Once again, I take you for a trip through buzzword bingo. Of the many buzzwords are artificial intelligence (AI), automation, and the word intelligence in general. VMware introduced Workspace ONE Intelligence a few years ago now and it has had some growing pains. I’m happy to report it has matured into a solid platform. We will go over the Workspace ONE Intelligence platform, some of its features, and enjoy the neat demos it has to offer.

An Overview into Workspace ONE Intelligence

As you will see in the video, Workspace ONE Intelligence offers a number of great features below. The platform is a huge advancements over the legacy AirWatch reporting that was powered by SQL Server Reporting Services:

VMware has some great documentation on Intelligence here. Essentially, Workspace ONE Intelligence is based on many industry-great products inside of AWS, such as:

• Amazon S3 Storage as the source of truth for data. It appears they leverage Glacier long-term storage for recovery efforts in the event of a total loss. Additionally, WS1 uses it for app analytics loads and usage
• Dynamo DB stores key-value pairs (KVPs) for data types and is the lifeblood for data powering reporting and dashboards.
• Elasticsearch, which is used elsewhere like WS1 Access is leveraged here for historical info and report previews just to name a few.

I also really love their data-map which helps to visualize their entire data strategy:

Let’s close things up by watching a video as I enjoy introducing you to Workspace ONE Intelligence:

Building Workspace ONE Intelligence Dashboards

Workspace ONE Dashboards are a neat little aspect of WS1 Intelligence. What I REALLY love about WS1 Intelligence is how automation is at its core the lifeblood of the entire system. Everywhere you go and everywhere you do, you should be thinking about automation. You can build automation workflows from every dashboard and report, which makes your strategic design crucial.

I would suggest checking out my video which covers me “fumbling” a bit and learning about how to build WS1 Intelligence dashboards. The smart move they made is having templates for most of the dashboards you need. So you don’t need to get cute and try to build them from scratch. WS1 Intelligence Dashboards are great and dynamic and can be tweaked very easily. The one criticism that I do have is a need to embed them into your O365 sites. Every dashboard should be embed-able just like Power Bi. You can’t make the argument “but they’re free” because it has a solid cost. Enjoy the demo!

Building Workspace ONE Intelligence Automations

Automations are pretty specific. You will see there’s a list of specific integration points you can use:

Essentially, the idea is you follow IFTT (If this, then that). If something happens, you do something. Pretty simple right?

You can see a few examples below:

The one above that I find particularly appealing is how you can partner Carbon Black, WS1, and Service-Now to combat Ransomware Threats by locking down folder access, sending an email, and opening a ticket to that effect. As you can see, you can build a beautiful harmony across your enterprise provided you have made technological investments that mesh with their supported Workspace ONE Trust Network partners. Now, enjoy the demo on building automations:

Workspace ONE Intelligence Reporting

Now, we cover a part that is for EVERYONE. WS1 Intelligence reporting is available to all license types and is very useful. As I discussed a few weeks back, WS1 Sensors are very useful for keeping an eye on your Windows 10 fleet and focus on the data that matters to you.

Reporting lets you be laser focused on an exact problem e.g. Windows 10 Devices that are not an old version of the Office 365 client and build automation that solves the problem. As an example, maybe you want PCs with an old version of the Office client to run this command:

"C:\Program Files\Common Files\microsoft shared\ClickToRun\OfficeC2RClient.exe" /update user displaylevel=false forceappshutdown=true

That code would make sure your Office clients are getting updated via a simple report and automation behind it, basically saying if any devices pop into that report to execute that script/product in Workspace ONE. It’s a beautiful thing! Check the video below to learn more about building reports:

Final Thoughts

I hope you have enjoyed this journey through Workspace ONE Intelligence. The platform has certainly come far in a short period of time. At the end of the day, you need to decide if the cost is justifiable. In the Modern Workplace, you need automation that shifts with your workforce. You shouldn’t have to focus on leaving the lights on. Being strategic means building things elastically. Leveraging automation will save you time, build credibility, and consistency on your EUC landscape.