I was recently tasked with the mission of finding the state of the art in RMM (Remote Monitoring and Management) and wanted to check in and report some of the very cool findings I’ve made. Long time Dashboard Spy readers know that I’m fond of the data visualization and dashboard work that the infrastructure side of the industry does. Network management, endpoint security, remote backup and recovery and patch management are some areas that can produce a lot of data and bring reporting challenges. I’ve always watched the vendors in this space for how they manage their dashboard reporting.
I came across a company, N-able Technologies, that has a very sophisticated suite of tools in the RMM space.
Here is a good intro for those of you looking to investigate state of the art Remote Monitoring and Management solutions.
This is a video:
These are a couple of screen captures from the video showing some of their RMM dashboard views.
Almost every digital dashboard uses color to indicate KPI states. Often the indicator is a little ball or box that is red, yellow or green. Dashboard designers struggle with end-user clarity issues such as color blindness, printing on a black and white printer, or simply too many different possible states. Thanks to a Dashboard Spy out there interested in server status enterprise dashboards, we have this screenshot of a remote server monitoring panel that has 7 possible states. To deal with the color issue (color blindness or printing on a b/w printer), we see that the red/green/yellow balls have symbols inside of them. There is a “no data” state that is represented by a black ball. The “disconnected” and “stale data” states have different slashes in opposite directions, and the “misconfigured data” ball has a question mark. For further examples of Remote Monitoring, see n-able technologies.
Homework: Usabilty is key when presenting to the end user through a dashboard. Study up on the discipline of usability. Start with these usability books.
So what or who is The Dashboard Spy? As his about page states, The Dashboard Spy is just a guy interested in the design of enterprise dashboards. He could not find any executive dashboard design source books (or even screenshots of real business dashboards) and so set about creating his own. Finally convinced to post his extensive collection of dashboard screenshots online, he was amazed to find how popular it has become. If you have a nice screenshot of a digital dashboard, balanced scorecard, or any business intelligence graphic to share, please send an email to info _at_ dashboardspy.com. Also check out The Dashboard Spy’s favorite books.
As a user interface and usability professional, I’m always excited when major shifts in software applications and operating systems happen. I always jump in as an early adopter just to experience the differences. Yesterday, I upgraded to Apple Lion and I must admit that my mind has been bent into a pretzel over the change [...]
More dashboard related search terms that bring traffic to this page: Dashboards Excel dashboard xcelsius tempates survey graph kpi HR analytics peoplesoft KPI The Balanced Scorecard Bullet Graphs video example corporate presentation flex dashboard example executive dashboards variance actual budget crystal excelsius dashboard exceluser file download pharmaceutical dashboards physician scorecard example The list goes on, [...]
Several of you Dashboard Spy readers have asked me how to refer readers to my new business intelligence dashboard newsletter. The newsletter is called The Enterprise Dashboard Digest and is a weekly compilation of dashboard examples, business intelligence posts and interesting videos about related topics. You can sign up here if you are not currently [...]
Here’s a quick (and fuzzy!) glimpse at a dashboard used by recruiters and HR personnel to match jobs against candidates. It’s a screenshot of page from an Unicru system. That’s a hosted resume management platform company that was bought out last year for $150M. Anyway, here’s the peek at the job requisition dashboard. The open job has 3 [...]
Sales people and teams love enterprise dashboards for tracking sales performance, pipeline and activities. Here are some sales executive dashboard screenshots from http://www.toplineresults.com/dash.htm. This series of dashboards start with a sales executive's personal dashboard and then shows sales pipeline and sales activities. So what or who is The Dashboard Spy? As his about page states, [...]
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