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Persona Insight - Configuration Guide (V1.0.0.0)

This document refers to the original version of Persona Insight, released December 2021 (V1.0.0.0)

Overview

The Persona Insights Library Pack is a turnkey solution allowing you to measure activity across a range of technical and sentiment based areas so that you can build an understanding of the behaviors of Employees as they go about their daily work.

The pack is slightly different to other Nexthink Library Packs in that it is essentially a framework of measurements that enables you solve a multitude of Business requirements. By importing and running the pack, you will discover the Persona-based activities of your Employees - but in fact it is what you do with this information that will provide you with the real power and functionality that the pack brings.

Configuration

Pre-Requisites

Before installing the Persona Insights Library Pack, for on-premise customers you must be on Version 6.29 of Nexthink and you must have installed the Digital Experience Score version 2.1 or greater. This requirement is automatically fulfilled for Cloud customers whose platform will always be the latest release.

The Persona Insight pack also uses a new feature, Focus Time, which, once enabled, is a data point that is collected showing the usage of applications (i.e. time of the current window in focus being used). This is documented for reference in the online documentation.

The Focus Time monitoring feature is disabled by default in Windows and macOS.
Should you wish to enable this across your Collector estate please use the necessary script delivery tools to configure it across all Collectors. Note that if you are licensed for Act, you can set this flag with the remote action Set Collector Configuration which is available from the Nexthink Library.

To enable this feature manually in Windows, you will need to create the following registry key on each Collector where you want it monitored:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Nexthink\Collector\WindowFocusTimeMonitoring

Also add a DWORD value named “Enabled” which will have to be set to 1.

For macOS, a config.json file can be suppplied to achieve the same result.

On both operating systems you will need to restart the Collector after having made these changes.

Category Configuration

It is important to understand the use of categories in this pack. From version 2.0.0.0, the use of categories was changed significantly so this should be of particular interest to those customers who are familiar with earlier versions of this pack.

The multiple categories included in this pack are used to group types of applications or business tools together to be referenced by the corresponding scores.

All scores concerned with application measurements now contain a direct reference to an entry in a category, rather than the application executable itself. There are two main reasons for this. Firstly, should an application change it’s executable name, or a web resource change it’s URL, this can be changed in the category rather than modifying the NXQL query in the score. Secondly, multiple executable names can be listed for the same application, which can now include macOS references.

Shown here is the score entry for Zoom Consumer in the Collaboration Tools grouping. The NXQL statement refers to a Collaboration Tools category, with an entry called “Zoom”

Shown here is the Collaboration Tools category referenced by the score, showing the keyword for “Zoom” and the executable names associated with it (zoom.exe for Windows and zoom.us for macOS)

If you wish to add a new application, a collaboration tool for example, you should start by simply adding a keyword and the corresponding conditions to the “Persona Insight – Collaboration Tools” category. This new entry will then need to be referenced by a score, either by modifying an existing score, or creating a new one.

The pack uses the following Categories:

  • Persona Insight All - For certain application groupings there is a need to show usage across all similar applications in summary form. For these summary groups; Collaboration Tools, Productivity Tools and File Sharing Tools, a new category has been created listing all common applications of the type. These summary categories are referenced by three corresponding summary scores.

  • Persona Insight – Browser Apps  - This category contains references to all of the main corporate browsers that may be in use in your organization. Where possible, each browser entry contains conditions for both the Windows and macOS executable names. Please note that whilst there are conditions and corresponding scores for six separate browsers, only four are referenced by metrics and widgets in the dashboard. A certain amount of customization could therefore be required depending on your organizations individual policies.

  • Persona Insight – Binary Compliance – This is used to monitor unwanted activity. One keyword is actively used, “Forbidden Binaries” which is in the “Shadow IT” Persona Trait and this should be configured to match your Organizations need. The other two, “Corporate Browser” and “Malicious Binaries” are present as categories which can be used, if wished, in extending the Scoring to monitor this kind of activity.

  • Persona Insight Cloud Storage Tools – This category contains entries for the locally installed client for three popular cloud storage tools; Dropbox, Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive. Each category entry contains conditions for both the Windows and macOS executable names.

  • Persona Insight Collaboration Tools – This category contains entries for many popular collaboration tools, such as Microsoft Teams, Zoom and WebEx. Each category entry contains conditions for both the Windows and macOS executable names.

  • Persona Insight Data Scientist Tools – This category contains entries for popular tools such as Microsoft BI, Tableau and Oracle BI.

  • Persona Insight Designer Tools – This category contains entries for both Backend Tools (e.g. Python, Powershell) and Frontend Tools (e.g. Figma, GitHub Desktop).

  • Persona Insight – Domain Profile – This is used in the score under the “Web Apps” Persona Trait grouping and each item within it, Social Domains, Reference Domains, Business Domains, Learning Domains and Non-Business Domains can be filled appropriately with entries for your Organization. The Score is then looking at the last seven days activity on these locations.

  • Persona Insight Email Client – By default this category contains one entry for Email Client containing conditions for both the Windows and macOS  executable names for Microsoft Outlook. This is in recognition of the fact that, whilst popular, Outlook is not always the chosen email client for all organizations. Alternative applications can therefore be listed instead of, or in addition, to this default entry.

  • Persona Insight Productivity Tools – By default, this category contains entries conditions for all of the applications in the Microsoft Office suite. The keywords referencing the individual executables are generic however, allowing easy customization of this category with no further changes to the score, metric names, or dashboards required. The Microsoft Office entries listed by default contain both Windows and macOS executable names where possible.

Score Modification

Persona Insights uses two Scores, Persona Traits and Persona Advanced Traits.

Each score contains a core set of Traits being measured, all of which may be modified as needed.

If you wish to introduce new Persona Traits, it is recommended that this is done in a new Score. Please see the Customization Guide for advice on how to do this.

Take care to be clear on how the Score is working. If duplicating an existing score be sure to check the score rating matches your expectations. The scoring for Excel (Spreadsheet Consumer) is higher than Microsoft Project Consumer, for example, as it is assumed that heavy spreadsheet use will exceed the heavy use of MS Project over the course of a week.

Metric and Dashboard Modification

Persona Insights has two main dashboards out of the box, the Persona Traits Insight and the Digital Experience by Trait Dashboards. Both are expected to be modified as needed.

The Metrics that underpin these dashboards simply look for the Persona Trait with a value greater than 6*. Each dashboard is a starting point so that you can understand your landscape. Think about which use cases you are interested in and update the dashboard accordingly.

* One metric “Multiple Device Consumer” has a threshold of 5 in order that the use of 2 or more devices is reported.

Nexthink is producing specific Library Packs based around the Persona Insights pack which will use these Traits to define actionable Personas for specific Use Cases such as hardware renewal.


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