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Brian Dosal

Customer Success   |   Read

BrightGauge is Hiring! Front End Developer

(Please note: This position has been filled as of June 1, 2015) BrightGauge is looking for a talented Front End Web Developer to help us continue to grow our core feature sets of rich data ...
(Please note: This position has been filled as of June 1, 2015) BrightGauge is looking for a talented Front End Web Developer to help us continue to grow our core feature sets of rich data visualization and interactive business analytics. This developer will work within our great product team environment, that already includes 1 Front End Developer and an excellent Designer, to develop amazing solutions and commit code on a bi-weekly basis to the application. Required Excellent HTML, CSS skills (cross browser consistency) Experience in developing cross-browser and cross-platform compatible solutions Exceptional JavaScript programming skills Experience with JQuery Experience working with git Excellent communication skills Understanding of working in Agile environment Technologies “Nice to haves” LESS Backbone.js Underscore Templates Bootstrap PHP Familiarity Position Details Base Salary will depend on experience Full time position with full benefits (medical, 401K, etc) Position in Coral Gables, FL Hours of operation 8:30am -5:30pm EST though off hours work to support worldwide market will be a regular occurrence Relocate help available for the right candidate About BrightGauge BrightGauge Software is a web-based business-analytics platform that enables managed IT services providers (MSPs) to generate customizable performance reports and dashboards based on their unique data sources. Founded in 2010 with a focus on the IT Services industries, BrightGauge has become a leader in simplifying data visualization and analysis for its fast growing worldwide customers. Contact Information Brian Dosal - info [at] brightgauge [dot] com
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Customer Success   |   Read

BrightGauge 3.0 Coming Soon!

May 2013 marks the launch of BrightGauge 3.0 and the addition of tons of new functionality that we are bringing to our community. Here are the “Top 3” features of this release and if you want more information, please don't hesitate to Request a Demo from our team. 1. Internal Reporting - Since 2011, BrightGauge has strictly been a client facing reporting tool. That changes with 3.0!! In addition to creating beautiful visuals that can be automatically sent to clients, our customers will now be able to create custom gauges and reports that will show aggregated data across the entire client base! This means Internal KPIs and Metric Reports can now be easily delivered through our extremely intuitive and web based reporting engine. BrightGauge will become your full Custom Reporting Solution with no SQL or development skills required!!! 2. NEW & IMPROVED Custom Gauge Builder - Since our Customer Gauge Builder beta release in August 2012, we received a ton of great feedback about this feature. The common theme in the feedback was that users want more access to their data and more flexible options on how to customize their visuals. We went to work and revamped the Custom Gauge Builder from its core and added amazing enhancements like Easy Filtering (including flexible Date Ranges) and Easy Slicing and Dicing of your data. 3. More Default Gauges & Datasets - With the ability to do aggregated reporting we have added more and more critical fields for you to visualize. Think Billable hours vs. Non-Billable hours, CRM modules like Opportunities and Activities, Project Information, and much more. Over 20 more default gauges will come “out of the box” for our PSA Data Sources like AutoTask and Connectwise (hosted and on-premise). We are very excited about this release and the opportunities it will provide our community. The release date is just around the corner as we’re in the final phases of testing!! Want more information? Request a Demo Today.

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Service, Best Practices   |   Read

Checklist for End of Month Reports

If you’re as fanatical about client reporting as we are then you also probably had a New Years resolution to create better and more meaningful reports for your clients. And there is no better time than end of January to start. Many of our customers follow three steps to ensure an easy and great end of month reporting process: 1. Identify who are the key clients to receive reports - In every month, there are ups and downs for certain clients. It’s important to identify who are the key clients that should receive special reports. 2. Create template reports one week ahead of time - With BrightGauge you can create “template” reports that are ready to be edited, tested, scheduled on the fly. It’s best to create these templates now so you can test out the reports all week before the final day when they will be sent. This can be found in your navigation bar: 3. Set the schedule for delivery - Once you’re comfortable with a template and how the data is flowing. You add a Schedule to the report in the 3rd step. This schedule can be anytime you would like and many people opt for the 2nd of the month just to be different. Following three easy steps will ensure a great end of month reporting exercise. If you're ready to learn more about best practices of client reporting, we've put together a free guide for you to download:
Customer Success   |   Read

