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Introducing an on-premise TV dashboard solution from Fugo
When it comes to getting business intelligence & reporting data on digital signage screens, tools to do it securely & at scale have been slow in coming onto the market and evolving to meet the changing needs of data-driven organizations.
The emergence of cloud-based digital signage software tools has solved some of these issues for organizations hosting their data in the Cloud. When Fugo's TV Dashboard feature launched, it was the answer many enterprises were looking for to share their data on TV screens without exposing their login credentials, disabling important browser protections, or inadvertently creating back doors into their data through hardware & software solutions that weren't as secure as they claimed.
And now, with the introduction of Fugo's On-Premise Dashboards feature, organizations who self-host their own data can take advantage of Fugo's easy-to-use management system to get their local reports, dashboards, or desktop apps up on TV screens without any data leaving a local network.
In this guide, we'll show you how.
Let's dive in!
How to set up Fugo with your on-premise dashboards & reports
Fugo's On-Premise Dashboards feature works similarly to our (cloud-based) TV Dashboards feature, in that you'll use it to record the steps you take to authenticate into your dashboard and instruct it how to take screenshots of your data that will be sent to your connected TV screens at set intervals.
In order to display your dashboard, you'll need to install Fugo's TV Dashboards Control Center app onto your desktop and follow a few instructions to share your dashboard.
💡 NOTE: These instructions should be followed only for dashboards that are accessible from your local network and can be opened in a browser. If you want to share a dashboard that's accessed in a desktop app rather than a browser, you can follow the instructions for our Local App Casting feature instead.
1. Install & launch the Fugo TV Dashboards Control Center app onto your desktop
1.1 Download the app installation file from fugo.ai/fop.exe.
1.2 Launch the file. You can usually do this by double-clicking on it.
1.3 The file will install itself without prompting you for any extra configuration.
The app will automatically do two things:
Auto-start itself when your OS boots up
Preserve your OS from shutting down
Once installed, the app can be closed & opened like any regular desktop app.
1.4 Install Node.js LTS
2. Set up your player
Fugo is a web based player application that will run on any consumer or professional display or media player device.
You'll need to install Fugo player application onto your device & pair it to Fugo CMS. You can follow the set up & pairing instructions for your particular device platform in our hardware help center or get there quickly with these links 👇
You will pair your device to Fugo from inside our CMS. You can log in or sign up for a 14-day free trial here.
3. Set up your on-premise dashboard in Fugo CMS
3.1 Sign into your Fugo account (or set up a free trial here.)
3.2 Select Dashboards from the top navigation bar & click Create Dashboard to start the setup for new dashboard.
3.3 When the Dashboard setup window launches, scroll down and click Add an on-premise dashboard.
3.4 Make sure the toggle is ON for Enable on-premise server for running steps.
Alternatively, if you want the Fugo TV Dashboard feature to run locally on your player, then toggle this off, and instead, toggle ON the Use player for running steps option.
You may choose to enable this if you don't have a dedicated server for running the TV dashboard steps, and therefore won't need to worry about allocating a computer for this or updating network rules. Note that this is currently only supported on Windows devices.
3.5 Open the Fugo TV Dashboards Control Center app on your desktop. Copy the data from the following fields in the app & paste it into the corresponding fields in Fugo CMS:
Fugo Server Local IP Address
This is the address where players will send queries.
Fugo Server Remote IP Address
This is the whitelisted/allowlisted IP address that Fugo will use to record & store your recorded steps in our backend.
Public Key
This is the key that Fugo will use to encrypt & store your recorded steps in our backend.
Note that all On-Premise server requests are signed.
3.6 This will launch the dashboard recorder window where you will follow the instructions to capture and preview your dashboard before publishing it to screen. It will prompt you to log into the service you'd like to use, such as Tableau which we've used here.
You'll notice that your steps are being reflected & recorded in the right hand pane:
3.8 Once you're logged in, you'll be taken to your dashboard. This is the point where you'll instruct Fugo how to take the screenshot of your dashboard.
Clicking Capture Dashboard will capture the entire screen in the screenshot.
To rid your dashboard of unnecessary elements that are in the viewport, you can use the Eraser button to delete them from the view. Then when you're happy with the view, click Capture Dashboard to take the screenshot.
Or use the Element Screenshot icon to capture certain elements inside your dashboard view.
3.9 The recorder will now close and take you back to the Fugo dashboard window. Here you will see a placeholder screen while Fugo is retracing and encrypting the steps you recorded to go and fetch your dashboard screenshot.
At this time, we don't currently support a preview of your dashboard in the CMS. You'll need to save and publish your dashboard to your screen to check the screenshot.
We will be rolling out dashboard previews in the CMS later in 2023.
💡 TIP: If you see an error message you can read the reason for the error and see the screenshot of the last step where the recording process failed. If you're stuck, you can always reach us in via chat box or by booking a call to help set up your dashboard.
3.10 From here, you can either hit Publish to add it to a playlist right away, or hit Save to save it to your Dashboards library.
Once saved, you'll be able to add it to Playlists & Studio content - which we'll show you how to do in the next section 👇
4. Publish your dashboard/s to your digital signage screens
Now that your dashboard has been created, you're ready to push it to your screens!
You've got two options from here:
1. Adding it directly to a playlist
1.1 Go to your Playlists page from the top navigation bar. Click Create Playlist.
1.2 Give your playlist a name - something easy to help you remember what's in it or where this content will live (ie. on which screen)
1.3 Click Select Screen and choose which Fugo-connected screen you want to send your dashboard to.
1.4 Choose Select Content. Go to the Dashboards tab & choose the dashboard to add it to the playlist.
💡 Note: You can update a playlist by adding content to it anytime. Just click Add More Content.
1.5 Click Publish to send this playlist to your screen/s right away. Or use the scheduling tools to get more specific about what days & times this playlist runs.
Your playlist will now live on your Playlists page. You can edit, remove, or pause this playlist any time.
2. Customizing your display in the Design Studio
The Design Studio is where you can create custom display layouts for your content. You can think of it like Canva for your TV screen! Use it to do things like:
Create independent loops of dashboards in one zone of your screen
Add your company logo & brand colors to your display
Simultaneously display widgets with the local weather & time alongside your dashboards
Add ticker texts to your display
Crop your dashboards to make them more readable on TV screens
You can learn more about creating content in the Design Studio here.
For our demo, we're going to create a display that has my dashboard displayed alongside the local weather, time & a news ticker.
2.1 Go to Studio from the top navigation bar. Click Create In Studio.
2.1 This will open a blank canvas where you can start designing your display. Click the Dashboards icon in the left-hand settings panel to access your saved Dashboards library.
2.3 Add the dashboard to your canvas by clicking it or dragging & dropping it.
2.4 From here, you can customize your display to your liking by adding elements like Apps, Media, Text, etc... In the example below, we've cropped our dashboard, added the Weather, Clock, and BBC apps. And we've made a few customizations to the color & layout.
2.5 When you're happy with how your content looks, give it a name & save it so you can find it to add it to your playlist.
2.6 You can add it to a playlist directly from your Studio content by clicking the 3-dot menu on the studio item & launching the playlist builder. You can also navigate to the Playlists page & start a new playlist from there.
2.7 In the playlist builder, choose your new content item from the Studio tab when selecting the content for this playlist (step 1.4 in the previous section.)
Need help?
If you need help getting your on-premise dashboards set up in Fugo, you can reach out to our support team at support@fugo.ai or book a call with our Dashboards team to set it up with you over a live video call.
Want to learn more about how Fugo can help you with displays in your organization? Book in a free demo to see the platform in action & chat with our team about your project!