Widget Wednesday: Understanding application stability and performance in one dashboard
This week’s Widget Wednesday takes a deep dive into the new Windows Application Stability and Performance Dashboard, now available in the Dashboard Gallery.
This dashboard is designed to answer two critical questions:
- Is my application stable?
- What impact is it having on my systems?
By bringing stability and performance metrics together in a single view, the dashboard helps IT teams understand not only when applications fail, but also how they affect user experience and resource consumption.
What’s new in this episode:
Start with an application or process:
The dashboard is designed to be used after selecting either an application or a process. The session uses Zoom as an example and explains the distinction between the two approaches. Once selected, the entire dashboard automatically filters to the chosen application or process.
Application stability metrics:
The dashboard provides a comprehensive view of application stability, including:
- Number of users
- Focus time
- Total processes
- Crashes
- Hangs
- Freezes
This makes it easy to understand how often an application is being used and whether stability issues are affecting end users.
Top users and affected devices:
The dashboard also surfaces:
- Top users
- Launch times
- Devices experiencing crashes, hangs, or freezes
User and device names are clickable, allowing you to drill deeper while preserving the selected dashboard timeframe.
Version comparison insights:
Dedicated widgets help compare application versions, making it easier to identify whether a specific release is contributing to stability problems.
Performance and resource consumption:
Beyond stability, the dashboard includes detailed resource metrics such as:
- Time spent in high-resource processes
- P99 launch time
- CPU load
- CPU time
- Average RAM usage
- Network traffic
- Disk reads and writes
These metrics help identify applications that may be consuming excessive resources even when they appear stable.
Before-and-after update analysis:
One of the most valuable use cases is comparing behavior before and after an application update. The dashboard helps determine whether a new version has become:
- Less stable
- More resource intensive
- Slower to launch
This can significantly reduce troubleshooting time when investigating user complaints after software updates.
Trend indicators coming soon:
The episode also notes that trend indicators are being added to the dashboard, providing additional context around changes in stability and performance over time.
Why it matters:
Applications are often the source of both user frustration and system resource consumption. This dashboard helps connect those dots by showing how stable an application is and what impact it is having on the environment.
Better visibility. Faster troubleshooting. Smarter decisions.
Have questions about this video, want to go deeper, or curious how others are using these dashboards?
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Categories: ControlUp Dashboards, Widget Wednesday - ControlUp Dashboard Videos