Likelihood to Recommend I think this tool is an absolute have to have for MSPs, especially those using
ConnectWise PSA for a ticketing system. From internal KPIs to showing customer's the value of your Managed Service, you will need this tool. 9/10 because the need for longer data sets is growing for my team. Trend lines over time are a big push industry wide to show improvements in our customers over the time as our MSP customer. Presently my team has to use CW
PSA 's Report Writer and that tool is the least user friendly we've encountered. Looking forward to the evolution of BrightGauge for our business
Read full review A simple and important scenario well suited is that you can configure alerts to notify you when the production server fails. another best feature is the report server is the central component of reporting services. For me something less appropriate is that the admin must ensure optimal performance for farm operations, they recommend that you install SQL Server on a dedicated server that does not run other farm roles and does not host databases for other applications.
Read full review Pros Robust and flexible kinds of dashboards and gauges Great customer support that often leaves custom video recordings answering your question, showing you how to do what you're asking Good ability to tie into critical data sources for our company's operations Read full review Flexible - able to make any changes we would like vs traditional service desk system. ROI - We were already using SharePoint for internal intranet, so we are simply getting more use out of licensing we had already committed to. Easy to use for end users. Read full review Cons Modifying data sets to bring in custom fields requires an experienced SQL engineer Cost when bringing in lots of data sources can be prohibitive Limited ability to format gauges and reports Make MFA a requirement - this data is sensitive and giving the admin the ability to force MFA is a MUST! Read full review It is hard to setup and nightmare It requires a of infrastructure, thus it could be costly because of requirement and licensing required for everything to run smoothly If it is not setup and organized properly from the beginning it could be maintenance nightmare It is hard to have "test" environment to do patches or similar Read full review Likelihood to Renew This was a long-term buy-in from a corporate perspective, to remain in the SharePoint space. Migration is certainly possible, which is good for planning and having options further out. At this point, the only planned migration is to eventually move the architecture up to SharePoint/SQL 2013. At that point, we will be able to leverage some greater efficiencies, some enhanced content design and management features, and some more current social features. It is well worth a full consideration in any shop looking at a new implementation of or migration to SharePoint (although you will probably be considering 2013 versions or beyond in those discussions), but the platform should be a strong competitor to any alternatives. Realizing the capability of a fully-branded and customized website was not part of the original choice for the architecture at Lincoln, but seeing it implemented and functioning now with this capacity far beyond original expectations has certainly cemented plans to continue using it.
Read full review Usability Usability is BrightGauge's strength. Granting the ability of virtually any user to be able to create a dashboard is incredibly valuable. If an organization very simple and straight forward reporting needs then BrightGauge is a perfect fit for them. Connecting to the dataset we used was very quick and easy and I imagine it would be the same for any major data source you would like to pull from.
Read full review SharePoint is very complex. This makes usability somewhat difficult from an IT perspective. An IT generalist will be able to pick it up and run with basic tasks. More customized functions would require significant specialized training and therefore limit what a standard user would be able to achieve. From an end user perspective, it's pretty straightforward to use.
Read full review Support Rating We did not need to use BrightGauge's support for the entire time that we used it. Best support is always the one that isn't needed because nothing breaks.
Read full review It's been fantastic in terms of Premier Support so far. If there is an issue and if you report if the product has an issue, they will act upon it immediately. In some cases, if you design/develop something using the platform, Microsoft appreciates it and... publishes it on their public website. But you have to wait for some time if it is a non-Premier Support issue as you may experience delays.
Read full review Implementation Rating Not implemented in best practice way, there are many customizations
Read full review Alternatives Considered We looked very briefly at Solar Winds, but due to Connectwise the reporting was not very accurate and was conflicted.
Read full review At the time of the two large projects, SharePoint was the enterprise solution so we were required to use that. We have since lobbied the enterprise teams to review and consider
Atlassian Confluence and were successful.
Confluence is cheaper than Sharepoint which is why we wanted to bring that in. The enterprise has now made
Confluence an enterprise solution as an alternative to SharePoint. After using both I think SharePoint has many more add-ins than
Confluence . It has much more customization ability than
Confluence . SharePoint is not good for mobile readiness.
Confluence is so there is a difference that might lead you to
Confluence over SharePoint. I would also say that SharePoint is very document-centric and that
Confluence has better KM than SharePoint does. even with the use of SQL Server. We were told that we could not use
Google Drive even though it had features we liked.
Gene Baker Vice President, Chief Architect, Development Manager and Software Engineer
Read full review Return on Investment Faster compilation of Business Review material For larger customers, the dashboarding has helped our customers to remain sticky and add services/revenue to our MSP. They want to add more fragments of their IT for the 1 pane rollup. From a leadership perspective, BG has allowed me to make difficult staffing decisions with confidence. Detailed metric driven decisions on who is hitting KPIs/who isn't - as well as when data proved we were overstaffed and understaffed. Read full review I've installed SharePoint in many different industries and each industry has seen greater collaboration among their teams both locally and nationally. The ability to collaborate more efficiently has reduced the need to have employees centrally located. Companies which have used SharePoint in a end user training portal have had great ROI, since they can create the content once and share with all their users who subscribe to their training service. The web content management aspect of SharePoint is a very helpful feature. Read full review ScreenShots