The BrightGauge Blog

It’s important to have goals—both in life and in business. Goals give people something to strive for so they can exert their maximum effort and achieve success. Countless organizational management books stress the importance of goal management—the art of setting goals that encourage people to maximize outcomes for the business. But, which goals should your business track? What are the three types of goals that you should be tracking? And, how can you make tracking employee goals and business goals easy? What are the three types of goals? Business goals can generally be sorted into three different categories: Process Goals. These goals define processes that should be followed to encourage quality outcomes. These goals typically focus on doing something rather than achieving an end result. Process goals are (barring outside interference) usually considered wholly under the employee’s control to meet. Performance Goals. These goals define a standard that should be met or achieved. These goals are used to set benchmarks that employees or teams need to meet and are mostly under their control. Outcome Goals. A strategic type of goal that defines an ultimate outcome with a clear pass/fail condition. These goals typically require the efforts of many people to meet, so they’re not under any one person or team’s sole control—one team/employee could do everything right, only for the shortcomings of others to cause them to fall short of the mark. All of these business goal types are important. However, many organizations get so mired in their immediate process and performance goals that they neglect their more strategic outcome goals. Why you should establish a goal setting system to accomplish business goals: Every business should have a goal setting system. Why? Here are a few reasons. Setting Business Goals Creates Alignment. Getting all of the “moving parts” in an organization aligned is crucial for success. Setting outcome goals that define what your company considers “winning” helps get everyone in the proverbial boat rowing in the same direction. Setting Business Goals Helps with Long-Term Planning. “Where do you see yourself in five years?” This isn’t just a question for new hires—it’s a critical question that businesses need to answer as well. As noted in an article featured on Inc., “When your goals have been defined, you can develop a deeper understanding of the effects of tactical decisions and how they play against [your] strategic goals.” Setting Business Goals Facilitates Accountability. Who is responsible for the success of an initiative? How does each person contribute to achieving a specific business outcome? Setting goals helps organizations track how people contribute to their success—increasing accountability and enabling appropriate reward systems that encourage further productivity. However, it’s important to make sure that employees are only held accountable for meeting the goals that they can directly control the outcomes of (such as process and performance goals). Setting process goals vs outcome goals Let’s use a hypothetical example of two new start-up companies in the same industry to highlight the importance of setting long-term outcome goals versus just focusing on process goals. Both of these organizations have similar budgets, products, services, and team sizes—the only major difference is in their approach to setting goals. Company A. This company focuses solely on process goals for its employee goals. Instead of having an idea of what they’re working towards, each employee focuses solely on getting tasks done. Once finished, no further effort is put into achieving strategic goals. Company B. This company adds performance and outcome goals and makes its employees aware of their progress using goal setting frameworks and reporting tools. Each employee has an idea of what success looks like not just for themselves, but for the company as a whole. They also know what criteria contributes to their personal success and the company’s success—enabling them to focus more effort on the things that matter. In this hypothetical example, which company do you think will do a better job of achieving long-term success? Odds are that it’s Company B. Why? Because, as the BrightGauge team has seen from real clients, companies that set and track goals for outcomes as well as processes and performance tend to outperform their competitors. Remember this: goal management isn’t an either/or proposition. Every kind of goal—process, performance, and outcome—is important to your company. Just setting one type of business goal won’t produce the right results! Best practices for tracking outcome goals It isn’t enough to simply create a big, aggressive outcome goal and call it a day. To make that goal mean something, you need to be able to track it! And, you need to track it in the right way. Here are a few best practices for tracking outcome goals: Examine Other Companies’ Outcome Goal Examples. How do you know if an outcome goal you’re tracking is the right one for your company? One way is to examine what kinds of long-term goals other successful organizations in your industry are