Omnissa Intelligence and DEX : Finally Worth Your Time
- Edwin de Bruin
- 1 jul
- 4 minuten om te lezen
Bijgewerkt op: 2 jul
Omnissa Intelligence has been in the stack for a while now. Most people knew it existed, but it often got ignored, to many day-to-day concerns like UEM, Horizon, or App Volumes.
Intelligence always looked promising, but it felt like another dashboard with too many lines and not enough relevance.
That... is changing.
The Digital Employee Experience (DEX) side of Omnissa Intelligence has received serious attention. It is now mature enough to actually do something useful in real environments.
I’m convinced it’s no longer just a slide on a roadmap deck. It's no longer magic. No more steam out of the end user's ears.
It’s something you can use to improve user experience and reduce support overhead.
Here’s what’s new, what works, and what you should still be cautious of.
What DEX Actually Does
DEX is Omnissa’s way of making device health and user experience measurable. It combines telemetry from UEM-managed devices, Horizon sessions, and optionally some third-party integrations. That telemetry is used to produce a score.
The lower the score, the worse the user experience.
This includes metrics like boot times, login delays, app crashes, disk health, and software responsiveness.
In theory, this gives you a view of your environment’s digital experience. In practice, if you configure it properly, it does.
Configurable Scoring
One of the key improvements is the enhanced flexibility to configure how scores are calculated by adjusting the weight of different metrics.
This allows organizations to tailor the scoring system to reflect what truly matters for their environment and workflows.
For example:
Assign higher impact to application stability (e.g., Excel crashes) when that is critical
Prioritize login times if fast access is essential
Weight CPU or resource usage more heavily when performance during builds or intensive tasks is key
This matters. It means the score now reflects real pain points rather than generic metrics.
Horizon Data is Fully Integrated
If you are using Horizon, especially Horizon 8, you can pull in session data:
What kind of data? well, think protocol latency, logon time, app launch delay session disconnects
This makes it possible to identify whether a user complaint about “slow VDI” is really about Blast latency or just Outlook freezing.
In environments with both physical and virtual devices, this cross-platform insight is valuable.
On top of that, Horizon Operations gives you a clear view of how your virtual desktop environment is doing. You get real-time info on session activity, infrastructure health, and resource usage so you can spot issues early and fix them fast.
Automations that Do Something
The automation engine is the biggest reason to take Intelligence seriously now. Previously it was mostly good for sending alerts or tagging devices. Now it can take real action.
Here are some examples:
If disk space drops below 10 percent, launch a cleanup script
If the Teams app crashes more than three times in a day, silently reinstall it
If battery health drops below 70 percent, trigger a replacement workflow
These automations, once in place, they reduce tickets, reduce user frustration, and remove repetitive tasks from the support desk.
App Performance and Crashes
You can now track app responsiveness and crash telemetry for example Office apps. It picks up abnormal load times, crash frequency, and unresponsive states.
Think a high rate of app freezing. The DEX dashboards immediately flagged that user group with a low score.
Before this, the issue had been reported manually with vague “this app is slow”, "this app crashes" or even worse: "this app is stupid" complaints.
This kind of application-level insight is finally usable and actionable
Omni is Getting There
Omnissa is announced an AI assistant inside Intelligence called Omni. Yeah, they went all-in on the name. well...easy to remember, at least.
Omni looks at trends and suggests actions, like spotting devices likely to fail based on past data, flagging users with dropping DEX scores and lots of tickets, and recommending new automations to lighten the load.
It’s still early days and nothing fancy yet, but in the right hands, Omni can save you time and help you get ahead of problems.
Dashboards with Real Value
The dashboards have also improved. You can now export reports, include exec-level summaries, and compare data across regions or departments. This is useful when you are trying to justify investment in hardware refreshes or platform upgrades. You can link DEX scores directly to support volume, which makes budget conversations much easier.
Privacy and Compliance
DEX collects a lot of data. You need to be aware of privacy concerns,
Some recommendations:
Disable app usage tracking if you do not have explicit consent
Think about what you wish to collect. More data more insights. But do you need to collect everything?
Engage with your privacy officer or works council early in the process
The good news is that you can tweak these configurations. You can tailor what you collect and how long you keep it with software development kits (SDK)
What’s Still Missing
Not everything is perfect. A few things still need work:
There is no native way to show the DEX score to the end user. This would help with transparency and self-help.
No support for devices managed outside Workspace One. as we say in Dutch "open door" but still true.
Custom metric ingestion is not point-and-click friendly.
These limitations are manageable, but worth being aware of during planning.
Is It Worth Deploying
Yes.
If you are already using Workspace ONE, Omnissa Intelligence is a no brainer.
It is one of the most useful parts of the platform (provided you configure it properly) and will give you visibility into real user experience, links that data to support costs and allows you to act before users complain.
If you want to go beyond reactive support and start proactively improving experience, Omnissa Intelligence with DEX is the place to start.
More to Come
This is not the end.
Omnissa has made it clear they are investing heavily in Intelligence and DEX. Expect more AI-driven insights and deeper app integration.
I’ll post updates when those land. In the meantime, if you're using Intelligence and have use cases or scripts worth sharing, feel free to reach out!
For more detailed information, some handy sources:
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