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The BrightGauge Blog

Brian Dosal

How to Create a Report within BrightGauge!

Two weeks ago I wrote about what goes in a Custom BrightGauge report (blog post link here) and we now have this short video to really show how to create a custom report within our product. Reporting ...
Two weeks ago I wrote about what goes in a Custom BrightGauge report (blog post link here) and we now have this short video to really show how to create a custom report within our product. Reporting takes less than a minute and is designed to easily replace or improve your current Connectwise, Kaseya, or Labtech customer facing reports (and soon to be more tools as well). If you have any questions or would like help in replacing your own reports just contact us and we'll get back to you quickly with help.
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2.10 Release Notes

Happy Holidays everyone! We are excited to announce our 2.10 release for many reasons, but primarily because we have our new Agent complete and rolling out to our new and existing partners! Listed below are more details about each major item that we released with 2.10: New Agent - The big change of the new agent is that it runs as a service and is easier to manage. We are releasing the new agent to our partners and will reach out to you shortly. New Gauge! - "Opened Tickets by Sub-Type" - This is a phenomenal gauge that shows past 30 days worth of tickets opened categorized by Sub-Type. New Gauge! - "Disk Utilization" - Another popular request was implemented with this release. Both Workstation & Server Disk Utilization Gauges are now available. New Pricing Packages - Check for our latest pricing packages. Customer Portal Improved Dashboard Design - We made some improvements to the customer portal dashboard so your customers can quickly click on any gauge right from the dashboard! Improved IT Health Score Management - You asked for it, we made it happen! When reviewing a customer's IT Health Score you can now quickly see what gauges are causing the score to lower or higher than expected. As an update, we will be closed tomorrow (Thursday, November 24th) for the Thanksgiving holiday. If you have any questions or any support issues please contact us at: support@brightgauge.com. For any feature requests (or to see what other MSPs have been requesting) please visit: http://brightgauge.uservoice.com/

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What's in a BrightGauge Custom Report?

Following up from IT Nation last week we had a few questions about how our Real-Time Gauges tie into our Custom Report Builder. I ended up putting together a lengthy email for one of our Connectwise prospects so I wanted to share a summarized version of that note with everyone. Any Gauge that exists within BrightGauge is available to report off of within our Custom Report Builder. Additionally, we have unique Modules that enhance the Custom Report Builder for our MSPs. Both modules and gauges are listed below with a little more detail. Alternatively we have set up Default Report Templates (Executive Summaries, Daily Reports, SLA Review) that are the most popular reports sent out by our partners today. Those templates have a mixture of modules and gauges that are pre-configured and ready to Create or Schedule for our partners within seconds. I should also mention that we are adding Gauges every week based on MSP feedback. For instance AV, Tickets by Sub-Types, and others are being released this month! But here are the current Modules/Gauges you can add to your reports: Support Ticket Summary - Send a summarized list of tickets by your chosen date range (last month, last week, week to date, month to date, currently open) and by any of your statuses. IT Health Score - Send the visual representation of the client's custom IT Health Score. Personalization Text - You can add your own personal touch to the reports by adding headers, breaks, and paragraph texts. PSA Gauges - Listed below RMM Gauges - Listed below Current Gauges within BrightGauge Average Time to Acknowledgement (past 30 days, line chart) Average Time to Resolution Plan (past 30 days, line chart) Average Time to Resolution (past 30 days, line chart) Open vs. Closed Tickets (past 30 days, line chart) Tickets Opened by Type (past 30 days, pie chart) Most Active Users (past 30 days, bar chart) Tickets Open by Status (pie chart) Tickets Open by Type (pie chart) Backup Status (success/failure, pie chart) Server Disk Utilization (list) Server Disk Space Available (pie chart) Server Patch Status (pie chart) Server Statuses (table, whether servers are up or down) Server Operation Systems (Bar chart) Workstation Disk Utilization (list) Workstation Disk Space Available (pie chart) Workstation Patch Status (pie chart) Workstation Operating System (Bar chart)

IT Nation here we come!

IT Nation starts today and we’re pumped. It was this conference last year that we first started talking about BrightGauge to our friends (I was there because I was Director of Sales & Marketing at Compuquip Technologies). Those original partners gave us the motivation to build out this company and here we are, one year later sponsoring the event. Our team will be at booth 117, right next to Google, and hope you stop by and say hello. Our Director of Development, Jaime Wheeler, will be there as well so you can talk directly to the source about what you want in the product in the next release. He’s all ears and is a rookie at IT Nation. If we’re at all busy when you stop by, feel free to send me an email and we’ll schedule a time to get together. My brother is also a presenter with Ricky Phipps from Intrust Group in their breakout session, Refining Process Through Automation. Definitely check them out if you can! See you in Orlando!