using. You can often find long-term goals or plans listed right on a competitor’s website or in their social media. Leaders from these businesses may also share their outcome goals when discussing their business in TED talks or other social gatherings. Try to Break Larger Outcome Goals into Smaller, More Manageable Chunks. Let’s say your business usually does about $75 million/year in revenue and you have a big goal of “Hit $100 million in revenue this year.” Breaking this goal up into smaller outcome goals of “Hit $25 million in revenue this quarter” can help give your people a short-term goal they can target aggressively and keep them motivated. Find Employee Goals That Support Outcome Goals. To keep employees aligned with your business’ outcome goals, it’s important to set the right process and performance goals. For example, if your outcome goal is “Hit $25 million in revenue this quarter,” then you should be tracking employee goals like “Close $25,000 in new deals each month” and “Make X sales calls per day” (where “X” is a number based on the average talk time with a prospect over the phone) for sales people. Customer service goals like time to resolution or successful customer issue resolution rate can contribute to customer retention—making them worthwhile goals to track for supporting a revenue outcome goal. Use a Goal Setting and Tracking Solution. Employee goals are meaningless if there isn’t a reliable and accurate method of tracking them. Using a goal tracking software to set and track employee progress towards their performance and process goals can help you keep your business on track for meeting its outcome goals. Being able to share goal information with employees in real time can help keep them motivated and enable them to course correct if they fall behind on a particular goal. Set the right outcome goals (and track them with ease) through BrightGauge! Since using a goal tracking solution is a best practice for monitoring your progress towards your outcome goals, BrightGauge is an ideal tool for businesses. With BrightGauge’s online data dashboards, your can easily put your business’ most important outcome goals (like revenue targets, total number of customers, customer satisfaction goals, etc.) in a central view pane that everyone in the organization can see. You can also pick and choose role-based employee goals that support your desired business outcomes—then let your employees see how well they’re meeting those goals. This helps keep everyone rowing the boat in the same direction to produce real results! Don’t wait – Reach out to BrightGauge now to get started on tracking your mission-critical business goals!

This month, we're stepping away from our regular dashboard of the month to share this awesome Engineer Audit Monthly Report. Luckily, your BrightGauge is flexible in that any of the gauges you see here can also be added to a dashboard, or converted to a number gauge and used to track your goals. All KPIs displayed: Hours Billable vs Total Member Scorecard - Last 6 Months Hours by Work Type Time Rounding CSAT 6 Months What is in the report On a recent account review call with our partners Cygnus Systems, I was amazed by some of the time tracking gauges their CEO Craig Isaacs shared. For this monthly report, we're given a summary of the team's performance over the last 6 months, and whether each metric is trending upwards or downwards. We especially love this Time Rounding gauge that highlights when team members might be over- or under-rounding for their timesheets, a common hallmark of those who don't enter their hours in a timely manner. This translates to keeping an eye on upping your Billable % for each team member. While it's a simple amount of gauges, this report gets the job done. When it comes to putting the numbers in front of your team, less (and what's actionable), is always more! How to recreate in your BrightGauge First, view the report here. Follow these modules here to recreate this report, or build any of the gauges found here, back in your BrightGauge account: Report Buildout Key For more examples of how BrightGauge works, check out our Templates as well as our Monthly User Showcase Webinars.

As a BrightGauge user, you’re constantly referencing your gauges, dashboards, and reports to gain data insights that drive important business decisions. Right now, as remote work is the norm, your data is playing an increasingly important role in aligning your team members and making sure productivity stays on track. To really solidify that alignment amongst employees, you probably want to get more eyes on that crucial data on a more consistent basis. A question we often get asked is, “How can I share my BrightGauge data without adding more licenses to my account?”