Open APIs in the MSP Community (Post #2)

During the holidays I was catching up on some articles sent my way that I had saved over the fall using Instapaper and came across this one from Techcrunch: 5 Rules for API Management. It’s a great short read (including the comments) and the 5 “rules” are Design, Documentation, Analytics, Universal Access, and Uptime. It reminded me of a post I wrote in late June calling for a continued push for Open APIs in our industry. It’s great to see a blog like Techcrunch covering the need and importance of APIs in the software industry. APIs are what make the Internet so connected and powerful in these social days. Great APIs make software products so incredibly useful and flexible for their user base. APIs also help software companies expand the value of their products by leveraging the benefits of other products connected to them. It’s a teamwork type environment instead of the old “proprietary” days of the past where software customers were tied into one system and were literally at the mercy of those systems’ new features and improvements. In the MSP Industry having a well built APIs is a relatively new and rapidly developing idea. Most of the core vendors now have some sort of API but unfortunately most of them, if not all, have some deficiency. These deficiencies are unexplained usability issues (random timeouts), poor documentation, or just lack of data available through them. Things are getting better and you can see the change at IT Nation with so many new companies offering great add-ons thanks to Connectwise’s API. There is much more these core vendors can be doing to futher enhance and promote their open APIs that ultimately will help MSPs and provide more flexibility. They could be providing more and more data available through their API, they could really promote their development communities to their partners, and they could provide better support to these third party products, etc. I encourage all MSPs to continue to bring these points up through their support channels and user forums as stronger APIs mean better products to help MSPs perform their business faster, more profitably, and with less system headaches. In speaking with many MSPs, these are all top concerns. Stronger APIs is one area everyone can improve so lets push for them!!
Customer Success   |   Read

Using BrightGauge as a Sales Tool

This week I was reminded of one of the original reasons we created and started BrightGauge, SALES! I was speaking with one of our current partners and catching up on how everything is going and he immediately asked if I could show his sales team how to use BrightGauge. Absolutely, I responded, since showing off our great product is one of my favorite things to do. What was interesting was how quickly this MSP realized two of the true benefits of BrightGauge and Client Reporting, to maintain clients and also to WIN new clients. We originally started BrightGauge because as my brother and I were going after bigger and better clients for our MSP business, we realized we needed a differentiator. And one of those differentiators would be how we report on our services to our clients and how we could give them more access/control to our services performance than they could expect elsewhere. We call that “Client Reporting” and the concept is simple but the tools available in our market never solved the need. The functionality needed to make this easy for MSPs is greater than what exists in current products or SQL reporting services. And it’s not just in our industry, most products struggle with great executive style reporting. The client I referenced in the first paragraph signed up for BrightGauge a month back because he was competing for a large deal against IBM. This MSP is a smaller shop (less than 10 employees) and were fighting for a 500 user outsourcing deal that the CIO was interested in exploring his options outside of Big Blue. This MSP got creative and signed up for our services on a Friday in anticipation for a meeting on Tuesday of the following week. He implemented and integrated our tool on that Monday and showcased the sample reports and client portal that they would offer this CIO if they switched to their services. Well it paid off, the CIO said “I’ve been asking IBM for this type of reporting for years and I’ve never received anything close to this.” The MSP is now in final negotiations with this company to win this deal. It’s a pretty cool story and one I want to scream from the mountain tops now (and I’ll provide the MSP name once the deal is one!). Many MSPs I speak with get a little lost in the focus of what really matters in their operations, keeping the clients happy. And in today’s hyper connected world, providing executives real time access to their data is simply best practices. Sure you’ll still have the “as long as my systems are up, i’m happy” type clients but those clients are either going away slowly or just don’t expect much from their service provider (not good!). 11 months into BrightGauge and 60,000 client reports later, we know this concept of client reporting is uber important to the industry. If you don’t believe in it, let us make you believers. You’ll thank us later!!

