If you’re like us, or like many of our customers, you have multiple screens around your office displaying BrightGauge dashboards. Maybe you have TVs in your various departments showing data relevant to that team. Or perhaps you have a dedicated dashboard area, where a bunch of monitors are displaying different metrics side-by-side.
Whatever the case may be, if at any time you need to check the status of one dashboard, it’s probably not as quick or seamless as you’d like.
We ourselves have struggled to find a solution that lets us modify all of our displayed dashboards from one central location. However, BrightGauge user Ammon Lane-Ramsey of Live Consulting recently introduced us to Stardock, which is a great option for anyone using multiple dashboards.
What is Stardock?
Stardock is a provider of multiple solutions, and the one we are talking about here is Multiplicity, which is a wireless KVM software solution. It lets you connect multiple PCs to one switch and do work across all those PCs seamlessly.
You may be familiar with traditional KVM hardware, but Multiplicity eliminates the need for any cables or extra KVM switches. With Multiplicity, you basically install the software on one computer and use that main PC as your control panel for all others. As long as all computers are running on the same network, you’ll be good to go.
How Multiplicity is used at Live Consulting
Around Live Consulting, there are 8 screens being used to show BrightGauge data and each screen has a physical computer hooked up to it. In the past, a VNC viewer was used to manage all the screens, but it was clunky and took a long time to use.
Ammon says that on Monday mornings, he would walk around checking in on all the dashboards, and if anything was off, he’d have to jump onto that specific computer and make necessary changes. Doing this multiple times a week - or even day - was not an efficient use of time.
“Now, I have Multiplicity installed on my own computer and any other computers I want to track,” says Ammon. “Throughout the day, I’ll open my control panel, take a look at all my dashboards from there, and see how my team is performing or if there are any adjustments I need to make.”
It’s simply a matter of right-clicking on your Multiplicity KVM, choosing whatever screen you want to look at, and taking it from there.
For Ammon and Live Consulting, the use of BrightGauge and Multiplicity has helped make the team more productive.
“From my office, I can take a look at all these various BrightGauge dashboards and see the status of my teams,” says Ammon. “If I see a lot of red, I can ask what’s needed, how I can help. If I see a lot of green, I know things are running smoothly. We’ve been able to fine-tune the way we deliver service by having access to this kind of data.”
When it comes to data, managing it in a seamless way is priceless, because data can scare people, so it helps to make sense of it. Easy access to data can provide the context needed to understand and improve upon the business as a whole.
The control panel is not the only benefit of using Multiplicity. Ammon himself likes to have as many monitors as possible and uses 4 in his own office. 2 are hooked up to one computer and the other 2 to a separate computer. Having Multiplicity installed on both computers lets him literally move through all 4 monitors regardless of which computer they’re hooked up to, making it easy to move across files and tasks seamlessly.
“It’s a very simple product,” says Ammon. “But what it does is pretty powerful in terms of lending itself to higher efficiency and minimizing the need to run around your office to get things done.”
Learn more about Stardock’s Multiplicity solution or contact BrightGauge today if you have any questions.