Health Score and Experience Index both measure how much of a user's active time was affected by issues. This article uses one worked example for each score and explains why the results can differ even when they describe the same hour of user activity.
How the Two Scores Differ
Health Score uses fixed health categories such as CPU, memory, disk, latency, startup, and faults. It measures how many active minutes were affected by one or more of those categories.
Experience Index uses a curated set of sensors. Each sensor contributes a configured number of impact minutes when it triggers.
The two scores also organize time differently:
Health Score rolls impact into 10-minute active-time buckets and counts each affected minute once, even if more than one health category was active during that minute.
Experience Index uses 5-minute buckets and counts impact minutes for triggered sensors during active time. For the key concepts, see Understanding the Experience Index.
Health Score Example
This example uses 60 minutes of active time.
10-Minute Bucket | What Happened | Impacted Minutes Count |
|---|---|---|
08:00-08:10 | Startup affected 1 active minute | 1 |
08:10-08:20 | CPU affected 1 active minute and a fault affected 1 non-overlapping active minute | 2 |
08:20-08:30 | Latency affected 1 active minute and CPU affected 2 active minutes, with 1 minute of overlap | 2 |
08:30-08:40 | Latency affected 8 active minutes and CPU affected 7 active minutes, with 2 minutes of overlap | 10 |
08:40-08:50 | No impact | 0 |
08:50-09:00 | No impact | 0 |
Explanation:
08:10-08:20 bucket: non-overlapping minutes add, so 1 + 1 = 2.
08:20-08:30 bucket: overlap counts once, so 1 + 2 - 1 = 2.
08:30-08:40 bucket: distinct impacted minutes would exceed 10, but the bucket is only 10 minutes long, so it caps at 10.
Total impacted time is 15 minutes.
Health Score = (1 - 15 / 60) × 100 = 75%
This example shows three Health Score rules:
Different affected minutes add together.
Overlapping affected minutes count once.
A 10-minute bucket cannot contribute more than 10 impacted minutes.
Experience Index Example
This example uses the same 60 minutes of active time.
Sensor impact minutes for the example:
Extended High CPU Use: 2
Low WiFi Signal Strength: 1
High Destination Latency: 2
Critical Application Hang: 5
Assume the following Experience Index sensors triggered during the hour:
5-Minute Bucket | What Happened | Impacted Minutes Count |
|---|---|---|
08:00-08:05 | Extended High CPU Use triggered | 2 |
08:10-08:15 | Extended High CPU Use and Low WiFi Signal Strength triggered | 3 |
08:25-08:30 | Low WiFi Signal Strength triggered multiple times | 1 |
08:30-08:35 | High Destination Latency and Critical Application Hang triggered | 5 |
Explanation:
08:10-08:15 bucket: 2 + 1 = 3 impact minutes.
08:25-08:30 bucket: repeated triggers of the same sensor still contribute only 1 impact minute for the bucket.
08:30-08:35 bucket: 2 + 5 = 7 raw impact minutes → capped at 5 minutes for the bucket.
Total Experience Index impact is 11 minutes.
Experience Index = (1 - 11 / 60) × 100 ≈ 82%
This example shows how Experience Index differs from Health Score:
Data is evaluated in 5-minute buckets instead of 10-minute periods.
If a sensor triggers multiple times in the same bucket, it contributes its impact only once.
If multiple sensors overlap, their impact is summed, but the bucket cannot exceed 5 total impact minutes.
What to Expect When Comparing the Scores
In these examples, the same 60 active minutes produce two different results. This difference is expected. Health Score uses fixed health categories and counts overlapping categories within the same affected minute once. Experience Index uses named sensors, configurable impact minutes, and 5-minute bucket capping.
If you compare both scores for the same user or device, do not expect them to match exactly. Instead, expect Experience Index to reflect a more specific set of issue detections and bucketed impact rules, while Health Score reflects impacted active time from the legacy health categories.