. There are various ways you can publicly share your data with key players without having to add more licenses, including dashboard playlists, public dashboard links, and embeddable gauges. Just ahead, we’ll cover each one. Dashboard playlists & viewer licenses You likely have several dashboards you are watching on a daily basis and that you care to share with your individual technicians or clients or board of directors. Creating dashboard playlists makes this simple. You can group relevant dashboards into one playlist, which will rotate in a carousel throughout the day, so you can easily stay on top of what matters. This is especially helpful if you like to view your dashboards on a TV or other screen other than your main computer. Here's a quick video on setting up your rotating dashboards: From your dashboard, click on ‘Present’ mode and select ‘Rotate Dashboards’, where you’ll see the option to choose from 3 playlists. Every user on your account can create up to 3 playlists, and each playlist includes up to 10 dashboards, so your viewing possibilities here are vast. Dashboards will rotate every 30 seconds, 1 minute, 2 minutes, or 5 minutes depending on the cadence you prefer. NOTE ON VIEWER LICENSES: To share these dashboards, simply give your desired recipient ‘Viewer’ permissions within BrightGauge, which means they will have read-only access to anything you share with them and will not be able to edit or manipulate data. Reminder: your account comes with an unlimited number of viewer user allowances! Pro tip: use an internal viewer license for displaying dashboards on TVs, that way you won’t be prompted to log in! For more on user permissions, read this. Public dashboards A favorite amongst BrightGauge partners and perhaps the simplest way to share data with anyone you’d like. A Public dashboard is quite simply a read-only dashboard that is shared via a public URL. A dashboard is not public by default - you can only share a dashboard if you have switched on the public URL modal. The nice thing about public dashboards is that the end-user does not need to have any BrightGauge permissions whatsoever. Everybody and anybody with a public dashboard link will be able to view that dashboard without being required to sign in or enter any information. Some BrightGauge partners have told us they’ve shared public dashboards with peers and colleagues in order to help them understand what valuable metrics they should be tracking. We love this because we truly believe that teamwork makes the dreamwork! To learn more about sharing public dashboards, read this. Embeddable gauges When you want to display your metrics for anyone to see, rather than one specific individual to see, embeddable gauges are a great choice. They are basically just what their name implies - gauges which you can embed on a public site. When you mark a gauge as publicly viewable, you’ll have access to a short snippet of code that will allow you to embed the gauge wherever you’d like. Anyone viewing that gauge will not be able to click into it to apply a filter or access the drilldown, so what you see is what you get. One popular way partners use this feature is to display their CSAT scores or their average response times right on their marketing site, which is a great way to let numbers do the talking for you. See how BrightGauge partner C SPIRE started a service library using these gauges. Want to upgrade your account or understand more about these features? Contact us today and we’ll be happy to have a chat!

Among the many things they do right, Network Doctor, an MSP firm based out of the Northern US, excels at keeping their engineers engaged and always focused on where they can help out next. Through their BrightGauge dashboards, each is able to cover a little self-triaging while seeing where their metrics line up for the day. We recently hosted a webinar with our longtime partners to go over how they use their dashboards to keep their techs motivated while on top of the endless ticket queues. Watch the webinar here: Pushing for Accountability & Auditing your Data with Network Doctor. For the dashboard featured, Network Doctor partner David Birk shared how they create individual dashboards for each team member. Color thresholds are then set to show the split of what the technician has on their plate, stats from the previous week, and where there is room for them to pick up "In-Progressable" tickets (tickets that aren't waiting on the customer and may be progressed along). Engineer Dashboard - public view link Engineer Dashboard key - public link with instructions on how to rebuild in your BrightGauge KPIs displayed - filtered for each technician: Your Hr./Ticket Ratio - Last 30 Days Team Weekly Average (2-Week Lookback) Assigned Today Completed Today Worked On Today Your Ticket Stats For LAST Week (Member Board) Your Ticket Stats For THIS Week (Member Board) Hours Entered Today Past Due Items In-Progressable - Today's Ratio In Progress Currently In-Progressable Tickets Your "New to Completed" Stats (HD Board Tickets Only) Your Surveys This Year Your 30-Day Utilization Average Survey Leaderboard Your Hours By Client This type of dashboard has provided the Network Doctor team with a high level of visibility and transparency that has helped keep productivity consistent, even during the COVID-19 pandemic. To recreate these dashboards for your own teams, check out the links below: Public view link - Engineer-filtered Dashboard Buildout Key Instructions Please feel free to reach out to success@brightgauge.com with any questions you have!

