GopfTool - Augmented User Experience Monitor
An area that has proven to be rather difficult to tackle in performance monitoring is desktop performance. At the same time, this is where the rubber hits the road, even when my performance monitor tells me that the desktop performance is fine, what matters at the end of the day is if the users feel comfortable with their desktop performance.
So instead of throwing ever larger amounts of technology at the 'problem' GopfTool centers on the user experience. And provides the user with a very simple way of reporting problems.
Operation is pretty simple, whenever the user is unhappy about some technical aspect of his IT environment, she launches the GopfTool and types her complaint into the comment box and presses send.
This information is then uploaded to the GopfTool server which can also pass the information on via email for further processing.
Obviously the system will only work when the reports are processed by other humans who respond and take care of improving the system performance.
To help IT supporters figure the cause of the problem GopfTool can customized to fit the local requirements:
The user can be provided with additional controls to supply more computer readable information with his message:
A slider to express how big the problem is
Checkboxes to pick which application is affected by the problem.
Checkboxes to specify the type of problem
GopfTool can also acquire additional information from the users computer at the time where the problem report is being created.
fetch the last X lines of a log file
take a screenshot
report the cpu, network, memory performance
discover system configuration information
The automatic data acquisition facility is plugin based and can be easily enhanced.
The GopfTool server is responsible for providing the GopfTool clients with configuration information as well as for processing problem reports.
As problem reports arrive, they are forwarded to an email address of your choice. At the same time the GopfTool server will collect statistical information on the problem reports. The more machine readable information is contained in the reports the more statistical evaluations are possible.
The Statistics are presented in graphical web interface.
Gopf is a swiss german word utterred in frustration over something which does not work the way it is suposed to.
Tobi Oetiker <tobi@oetiker.ch>
2011-08-25 Initial Version