August 2011 Development Update & Feature Preview

Version 2 of BrightGauge Software is nearly complete and in the final testing phase! Below is a list of new features and functionality that will be available. Over the coming month we'll expand more on each new feature. NEW Report Builder The Report Builder in version 1 was good, but this report builder is GREAT! More data to report on, more personalization by the MSP, and more preview functions before creating reports. Creating custom Connectwise, Kaseya, or LabTech reports has NEVER been easier or looked better. Improved MSP Manageability As an MSP you can now more easily manage IT Health Scores of your clients, upload files and view all custom reports generated. Included in this improvement is an amazing update to our User Interface. [dividerline] NEW Agent Based Solution Like we shared in May, we created a downloadable agent to handle on-premise queries and send data back to BrightGauge securely and encrypted. Onboarding has smoothed out because of it and security has been improved tremendously. [dividerline] Improved Gauges Our Gauges and reports are new and improved. They are all mobile friendly and beautifully viewed on all tablets and mobile devices. As a bonus we have also added drill down capability to be able to view the specifics if necessary. [dividerline] Again, these improvements major and we're inviting our supporters to test Version 2 starting next week!

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Productivity Post – Solution #1: Airplane Mode

Previously I wrote a post on the problem of lack of productivity in the workplace. Productivity, as I’m defining it, is the amount of work you get done in a set amount of time. I used the example of 8 hours in a workday being the equivalent of running close to two marathons, meaning it’s a ton of time. In this post I wanted to offer solution #1 to becoming more productive during the work day. As you can imagine, many productivity killers are not in our control (lack of direction from leaders, interruptions from colleagues, etc) but there is one main productivity killer that is squarely in our control, our ability to FOCUS. In today’s connected world there are many self inflicted tools we use that are distracting us from the very tasks we are trying to focus on. Probably the biggest ones are the Internet, receiving/sending text messages, and receiving phone calls. Studies show that anytime you get distracted while focusing on something it takes your mind 10 to 20 minutes to get back into the full mode it was in before. And if you are tackling a difficult problem then it could be longer. So focus is important in order to get things done in a shorter amount of time. My simple suggestion that has worked wonders in my work environment is a nod to Apple. I personally switch my world into “Airplane Mode”. Airplane Mode, for those that don’t get the reference, is the little slider button on your Apple iPhone that disconnects your phone from the rest of the world (wireless and network access is turned off). By cutting your phone off from those two connections the device becomes nothing more than an iPod, note taker, or for some just piece of metal in your pocket! If you mimic this same “Airplane Mode” with everything around you, you too will become singularly focused on the task at hand. Here are four VERY easy tips to go into Airplane mode: Close your door at your office or go into a quiet area to work (sometimes thats home). Turn off your computer’s wifi or unplug the Ethernet cord. Turn your phone off. Wear headphones (with the right music of course) From my experience if you can get yourself into this mode there is a high probability your production levels will go up. Try it for one hour and see how you do. PS - a great site on Productivity tips is http://www.productivity501.com/ and www.workawesome.com

BrightGauge Gauges, Gauges and Gauges

As you can tell from our company name, we are all about Gauges. We’ve built our product around a set of gauges that we plan to continually expand based on customer feedback and changes in the industry. But we started with 15 as a base that we feel every MSP client would be interested in seeing. Let me explain a few of our most popular ones: From your PSA system (Connectwise, Autotask, etc), these are some main gauges: 1. Average Time to Acknowledgement, Resolution Plan, and Resolution - What client doesn’t want to know how long it takes for tickets to be planned, worked on, or even acknowledged. These are very popular gauges as they show not only the current average time but also trending for the past 30 days! 2. Tickets Open by Status - Many clients ask about open tickets and why it takes so long to close. But what if they knew that tickets weren’t being closed because the MSP was “waiting on the client” or otherwise on hold. The pie chart serves up these metrics so clients know the status of each open ticket. 3. Most Active Users - This one is a BrightGauge favorite. It shows what users (in a bar chart) have created or opened the most tickets over the past 30 days. Usually its the client liaison who takes the lead but sometimes its just the high maintenance end users! From your RMM system (Kaseya, LabTech, etc), these are some main gauges: 1. Server Status Gauges - These gauges are one of my personal favorites as it provides the simplest amount of information possible. What’s the one question any executive wants to know? Are my servers up or down? that’s it. We don’t need to give them any more information than that! 2. Server & Workstation Patch Status - A personal client favorite at Compuquip Technologies is Patch Status Reports. Every client, whether audited or not audited understands the importance of patches and therefore. 3. Workstation Memory - Its important for clients to know what workstations have what memory so as an MSP we can have the ability to help them understand what workstations need to upgrade in order to keep up with software requirements. 4. Workstation Disk Space - Same concept as the Workstation Memory, gives the clients the information they need to understand what is in their environment. 5. Operating Systems Counts - We have two gauges focused on the type of operating systems that are currently being used by Servers and Workstations. Again, this helps the client understand what they have invested in and what needs more investment (if any...like a Windows 2000 machine). Gauges will continue to grow and become more complex as we get more and more feedback. But our customers love these gauges and love to report off of them. Any particular gauges you would like to add to our list? Let us know!

