Introduction
The Smart Refresh feature in the Labs module of HP Workforce Experience Platform (WXP) helps organizations identify devices that may need replacement and plan device refreshes based on business priorities. It uses device health, performance, age, warranty, and hardware data to assess devices and provide replacement recommendations.
Smart Refresh uses an enhanced Refresh Urgency model to help prioritize devices for replacement based on factors such as hardware reliability, productivity impact, device age, and performance degradation. IT administrators can use an HP-recommended strategy or create a custom strategy based on your organizational requirements, performance needs, and cost considerations.
Smart Refresh helps your organization improve employee experience, maintain device performance, control replacement costs, and support sustainability goals.
Key features
Some of the key features of Smart Refresh are:
Device refresh assessment: Uses device telemetry and hardware information to identify devices that may need replacement and classify them as Refresh Now, Refresh Soon, or No Replacement Needed.
Refresh Urgency: Uses an enhanced Refresh Urgency model that considers device health, hardware reliability, productivity impact, device age, and performance degradation to determine refresh priority. Select on of the two options:
Refresh Now: Prioritizes devices that require immediate attention due to performance, reliability, or lifecycle concerns.
Refresh Soon: Includes devices that may not require immediate replacement but are likely to benefit from a refresh in the near future.
Combined issue analysis: Identifies related device issues that can have a greater combined impact on the employee experience. For example, Smart Refresh can consider combinations such as thermal problems with system crashes or memory shortages with high memory utilization.
Age-aware recommendations: Considers device age when evaluating applicable performance and reliability issues to help distinguish temporary issues on newer devices from recurring or age-related issues on older devices. This helps identify devices approaching end of life more accurately and supports better refresh planning.
Recommendation transparency: Provides visibility into the factors contributing to a refresh recommendation, such as hardware failure, productivity impact, hardware deterioration, aging and degradation, and underpowered devices.
Refresh strategies: Provides three predefined strategies: Experience first (Recommended), Performance driven, and Cost saving. IT administrators can also create and save custom strategies and refine them by using device health and hardware criteria.
Budget planning: Enables organizations to define budget constraints and distribute the budget across multiple phases. IT administrators can evaluate different replacement scenarios to balance device replacement costs, employee experience improvements, and business objectives. You can specify the following:
Currency: Select the currency used for budget planning and reporting.
Total Budget: Specify the total amount available for device refresh activities.
Budget Distribution: Allocate budget across multiple refresh phases:
Enter a budget amount for each phase.
Enable Divide equally per phases to automatically distribute the total budget evenly.
Create additional phases using Add Phase.
Remove phases as needed. Phased budgeting allows organizations to spread refresh investments over time while managing operational and financial constraints.
Best Practices: Consider the following when configuring preferences:
Prioritize health indicators that have the greatest impact on employee productivity.
Align device age and warranty criteria with your organization's refresh policies.
Use phased budgets to support multi-quarter or multi-year refresh programs.
Balance immediate refresh needs with long-term planning objectives.
Refresh insights: Shows the number of devices to refresh, the estimated investment, and recommended replacement models from the selected product catalog. It also displays CPU utilization, memory utilization, refresh breakdown, and refresh health by device age.
Custom catalogs: Supports product catalog management, including uploading, downloading, and removing custom catalogs. Organizations can use custom catalogs to align replacement recommendations with approved device standards and devices available in specific regions.
Country-based recommendations: Enables administrators to select a refresh country so that replacement recommendations can consider device models and SKUs available for that country. The default HP catalog contains U.S. SKUs.
Export and reporting: Supports exporting refresh recommendations, refresh plans, device assessments, and supporting data for further analysis and reporting.
Target Audience
IT administrators and support personnel who set up and manage the platform (all roles).
HP Partners who use the platform to manage their customers.
Internal and external developers who integrate with the platform.
Prerequisites
Before beginning, ensure that:
Devices are enrolled in WXP and report the required telemetry.
You have access to Labs > Smart Refresh.
A suitable product catalog is available.
You know the country where replacement devices will be purchased.
OS Support
Smart Refresh currently supports Windows-based devices only
Support for MacOS and Linux is planned for future releases
Hardware Scope
This release is designed for physical endpoint devices
Virtual Machines (VMs) are not supported and are outside the scope of Smart Refresh.
Smart Refresh Strategies
1. Experience First
This is an HP-recommended strategy. Use this strategy when employee experience, device reliability, and productivity are the primary considerations. This strategy identifies devices that need replacement immediately or in the near future.
2. Performance Driven
This strategy prioritizes device performance while helping the organization manage costs. By default, it considers CPU health and memory health when identifying devices for replacement. Use this strategy when the organization wants to address devices that may affect employee productivity because of performance-related conditions.
3. Cost Saving
This strategy helps reduce replacement costs without unnecessarily replacing devices that continue to provide acceptable performance. Use this strategy when budget control is the primary consideration and the organization wants to replace only devices that meet selected refresh conditions.
Custom Strategy
Custom strategy enables IT administrators to select a product catalog and define refresh preferences based on organizational requirements. Depending on the available data, preferences can include:
Refresh urgency
CPU health
Memory health
Battery health
Thermal health
Disk failure
GPU failure
Fan failure
Device age
CPU model
RAM capacity
Warranty status
Device manufacturer
Understanding the Smart Refresh Recommendation Model
The Smart Refresh recommendation model helps you identify devices that may need replacement and determine the urgency. The model evaluates device health using factors, such as hardware reliability, productivity impact, device age, and performance degradation.