We get asked quite a bit, "Which metrics are the right ones for me to measure for my team and business?". A lot of factors play into this. Consider the size of your team, customer communication, revenue, products and services provided, and markets served to name a few. Take stock of where you stand amongst these, plus a multitude of other factors. This is where you are in your journey. You may realize that your success isn't dependent on the age of your business but rather how mature, or developed each of these core areas are. That's a great start! From here, it's all about knowing what to act on, and setting in place the right intelligence gathering. To demystify this process, join industry expert Eric Hoffmaster for our User Showcase webinar: Making Sense of your Journey Towards Operational Maturity, taking place on May 11th, at 9:30 am PST/ 12:30 pm EST. We'll cover: Key Business Stages What every business should evaluate Evolving your metrics Working towards what's actionable Painting everything green RSVP to our live webinar or to receive a recording: http://info.brightgauge.com/en/wb-msp-maturity

While it’s always hard to see someone leave a team or move on, it can be a harsh reality once you jump into what they’ve left behind. Often, you’re left with tasks left undone or a lack of documentation to follow. When planned right, platform and process handoffs should come with a clear overview and instructions for each use case across teams and individuals. Keeping tidy documentation can be tough, especially when you’re a small shop running single team members in multiple roles. We’ve put together this checklist to help any new or existing BrightGauge partners get up to speed on where to begin with organizing and working within an existing BrightGauge buildout. Taking over an existing BrightGauge account If you are new to BrightGauge or have just been assigned as the primary account user on an existing account, follow these tips and steps to get started. Overview video - This quick video gives a great high-level overview of what BrightGauge offers. Watch the video - only 4 minutes! Share with any team members you may want to onboard as well. Attend an in-depth training webinar - Sign up for one of our weekly training webinars OR watch a recorded version here. These weekly sessions offer you the opportunity to attend a one hour deep-dive into all areas of BrightGauge. You’ll learn about datasources available, data syncing, dashboards, automated reports, goals, and more! Create an inventory of what’s already in your BrightGauge - Get organized by creating a log of all users, including viewers, and take note of the dashboards, scheduled reports, and gauges you have built and are actively using. You may reference what comes standard with each datasource through looking it up in our Knowledge Base, and scrolling to the end of the corresponding article. We recommend creating a spreadsheet or using your internal documentation tool to get organized. Be sure to note which team or process would reference that item, frequency of use, definition, and how often it should be updated or referenced. For a great example of organizational bliss, check out this user showcase webinar with Justin Bryant of CSpire on Starting a Service Library: watch the video here. Pro tip: If the account is just too much of a mess, with many of the default dashboards and reports modified from their original version, reach out to support@brightgauge.com. We'll be happy to push out a new set of defaults to your account. Delete what’s not in use - Let’s face it, we’re all guilty of hoarding something seemingly valuable to us. If it was created more than 6 months ago and you’re not using it, get rid of it! Pro tip: On the left-hand side of your gauges overview page, click ‘Unused Gauges’ to get a sense of what you can delete. Read more cleanup tips here. Meet with stakeholders to align on objectives, discuss use cases, and come up with actions you'd like to see as a result of your BrightGauge use. We're here to help! Setup a one-on-one training with a BrightGauge Success team rep. Book your new admin training here. After you’ve organized and cleaned your account and have a general idea of how you’d like to use BrightGauge, it’s time to get formal about your objectives. Map out what is actionable and where you would like to make organizational change and improvements. Turn to “IDEAS”, then keep it “SMART”. IDEAS is a framework for setting key performance indicators (KPIs). Identify the problem What is the problem that you want to solve? Or what do you want to prevent from happening? By starting here, you can tie metrics directly to your desired outcomes. Determine what solves the problem Now that you’ve identified your issues, what are the indicators that might mean progress towards a solution? For example, if you’re looking to improve Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) scores, maybe Average Time to Response is a metric that’ll help you make progress. Establish your KPIs Knowing your issues and what can help you solve them is how you’ll determine the KPIs that are right for your business. At this point, consider where you’ll find the data you need (i.e. what tools can help you track your data?). Analyze the results Now that your data is in, it’s time for a gap analysis. How do your actual results compare against benchmarks you’ve set? Where can you fill in the gaps? Perhaps you need a change in processes or to invest in additional training for your team members. Start from the beginning The process of setting and tracking KPIs is ongoing. On a regular basis, you should assess your results, see what you can learn, and then start the process over. With this framework in mind, you can begin to determine the KPIs that are going to drive each department, and your