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Customer Success   |   Read

Browser Wars and BrightGauge

Often times partners ask me which browser we recommend to use for BrightGauge and in the past we've always said "any browser will work just fine". When breaking down the question, our partners are usually just curious between the big four, Internet Explorer (IE), Firefox, Safari, and Chrome. And then knowing that most of our users are Microsoft users, they're really just battling between using IE (the standard) versus using Chrome or Firefox (the optional downloaded browsers). What we've come to realize is that our application experience does favor Firefox and Chrome over IE. It's been a little tough to accept that internally because being browser agnostic is important but when analyzing the amount of "one-off" visual issues that are browser related, IE8 and IE9 are always at the root. So we're starting to feel comfortable recommending our users to avoid Internet Explorer all together and so far the few people we've spoken with are comfortable with that change. They just want the best user experience. Since we so wholeheartedly believe in great a user experience, it's time to be ok with saying... the Internet is just more beautiful in Chrome or Firefox. And my personal opinion is that Chrome is really the best browser experience and I believe will continue to win out. We won't ever abandon Internet Explorer but we recommend if you're using IE... to take a look at Chrome or Firefox. You will never look back!
Customer Success   |   Read

Benefits of Client Reporting

Last month MSP Mentor wrote a blog post about the upcoming IT Nation conference Connectwise is hosting and mentioned BrightGauge as a "Emerging Software in the MSP Market". We were definitely flattered he would consider us an upcoming software and that he would put us along side some good friends and companies like Connectsmart, JoomConnect, etc. Joe P does a great job of reporting on our industry and I read his stuff every day. Next to our name he did add this comment which I wanted to respond to briefly in this post: Reality check: Can customer reporting really win you more business? Early BrightGauge users say yes and I’d like to learn more. The truth is AWESOME client reporting (which is us!) doesn't just help win clients but it also REALLY helps MSPs keep clients. Both situations are hugely beneficial for MSPs but usually the "keeping" of clients is the more fruitful and an easier way to spend resources. Think about it, how much does it cost to get a new client? Quite a bit... Fortunately, this concept is not lost on too many MSPs we are still acquiring and talking to new partners every day! Helping win new clients is a benefit of ours but it's more of an offshoot of our product because of our slick designs and our clever partners. See, many of partners realize a small differentiator like report samples is tangible enough to convince a weary prospect to sign on with them (ever seen an internal IT department with great executive reports? me neither). Keeping new clients is why we get calls and sign ups every day. Don't get me wrong, in order to truly keep clients you have to deliver a great service. But sometimes in IT Services that service is very, very transparent. Almost to the detriment of the service provider because they make it look so easy that the client thinks they can do it cheaper or by themselves. Regular reporting, and AWESOME reporting, can help keep that constant flow of information to the client. Even if they glance at it once a month they know the service provider is doing their job and checking in, again, especially with AWESOME reporting. What else could clients ask for? We recently integrated our client reporting with GFI Max and in talking with their MSP partners and their internal team, they say client reporting is one of the most talked about functions within their community. It kind of is amazing that something so conceptually simple (like reporting) could be so helpful to so many! The really interesting aspect is that although the concept is simple, the effort isn't. That's where we come in... Ready to learn more about the benefits of Client Reporting, and how to put them together? Check out our free webinar:
Customer Success   |   Read

Custom Gauge Builder Update - Two Weeks Into Beta Release!

