Empower Frontline Workers Solution: Support

Overview

Introduction

The service you receive following an important purchase is just as important as the sale itself; the after-sales service is part of the whole experience. For example, if you have purchased a car, you will know that the complete car-buying experience included how you were treated after the sale was finalized.

This is similar to how your frontline workers feel in the field when using a mission-critical device. How does the employee’s experience, including the applications and settings on the device, influence the overall Digital Employee Experience? Do they feel like the company is supportive, or are they alone when dealing with application or device issues?

According to studies, 68% of organizations saw an increase in support ticket volume in 2019.1 This increase has a lot to do with the growing number of devices being deployed and the rise in complexity of typical deployments. In fact, this number is likely to increase, as it’s been predicted that 70% of new mobile investments over the next 5 years will be for frontline workers.2 

1 The State of Ticket Management & Metrics (HDI, 2019)

2 Hype Cycle for Frontline Worker Technologies (Gartner, 2020)

Scope of this Document

There are three main components of VMware’s Frontline Workers Solution: Stage, Manage, and Support. Each component provides technologies to simplify operations for IT teams responsible for mission-critical devices.

Frontline Worker Solution Architecture Graphic 2

Figure 1: Components of the Frontline Workers Solution

This deployment considerations document provides an overview of the Support component of the Empower Frontline Workers solution and is the third document in a three-part series.

Just like Stage and Manage, Support of the Frontline Worker is one of the pillars of Workspace ONE UEM; so, after your device has been Staged and placed into Production, it needs to be supported if something goes wrong. 

Workspace ONE provides a variety of ways to support frontline workers and mission-critical devices in the field. This document will focus on three different tools that can provide the support needed to remotely resolve common device issues. 

Audience

This document is intended for prospective and current IT administrators of Workspace ONE and anyone who uses the Workspace ONE platform. Familiarity with mobile device management, security, networking, Active Directory, identity management, and directory services is assumed. Knowledge of VMware Workspace ONE® UEM (Unified Endpoint Management), VMware Workspace ONE® Access, and VMware Horizon® is also helpful.

Workspace ONE Assist

The numbers are overwhelmingly in favor of implementing a remote control tool to provide support for your frontline workers’ mobile device deployment. According to metrics collected in a 2020 study by HDI, there are several reasons why a remote control tool can be a cost effective means of providing support.3

  • 72% of support tickets are resolved using a remote support solution
  • Implementing a remote support solution decreases average mean time to resolution (MTTR) by 35%
  • 74% increase in productivity and efficiency for device users
  • 61% decrease in device and app downtime

Workspace ONE Assist is VMware’s remote control tool, allowing administrators to view and take control of the frontline worker’s device, including the device skin, and gives access to hardware keys, such as volume up, volume down, and the power button.

Additionally, Workspace ONE Assist provides several other key features including:

  • Access to the file structure, allowing the administrator to upload/download files and folders, including configuration files, and log files for testing and troubleshooting.
  • An Assist Session Command Prompt that gives the administrator the ability to issue a variety of commands to the device including logcat commands to pull log files from the device over-the-air.
  • Session Collaboration, allowing multiple administrators to take part in the same remote support session simultaneously.

3 The ROI of Remote Support (HDI, 2020)

Additional Resources

Review these Tech Zone resources to learn more about Workspace ONE Assist:

Workspace ONE Intelligence

What if the solution could be automated? Would that improve your Frontline Worker’s Digital Employee Experience and help resolve problems at a faster rate, and at a larger scale? Absolutely.

Workspace ONE Intelligence is VMware’s Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) Analytics Engine and Automation Tool, that provides insights and resolution to challenges, that no other Mobile Device Management (MDM) offering can match. Workspace ONE Intelligence offers a custom reports tool that allows Administrators to design a multitude of reports based on a variety of Categories, Templates, and Filters, such as Battery Health Metrics, Operating System Version, Custom Attribute Values, Product Provisioning Compliance Status and many more. Reports can be scheduled to run at predefined intervals, shared with colleagues, saved as a template for future reports, and used as the basis for an automation workflow.

Dashboards within Workspace ONE Intelligence give a visual depiction of snapshot (current) or historical data through a variety of charts including Horizontal, Vertical, Donut, Metric, and Table. Dashboards can be shared with other users, let you view trends, and the data can be filtered and grouped to give concise and coherent results to analyze information, and even automate actions. Built-in dashboard templates are available for Security Risks, OS Updates, User Risks, Apps, and Devices.

Integrations allow Workspace ONE Intelligence to connect, interact, receive notifications of events, and stream data with other Workspace ONE tools or third-party software solutions. A sample of these integrations include Carbon Black, ServiceNow, Slack, Checkpoint, Zimperium, and others.

Automations are the workflows that tie your reports and dashboards together with your integrations to carry out the necessary steps for corrective action when needed.

Additional Resources

Review these Tech Zone resources to learn more about Workspace ONE Intelligence:

Logging

When advanced troubleshooting is required to overcome an obstacle, Workspace ONE UEM offers an extensive array of log files that can be collected and analyzed to determine the root cause of an event.

Review the following resources to understand Workspace ONE UEM logging:

Review the following device troubleshooting resource:

Summary and Additional Resources

This deployment considerations guide covered the Support component of the Empower Frontline Workers solution. After mission-critical devices are placed in production, Workspace ONE provides several tools to help the administrator support the devices remotely, including Workspace ONE Assist, Workspace ONE Intelligence and logging.

Additional Resources

Visit the Empower Frontline Workers Solution Architecture page on Tech Zone to learn more about this solution.

Changelog

The following updates were made to this guide:

Date

Description of Changes

2021/09/16

  • Initial publication

 

About the Author and Contributors

This document was written by:

  • David Dwyer, Sr. Solution Engineer, End-User-Computing Technical Marketing, VMware

With contributions from:

Feedback

Your feedback is valuable.

To comment on this paper, contact VMware End-User-Computing Technical Marketing at euc_tech_content_feedback@vmware.com.

 

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