organization as a whole, towards success. To reach those KPIs, it’s important to set SMART goals. Goals should be SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time Based) so that it’s easier to track the progress of meeting that goal. If you’re in sales, it’s not enough to say, “next quarter, I want to close more accounts”. Instead, a SMART goal will be something like, “by the end of next quarter, I want to bring in 10 new accounts that will result in a higher commission for myself and will contribute to the overall revenue goals of our company; I’ll do this by increasing the amount of calls I make from 100 to 150”. When you’re ready to start building By now, you’re probably ready to start building. By all means, go for it! But do keep in mind these last few tips so you can keep your account clean and tidy. Map out the key metrics you’d like to measure by team and individual, and how to make them actionable. Check out this great user webinar that goes into setting expectations with baseline metrics and naming conventions. Plan for your data. List out what you’d like to see on one or multiple dashboards, reports, and goal lists. Think short term and long term, and proactive versus reactive KPIs. Use what’s already built. All integrations in BrightGauge come with pre-built dashboards and gauges and report templates. Check out what’s automatically available to you before trying to build something that may already be there. Pro tip: If the data doesn’t look quite right, you may just need to apply a filter. Always apply a filter at the dashboard or report level before cloning a gauge. This will help keep your account accurate, clean, and organized. All dashboard and report filters override what you have set at the gauge level; keep this in mind as you work with date ranges. Check data accuracy. Make sure you’re using the right dataset. If you’re looking at ticket stats for the last 30 days, check to see that you’re not working with one of our lighter datasets. When in the gauge builder, reference the right-hand column for a review of the time range you’re working within, sync frequency, and description. Click on the name of the dataset there to see the raw data coming in. Always be iterating. Consistently review where you are. It’s never too early, or too late, to evaluate and change course accordingly. This is especially the case with goal setting. If 3 weeks in you find that you’re far exceeding or falling short, adjust and keep a realistic view of where your team and you are at. Show off your work. You’re spending valuable time, effort, and money into building these gauges, dashboards, and reports, so put them to use! Incorporate your data into meetings, presentations, discussions with stakeholders, client visits, and more. For more help, check out these go-to videos, webinars, and articles: How-to Videos Dashboard examples and keys User Showcase Webinars Support queue - we trade tickets for how-to videos Weekly general training webinars In-person workshops Knowledge base documentation This post was written by Danielle, Partner Success Team Lead to BrightGauge. The Partner Success Team is focused on getting you the training and resources you need to help grow your business through team alignment and showing your value to clients. Still not sure of where to begin? Email success @ brightgauge.com.

Are you new to BrightGauge or looking to get an in-depth training session? Join us from February 19-21 at our BrightGauge HQ in Miami, FL for our 13th quarterly in-person Data Driven Workshop. We'll host around 20 partners for a two-day deep dive into the foundation of BrightGauge; reviewing the core areas, your unique setup, best practices from other attending businesses, and active building sessions. All Enterprise+ accounts that have been with us for over three months get to send one team member for free. DDW begins with a team meet & greet Wednesday night where you'll get to check in and get to know the BrightGauge team. Thursday will offer a full day of programming with all meals provided, capped off with a special Miami outing complete with Spanish food and a live Cuban band show. Friday, we'll host your one-on-one training and buildout sessions, plus link you with our product team to make sure your feedback and ideas get integrated into the platform. You have the option to attend these last sessions either in person or remote at a later time. In our sessions, you'll work with team leads to refine your goals, discover tips for how to advance your use of BrightGauge, get a breakdown of the gauge builder, plus engage in a heavy run-through of setting up reports and dashboards for your team and clients. Past attendees have said that DDW is "a must for anyone looking to get a leg up in their BrightGauge knowledge. Plus the team is so great!" "Anyone using BrightGauge to help manage their processes will find value in attending the Data Driven Workshop. Whether it is a tip for using a dashboard, a new way to configure a gauge, or a fresh insight into goals, the time spent with the BrightGauge team and other colleagues using the same tools in a similar environment is time well spent. I highly recommend it!" Did we mention we're averaging 75 degrees and blue skies every day? Sign up or request more info via https://www.brightgauge.com/data-driven-workshop/