Two weeks ago we released the beta version of our Custom Gauge Builder which was a feature we have been working on for 6 months as a team. It was a HUGE release for our product’s architecture, our future roadmap, and an important checkmark off our Feature Requests. The beta release was by design as we were expecting some small bugs and we knew we needed the help of our fastly growing community to come up with great iteration ideas. Since the release the team has been working round the clock on resolving issues with the builder and making sure all of our new custom gauges are working properly for existing partners. It’s been a fun roller coaster and we’re thankful to all our partners who have been helping along the way. With this post I just wanted to check in and provide an update on our progress. Where we’re at is simple, there are a few remaining bugs in some gauges and how those particular gauges interact with reports. For example with stacked charts (two sets of data) the drilldown isn’t functioning properly and for our Kaseya server uptime gauge, the visual isn’t working quite right for some partners. With the builder opening up the API’s of our friends at GFI, AutoTask, Kaseya, and Connectwise, we’re also fighting some timeouts from custom calls we’re making. Nothing out of the ordinary but we don’t like bugs so we’re cranking away on fixing these while at the same time taking in some improvement requests. Here are a few examples that have come in already but feel free to add more to our forums: X-Axis Customization for long time periods - This way you can view daily or weekly and the X-Axis won’t look cluttered. Special Token explanations - We have these unique tokens MSPs have to use to build custom datasets so they can build once and apply to all clients. Feedback has been to more intuitively explain them. Custom Colors of Charts - MSPs want to customize the color scheme of the charts so red means bad, green means good, etc The great news is that MSPs have already begun creating custom gauges from scratch which has been awesome to see and get the positive feedback. They’ve been using their own custom SQL queries or our advanced Query Builder to build them so we know both options are working well. MSPs have also been editing current gauges by changing the time periods of their service gauges to match their QBR meeting schedules among other edits. All in all we’ve accomplished quite a bit in the past two weeks but there is still room to go. We will check back in with an update in the next two weeks but if you have any questions, please feel free to visit our forums and support portal, support.brightgauge.com. If you’re not a BrightGauge user, you can start creating awesome client facing reports today by signing up online, just takes a few minutes to get going! And if you haven’t heard, we just released our integration with GFI Max last week!
Customer Success   |   Read

Looking for Client Report Ideas? Look no further!

In June we had our strongest month to date of new MSP sign ups which was great but also reminded us to continue providing more "How To" documentation and "Suggested Use" information. Typically we handle this type of demonstration or Q&A over a webinar but we thought it might be good to post something on the blog as well! Just this past weekend I asked one of our top MSP partners (both in size and usage of BrightGauge) to put together a list of report ideas for our other users. He was kind enough to do so and here's the list of 5 reports that he automatically sends out to his clients every month or week. #1 Weekly Open Tickets Report Gauges/Modules: Tickets Opened by Status, Support Ticket Summary of all Statuses Purpose: For larger clients and new clients, keeps them in the loop always of what tickets are still being queued up. #2 Weekly Waiting On Client Report Gauges/Modules: Support Ticket Summary with only status of "waiting on client" Purpose: For those clients who seem to have too many tickets waiting on them. This is a very helpful weekly reminder. #3 Monthly Executive Summary Gauges/Modules: Tickets Opened by Type, Tickets Opened by Sub-Type, Server Disk Utilization, Server Operating System, Server Server Patch Status, Workstation Patch Status, Purpose: Executive Summary & Overview for a majority of his clients. #4 Monthly Justification Report Gauges/Modules: Support Ticket Summary, Tickets Closed Previous Month. Purpose: This report is more to justify the work for those clients who need the constant justification. Obviously this one is not sent to a client who doesn't open alot of tickets. #5 Monthly Creative Ticket Analysis Gauges/Modules: Service Backlog Gauge, Tickets Opened by Type by Sub-Type Purpose: Only for a few clients who like to get a different view of how the service is actually going. Particularly new clients. Hope this helps our new partners and prospective partners.
Customer Success   |   Read

Integration with Kaseya API Complete!!

We’re very excited to announce our completed integration with the Kaseya API. As you may recall, in December we announced our integration with Kaseya’s On Premise systems but at the time our product was inaccessible by hosted Kaseya partners. As of this week that is no longer the case! After a few weeks of working with Ben Lavalley from Kaseya and a few of our current hosted Kaseya partners we are proud to finally say we’re fully integrated! On-Premise customers can also choose the route to use the API integration instead of the BrightGauge Agent should they prefer that route of integration. Later this month we will be releasing our much highly anticipated Custom Gauge Builder which will take the Kaseya API, as well as any other integrated Data Source and make creating charts and gauges as customizable as ever and as easy as the rest of our application. Big shout out goes to Kaseya and their great work on having a strong & well documented API. Something we are big on here at BrightGauge!!
Customer Success   |   Read

BrightGauge will be closed July 4th, 2012

Good afternoon everyone! We wanted to let you know that we will be closed tomorrow for the July 4th US holiday. For those who are celebrating, have a great one! We'll be back in the office on Thursday continuing to work on the Custom Gauge Builder and other great features and integrations coming out this month! Happy 4th of July!