Introducing Jaime Wheeler

In our first “Product Blog” I want to introduce and talk about Jaime Wheeler. Jaime is BrightGauge’s Director of Development and currently lives in and loves San Francisco, CA. Jaime’s responsibility is designing, architecting, and building out our awesome product, team, and future. But that’s the obvious stuff, lets talk about Jaime past the obvious. Jaime, aka Mr. Even Keel, as we like to call him was introduced to us by a friend in California when we were looking for a person to lead our development efforts. Our first impression from our initial call and meeting still holds true today, he’s a tremendously nice guy who’s very talented and committed to his work, friends, and family. We couldn’t ask for anything more than that! The one thing you won’t find out about Jaime from first meeting him is the really good stuff, he’s survived without braking a bone being hit by a car as a pedestrian, he’s in the midst of taking hip hop dance classes at the pushing from a friend, and he gets along with just about everyone alive. Jaime is a tremendous asset to our team and will be the leading the development efforts of our products. If you want to get in touch with him, just email us at info [at] brightgauge.com.

What to expect from the BrightGauge blog?

As you can tell we’ve updated the look/feel of our blog and website recently and we’re going to take a new approach to the content we distribute. Moving forward, there will be two main parts to this blog, Company Blog and a Product Blog. The differences are: Company blog will be focused on the MSP industry, our point of views, and application development and other miscalleanous topics. Product blog will be focused, well, on the product. We want to be sure we keep everyone updated on what’s going on with the product, its features, improvements, etc. Included will be tips & tricks, videos, and screenshots with more information. We considered moving the company blog off to another URL but felt that our company’s culture attitude and feelings are embedded in this product and we don’t want to hide from that. We hope you enjoy, sign up with our RSS feed, and even get blogs delivered to your email. That’s what I do!

Introduction to BrightGauge

We’re unbelievably excited to welcome you to our website and blog. The idea behind BrightGauge has been brewing for nearly a year and now it’s finally time to give you a sneak peak into our upcoming launch. But first…a little background on the product creation! Like any idea, BrightGauge is a concept extracted from a few different sources of experiences and forces coming together at one time. The main experience is that of managing a successful Managed Services Provider (MSP) for over 6 years (and counting). We had 100's of clients and over 50 employees, which when we started we only had 10-15 employees. The MSP service offering is simple and beautiful; an MSP company assumes the responsibility for a small business’ IT support from top to bottom for a fixed monthly fee. MSP clients benefit by receiving superior system uptime, extremely fast support, and unbeatable IT reporting. Well at least that’s what we MSPs try to provide… The force that collided with our experience is the changing landscape of technology, most notably the disruptiveness of the Internet. We live in an amazing time with new web applications developed every day trying to make every mundane task extremely simple, more automated, and all “online”. Think of the great example of Mint.com. Mint.com connects all your online bank accounts into one easy to use and understand tool that helps you manage your personal finances. Oh, and its all done online. They were so successful that the dominant legacy player in personal finances, Intuit (Quicken), bought them just two years after inception! So here we were a year ago thinking about new ways to improve our MSP business, provide a better service and attract new clients. We surveyed our existing client base and we realized a common theme among all the suggestions, ideas, and even some minor complaints: We were not communicating well enough about the services we were providing and our clients still did not have a good sense of all the work we were doing! That's when we had what we call a “BOOM” moment! We thought why not create a tool that could securely extract information from our very own MSP databases (think like mint.com) and present that information to our clients in a way that would help them understand our services and interact with our services in real time (better communication = happier clients = ability to get more clients). If we could do that, then we knew we could also make reporting extremely easy, user friendly, and customizable like a mint.com or other web applications. All that was left was to securely connect that data and make sense of it in real time! Off we went to tackle this idea and now here we are with a prototype complete and testing with a few MSPs. Feedback from many MSP’s and our existing client base has been tremendous and we are encouraged by all their support. If you are interested in keeping up to date with us, please sign up for our launch list and follow us on twitter! We’d love to share with you our great product as soon as it goes live!

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