Once you get access to your data, it can be hard to know what to do with it. With so many KPIs and industry benchmarks, you may have a hard time figuring out exactly how these may apply to your bottom line. Join us for an in-person training session To ease the learning curve and provide you with hands-on, in-person training, we're hosting another Data Driven Workshop! This time, two in one month - a Pittsburgh session from September 29th thru 30th and another in Las Vegas from October 13th thru 14th. Find out more information here: https://www.brightgauge.com/data-driven-workshop/ All attendees will also be given a promo-link for a discounted hotel plus a special offer to attend our partner event with Continuum's leading MSP industry event Navigate, and which runs from Monday night through Wednesday. Each Data Driven Workshop, we spend a few sessions going over the basics of how to use BrightGauge -- from getting set up with dashboards for your team and creating automated reports for clients, to building advanced KPIs using multiple points of data to see how your techs time and effort are being spread or how much that ticket-happy customer is truly costing your business. We want you to walk away a BrightGauge pro and master of KPIs. As part of these workshops, you'll also get to learn about business best practices for growth through interactive peer sessions and a goal setting review. Plus, you'll get to hear from another power-user as they share how they've built out their account. These sessions are great for those just getting started or looking for insight into tricks for mastering BrightGauge. We'll give you the tools needed to better manage your data and team, while showing value to customers. "The BrightGauge Data Driven workshop had a ton of content for me and my colleague to learn and network. I highly recommend this for anyone looking to get more out of the software and get to know this vendor a little bit better. I left excited to build some advanced gauges for my company." -- NTM, workshop attendee How to sign up If you'd like to attend an upcoming workshop or inquire for more information, please fill out the form found at the bottom of this page: https://www.brightgauge.com/data-driven-workshop/

We're constantly thinking about upcoming quarters and projections for the future. Something that we firmly believe in is decluttering and beginning a new cycle with a fresh start. Whether it’s a change in seasons or a new fiscal year, the benefits of decluttering are big. In this post, we’ll share tips for how to clean up your BrightGauge accounts so you can work more efficiently and deeply. BrighGauge ‘spring cleaning’ tips Think of this as a lesson in spring cleaning, but for an app. We all lead busy lives and when it comes to our data, we want to get what we need as quickly as possible. Because of this, we’ve found that BrightGauge users tend to let their gauges and dashboards stack up, instead of taking some time to delete ones that are no longer used or needed. It’s kind of like when we save every single file to our hard drive and forget to clean out some of those files every now and then. That kind of clutter serves no value or purpose to us. There are several ways you can clean up your BrightGauge to get rid of unnecessary mess and to ensure that you’re using its features as optimally as possible. Doing this will make your BrightGauge a lot more manageable. 1. Delete what you don’t need Make time to go through your list of gauges and dashboards and take stock of what’s still of use to you and your team. Do you have duplicate gauges? Sometimes when we’re building a gauge, we forget that we had already attempted to create a similar one, so make sure to delete the superfluous ones. Do you have years-old gauges? Do they need to be updated or are they totally irrelevant? Click on your ‘Unused Gauges’, which are gauges that are not being used on any dashboards, reports, or goal lists. Is there any reason you still need these? Look through your team members’ folders. Are there any employees who no longer work at your company? Are their gauges still being used? 2. Consolidate what you can When you are in your Gauge Builder, are you configuring your gauges to look at more than one piece of data? If you’re not using layers, you may be creating more gauges than you need. Layers are great for when you want to see a comparison in your data. For example, you may want to see how many tickets your techs have resolved this month versus last month. You’d simply create the 1st layer of ticket stats for the current month and then you’d create a 2nd layer of ticket stats for last month. The data would be displayed side by side in a column chart (or bar chart if you wish). This is a much better use of your gauges than if you had created one separate gauge per month. Likewise, if you’re using separate dashboards for similar data, you probably want to consolidate your metrics into one seamless dashboard. You wouldn’t want to look at Currently Open Tickets, Tickets in New Status, and Tickets Opened This Week in one dashboard and then Ticket Response Time and Tickets by Type in another. Try to put it on a single pane of glass when possible. 3. Be more efficient with your gauges and dashboards First and foremost, make sure your dashboards are displaying only the gauges you need. Think of your dashboard like your desk. Too much clutter causes anxiety and can make you less productive. Too many unnecessary gauges on a dashboard make it harder to get the exact snapshot of data you need. We have features that make it easy to get really specific so that your insights are sharper and more conclusive. Make sure you’re taking advantage of these. Calculated metrics allow you to create formulas in your gauges, the way you would in Microsoft Excel (please note, you need to be on our Enterprise Plans to access this feature). As an example, you can use a calculated gauge to return your Kill Rate % by dividing Tickets Closed Today (layer 1) by Tickets Opened Today (layer 2). This saves you time and gives you a clearer idea of where you stand. Make sure your gauges are utilizing this feature when applicable. Similarly, if you’re not filtering your gauges, dashboards and reports, you may be looking at excessive or non-specific data. There are 4 filters