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Best Practices   |   Read

How to Generate Powerful Autotask Reports

You know what clients love? Partners who are trustworthy and transparent about what they’re doing. Know what’s even better? When that foundation is set naturally, without clients having to ask. It’s likely a priority of yours to foster a really strong sense of trust between you and your clients, which is great. Trust breeds long-term relationships and repeat business, putting you on a path towards success. And a really simple, yet powerful way to build that trust is to get in the habit of consistently sending out client reports. It’s not as tedious or time-consuming as you may think, and the payoff is substantial. Determining what to report on Let’s say you’re using Autotask Professional Services Automation to track your support tickets, SLA data, engineers’ hours, and more. That’s some pretty important data! How do you show your clients what you do with that data to keep them running efficiently? This is where Autotask reports come in. Consistent reports give you the opportunity to visually display your value to your client and reinforce the reasons why they are paying you. Autotask reports also show that you’re proactive and committed to helping them run their business - a.k.a., you’re a partner, not just a service provider. However, while we are clearly in support of showing off your data management skills, we should caution against dumping too much Autotask data (or any data) on your clients. The key is to choose the right data. There are a few questions to ask yourself whenever you’re choosing the Autotask data to report on: How does this fit into my client’s SLA? Referring to the SLA you and your client agreed upon is an excellent way to refresh yourself on what matters to them. For example, if the SLA specifies a satisfactory support ticket response time, you’re going to want to include your Autotask Average Time to First Response on each report you send. Does this impact my client’s bottom line? Only include the Autotask data that’ll have the most impact to each specific client. They may not need to know nitty-gritty details like Hours Today by Engineer, but would probably appreciate an update on Projects Opened vs. Closed. Am I spending significant time on this? If it’s not something that matters a whole lot to you, it’s not likely to matter a whole lot to your client. Remember, this is an opportunity to report on your value, so show off Autotask data that you spend a worthwhile amount of time on. Once you’ve got your data ironed out, you can start pulling your Autotask reports together. A little help goes a long way You’re really busy. You don’t have 8-10 hours a week to spend on compiling reports. And no one says you have to. Using a business intelligence tool like BrightGauge can help you get your Autotask reports out with very little work on your end. First of all, BrightGauge takes all your Autotask data (plus data from your RMM, BDR, security, finance tool, etc) and puts it up on one seamless dashboard, so you can keep an eye on the metrics that matter to you in real-time. Then, when it comes to building reports, the whole process is automated and can be set up in just a few clicks. When you connect BrightGauge + Autotask, your account will come pre-loaded with 8 report templates to get you started, including Daily Member Scorecard, Weekly Project Work Summary, Service Calls, Sales Daily Wrap Up, and more. You can open one of these templates, personalize it with a client logo, choose your client recipient(s), and then schedule the report to automatically be sent out at the frequency you choose (like every Monday at 8 a.m.). If you’d rather build a report from scratch, it’s just a matter of dragging and dropping the data you’re already tracking into the report template, and then personalizing it and scheduling it out. It’s honestly that simple. And the reports look clean, professional, and digestible. Once you get your Autotask reports scheduled, you can rest easy knowing they’re automatically being delivered to your client’s inbox every week/month/quarter and that your client’s can rely on you and trust you to receive this information. High-five! By the way, in addition to 8 report templates, you’ll get almost 200 default KPIs and 9 pre-built dashboards to get you started. Some KPIs include: Amount on Invoices 90 Days Past Due Average Time to First Response Average Time to Resolution Breached SLA Summary Per Resource Customer Satisfaction This Month Leaderboard Opened vs Closed Tickets Project Phases - Current Month Tickets Assigned by Tech Tickets Completed This Week Leaderboard Tickets by Issue Type Watch this video to learn more about setting up and sending out reports. If you’d like to add Autotask to your stack of BrightGauge datasources, please contact us today.
Customer Success   |   Read