Smart Refresh evaluates these factors together to generate a health score and classify devices as Replace Now, Replace Soon, or No Replacement Needed. This helps you to prioritize device replacements and make more informed refresh decisions.
The Smart Refresh recommendation model uses a layered scoring process to evaluate device health and determine refresh urgency. The model:
Identifies critical conditions that can immediately affect the recommendation.
Evaluates device health and productivity-related factors across different severity levels.
Identifies related issues that may have a greater combined impact.
Adjusts applicable deductions based on device age.
Calculates the final health score.
Assigns a replacement recommendation based on the final score.
Each deduction is associated with a contributing factor, which represents the specific device issue, and a factor group, which represents the category of the issue.
Factor groups
Each contributing factor in the Smart Refresh recommendation model belongs to a factor group. The following table lists the factor groups and their contributing factors:
Factor group | Severity layer | Age multiplier | Contributing factor | Time scale measured |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Immediate Action Required | Override | No | Battery Recall | Most recent event |
Immediate Action Required | Override | No | Drive Self-test Failed | Most recent event |
Hardware Failure | L1 | No | Disk Failure | Most recent data – output of disk replacement algorithm |
Hardware Failure | L1 | No | GPU Failure | Most recent data – output of GPU health algorithm |
Hardware Failure | L1 | No | Fan Failure | Most recent data – output of recurring fan incidents |
Productivity Impact | L2 | No | Battery Degradation | Output of battery replacement algorithm |
Productivity Impact | L2 | No | Memory Thrashing | Based on severity and chronic memory pressure as per the new calculation |
Productivity Impact | L2 | No | CPU Utilization | Average CPU utilization of the device computed over the last 30 days |
Productivity Impact | L2 | No | Storage Performance | Average disk I/O for the last 30 days |
Hardware Deterioration | L3 | Yes | Insufficient RAM | Total memory available on the device is below specification |
Hardware Deterioration | L3 | Yes | Outdated CPU | CPU whose support has ended according to the manufacturer |
Hardware Deterioration | L3 | Yes | Frequent System Crashes | Hardware BSODs experienced by the device within the last 30 days |
Aging & Degradation | L4 | Yes | OS Incompatibility | Windows 11 compatibility status |
Aging & Degradation | L4 | Yes | Security Hardware Gap | TPM 2.0 support availability on the device |
Device Underpowered | L5 | Yes | Slow Boot | Most recent data |
Applying the age multiplier
Device age can increase the impact of certain conditions on the final health score. The age multiplier applies to severity layers L3 through L5.
The age multiplier does not apply to:
Overrides
L1 factors
L2 factors
Correlation penalties
The following age multipliers apply:
Device age | Age multiplier |
|---|---|
Less than 3 years | × 1.0 |
More than 3 years and less than 4 years | × 1.2 |
More than 4 years and less than 5 years | × 1.5 |
More than 5 years and less than 6 years | × 1.8 |
More than 6 years | × 2.0 |
For example, if an applicable condition has a deduction of 10 for a device that is 4.5 years old, the × 1.5 age multiplier increases the deduction to 15.
Determining the Replacement Recommendation
After evaluating the applicable factors and calculating the final health score, Smart Refresh categorizes the device into one of three recommendation bands:
Health score | Recommendation |
|---|---|
0–34 | Replace Now |
35–64 | Replace Soon |
65–100 | No Replacement Needed |
Replace Now identifies devices that require immediate replacement attention.
Replace Soon identifies devices that may not require immediate replacement but should be considered for an upcoming refresh.
No Replacement Needed identifies devices that do not currently require replacement based on the evaluated conditions.
Understanding Recommendation Factors
Smart Refresh provides visibility into the factors that contribute to a device replacement recommendation.
Contributing factors are grouped into categories such as:
Immediate Action Required
Hardware Failure
Productivity Impact
Hardware Deterioration
Aging & Degradation
Device Underpowered
These factors help administrators understand why a device received its health score and replacement recommendation.
Use cases
1. Improve employee device experience
Scenario: Your organization wants to identify devices that may reduce employee productivity because of poor performance, hardware health issues, or aging components.
Solution: Use Smart Refresh to select the Experience first strategy and review devices classified as Refresh Now or Refresh Soon.
2. Prioritize devices with performance problems
Scenario: Your organization wants to replace devices with CPU or memory-related health problems while avoiding unnecessary device replacements.
Solution: Use Smart Refresh to select the Performance driven strategy, review the default CPU and memory health preferences, and adjust the criteria as required.
3. Plan device replacements within a budget
Scenario: Your organization wants to control replacement costs and prioritize only the devices that meet specific refresh conditions.
Solution: Use Smart Refresh to select the Cost saving strategy or create a custom strategy that uses device age, warranty status, health conditions, and hardware requirements.
4. Apply organization-specific replacement rules
Scenario: Your organization wants to replace devices that are more than five years old, are no longer under warranty, and have poor battery health.
Solution: Use Smart Refresh to create a custom strategy. Select device age, warranty status, and battery health as the refresh criteria.
Customers have visibility into the factors contributing to refresh recommendations and urgency assessments. This transparency helps users understand why devices are prioritized and supports more informed decision-making.
Contact Us
For any assistance, create a support case or email support@wxp.hp.com.