you can limit your data by: date, text, number, and boolean. A common example is to take a metric or KPI and filter it by technician, so you can evaluate their performance in a streamlined manner. This is especially useful if you have lots of direct reports. Pro ‘spring cleaning’ tips: Use linked filters to edit the same filter across multiple gauges. Read about how to do that here. Exclude filters from your dashboards and reports when you need to. Read about how to do that here. 4. Disconnect datasources you're no longer using If you still have access to a datasource that integrates with BrightGauge, but you aren’t really using it anymore nor do you plan to in the future, just get rid of it! No sense in holding on to something you don’t need. 5. Automate your reports So many of our clients tell us that our client reporting feature has been a complete game-changer. It is so easy to create custom, interactive reports in just a few minutes. But, make sure you’re taking full advantage of this feature. Once you’ve created a report once, you can save it as a template, and you can schedule it to go out on a recurring basis to the exact recipients you want, on the date and time you choose. This is perfect for daily, weekly, or monthly reports that you need to send to various clients. Recipients can’t see who is cc’d on reports, so no need to worry if you’ve got multiple people receiving the same report. 6. Set up your client mappings Make sure you’ve got your client mappings properly set up. We can’t stress enough what a huge time saver this can be for you. This is great to do if you integrate with multiple datasources, but your client names appear slightly differently across those datasources. Client mappings help you tell your data who’s who, which is of significant value when you’re sending lots of reports out! Here’s a client mapping video to make sure you’ve dotted all your i’s and crossed all your t’s. 7. Archive old goal lists We know how exciting it is to hit your goals and have an amazing quarter. Kudos to you when this happens. But instead of holding on to the past, work towards the future! Archive or delete the goal lists that you are no longer using and make space to absolutely crush new goals. At BrightGauge, we only keep up goal lists for the current quarter. Makes it easier to focus on the current task at hand. Being organized will make a huge difference down the line You might think you don’t have enough time to go through a ‘spring cleaning’, but trust us when we tell you that it’ll save you a ton of time later on. Plus, you’ll be working within BrightGauge much more efficiently, which will make data insights and analysis a whole lot less overwhelming. It’s worth dedicating time to this so you can head into each day a bit tidier and a lot more prepared. For more tips on cleaning up your BrightGauge, check out our webinar, 'Best Practices for Organization and Account Cleanup'.

It’s hard to master many things well. Focus on one area, and you’re bound to get it right. This rings especially true for the software you use to help run your business. Like many, you probably often find yourself thinking, “I want one piece of software to master all of my business needs: a PSA, RMM, CSAT, finance, security, and project management tool with the power of business intelligence and reporting to boost.” It’s near impossible to get all of this right in one platform though. Luckily, we’re all getting better at talking to each other, focusing on integrations and overlapping more seamlessly. Announcing BrightGauge public gauges! With public gauges you can take your KPIs on the road, placing them on your website, support desk, in your client portals; anywhere and everywhere. How it works Through unlimited viewer licenses, you already can share reports, dashboards, and goal lists with team members and customers. Now, use public gauges to put your target or great work front and center for your clients and potential partners. Available to all BrightGauge Enterprise level accounts, public gauges allow you to take any gauge, mark it as publicly viewable, and insert it on a webpage with a short snippet of code. There are only a couple of differences between the public version and the gauge that lives in your BrightGauge account: you’re not able to access filters and the drilldown. If you’d like to share more granular level information, consider sending a report or sharing a dashboard. A big benefit to public gauges too: no more auto-logout issues! This is key for those who use admin or viewer accounts to share tv displayed dashboards. Important things to note when setting up your public gauge Sync times. Public gauge dataset syncing works akin to gauges on a dashboard. If the gauge is not used anywhere (ie, not on active dashboard or scheduled report) then the datasets will not sync. Public Gauges will fetch for newly available/updated data every minute. As soon as new data is available, it will be fetched at the next minute interval. Sizing constraints. The height and width of the public gauges are automatically set to 300px by 400px. Keep this ratio in mind when attempting to size up or down. Disabled public gauges. If you disable an embedded gauge it'll show an error where it's embedded. Ways to set up your public gauge There are many ways to display your embeddable gauge. Here are a few we’ve heard about from customers: AVERAGE RESPONSE TIME Share your stellar response times and CSAT score on your support page or website. Add your top client gauges into their client portal. Put your main KPI front and center on your ConnectWise, IT Glue, and other datasource portals. If you’re already receiving great client feedback, share it on your testimonials page. Are you interested in getting set up with public gauges? Reach out to sales@brightgauge.com for help.