Dashboard of the Month: RMM Overview - Endpoints

Dashboards and reports play a vital role in streamlining data and extracting valuable insights. In the dynamic realm of endpoint management, it is imperative for Managed Service Providers (MSPs) to have real-time access to consolidated data from their array of tools, enabling swift action on behalf of their clients. Utilizing metrics not only aids in pinpointing areas for enhancement but also empowers them to enact precise strategies for advancement. In this month's featured Dashboard, we delve into RMM Overview metrics tailored to streamline endpoint monitoring and management. Our inspiration stems from a recent user showcase webinar featuring Nate Ginn, the Centralized Systems Manager at ESI Technology Advisors, who shared insights on leveraging ConnectWise RMM and ConnectWise PSA data for enhanced client management. Tune in to Optimizing Remote Monitoring and Client Management with Data to discover more on how Nate drives performance enhancements through data utilization. Nate and the ESI team rely on the RMM Overview dashboard to gain a snapshot into critical indicators like patch status, warranty updates, and disk space utilization, guaranteeing optimal functionality of their endpoints. This visual aid, shared among their team, helps them stay ahead of RMM tickets for prompt issue resolution as well. RMM Overview - Endpoints - view here. Here are some featured metrics: Ticket & Configuration Information - These segments organize RMM tickets based on their status, time spent, and attached configurations. It also offers a historical perspective on ticket volume, and provides insight into the endpoints and software under your management. Patching & Disk Space Utilization - These metrics provide valuable insights on missing patches, OS patch compliance rates, and disk space utilization percentages. These data points are crucial for addressing performance concerns and identifying potential security vulnerabilities. Thank you, Nate, for collaborating with us and sharing your valuable insights! Recreate in your BrightGauge RMM Overview - Endpoints Dashboard (public view link) RMM Overview - Endpoints Buildout Key Make sure to visit our library of more report and dashboard templates and please feel free to reach out to success@brightgauge.com with any questions!
Customer Success   |   Read

Report of the Month: Service Desk 30-Day Summary

Managed Service Providers (MSPs) play a vital role in ensuring the smooth functioning of their clients' IT infrastructure. One effective way for MSPs to showcase their worth and maintain transparency is by crafting monthly client reports. These reports can spotlight important metrics around ticket volume, response and resolution times, and customer satisfaction ratings, illustrating their dedication to meeting service level agreements (SLAs). For June's Report of the Month, we are excited to present a Service Desk Summary Report inspired by a recent User Showcase Webinar on Client Reporting Excellence featuring Scott Kingston, the Service Delivery Manager at Spark in New Zealand. This 30-day summary offers a comprehensive view of the services delivered in the past month. Utilizing dynamic filtering capabilities in BrightGauge, this report can also display data from the previous month, tailored to your reporting preferences. Scott and his dedicated team at Spark NZ diligently distribute their Caretaker Plus Service Desk Report on a monthly basis, providing both interactive drill-down features and a downloadable PDF version for convenience. These reports offer a detailed backdrop for their regular meetings and consistently showcase the tangible advantages and improvements facilitated by Spark's exceptional services. This not only validates their pricing structure but also strengthens their reputation as a reliable and valued partner. Service Desk 30-Day Summary Report - view here. Here are some featured metrics: Ticketing Information - This section offers a concise overview of active tickets, the 30-day history of both open and resolved tickets, and key performance indicators such as resolution rates and customer satisfaction scores (CSAT). Ticket Trends - This section categorizes tickets to easily identify trends. For instance, metrics include tickets by type, subtype, item, source, and ticket opener. Additionally, it provides insights to highlight potential problematic tickets, such as those with extensive time entries and an aging ticket summary. Open Projects & Managed Servers - Concluding the report with a brief summary of ongoing projects and the effectiveness of managed servers opens up avenues for further improvements and additional tasks to be explored. Thank you, Scott, for collaborating with us and sharing your Caretaker Plus Service Report template! Recreate in your BrightGauge Service Desk 30-Day Summary Report (public view link) Service Desk 30-Day Summary Report Buildout Key Make sure to visit our library of more report and dashboard templates and please feel free to reach out to success@brightgauge.com with any questions!

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