection source. Monitoring the SSIDs gives IT admins information about the device’s connection source, which aids troubleshooting to provide a better experience.
- Network latency. IT admins measure network latency to evaluate the responsiveness of network connections. High latency can cause delays in accessing critical applications, which impacts employee productivity.
- Wi-Fi signal strength. Identifying frequent Wi-Fi or mobile connection drops and interruptions helps to troubleshoot Wi-Fi infrastructure issues and reduce productivity losses.
- Jitter. High jitter affects the quality of any VoIP calls that employees may rely on to perform their daily activities, which could impact their network experience.
- Wi-Fi network frequency. This feature helps to understand the frequency on which all the devices in your deployment operate. High frequencies provide faster speeds but have a much shorter range, while low frequencies have slower speeds but operate at longer ranges.
Device-related use cases
The final category of telemetry includes any other device attributes that do not fall under the “Network” and “Battery” categories but do impact the device performance, thereby affecting the overall employee experience while using the device.
- Storage (free disk space). Disk space is the primary storage for mobile devices, and having low free disk space slows down Android devices.
- CPU utilization. This data is collected on iOS devices. It’s helpful for admins to know when more CPU is utilized, because there might be an increase in battery drain, impacting device performance.
- Location latitude/longitude. Latitude and longitude data provide the location coordinates of at-risk devices (e.g., devices that are running low on battery and are not plugged in).
How to enable the new telemetry
Enabling this new telemetry is easy, requiring minimal changes for existing Intelligence SDK users. With a simple adjustment, organizations can unlock a wealth of device-centric insights, setting the stage for enhanced digital experiences without disrupting existing operations.
Customers leveraging the Intelligence SDK today simply need to make a one-line change to enable the delivery of all app and device analytics. Refer to the release notes documentation below for detailed instructions to opt in for the new telemetry. To enable device telemetry in Launcher, simply add the key value pair “CaptureDEXData”: true to the SDK profile assigned to it.
Please note: Launcher 24.02 and above will include the Intel SDK 24.1.0 version with the advanced device, network, and battery telemetry.
Conclusion
The new Intelligence SDK isn’t just a data collection tool; it’s a solution tailored to address specific digital employee experience (DEX) challenges across various industries. From optimizing battery performance and managing faulty batteries to fine-tuning network resources and identifying device performance bottlenecks, the breadth of potential use cases is vast.
The arrival of advanced device telemetry in the Workspace ONE Intelligence SDK is a game-changer for managing mobile devices. It connects the dots between app data and overall device insights, transforming how businesses handle their mobile ecosystems. This shift promises proactive and customized digital experience management, boosting productivity and workflows for companies everywhere.
Important resources
- Workspace ONE Intelligence SDK Developer Docs
- Workspace ONE Intelligence SDK for Android 24.1.0 Release Notes
- Data that Workspace ONE Intelligence SDK reports (includes new entities for device, battery, and network telemetry)
