Four Winds Interactive headquartered in Denver offers their digital signage content manager and content player applications to enterprises of various sizes in many industries, providing digital content to large live digital signs and billboards in arenas and airports to smaller kiosks and interactive consoles for customers in entertainment venues, banks, and other industries and locations.
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Robin
Score 8.3 out of 10
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Robin, headquartered in Boston offers their meeting room booking system, featuring software for scheduling conference rooms, space management with workspace usage analytics, and integratable digital signage.
If you want to create an elaborate, multi-leveled kiosk for your organization, Four Winds Interactive Content Manager Desktop can definitely do that for you. Just know going in that it's not the easiest to operate, and definitely devote time to training. Definitely have a couple of people go through this training, so it's not just one person in your organization that can operate Four Winds.
Robin is my benchmark for room displays. It effectively does what it is meant to do without additional fluff. The default theme is more than you'll ever really need, but customization is available. I just really wish there was a simpler way to remove check-in requirements for events. I would always recommend them first for most situations, but my company has a special use case that Robin, or any other competitors for that matter, have not been able to achieve yet.
The FWi platform handles very complex or unique situations better than other signage solutions. They support every standard type of data and web service, and through a supplemental Integration Framework product they can support almost anything out there... or things that aren't even out there yet.
Their support and assistance has gotten very good over the years; I'd say it is now excellent. Their team of sign builders and engineers have advanced knowledge of the product and how it can be used; you won't get a "did you try restarting it?" when dealing with them.
The integration to GSuite calendars is fantastic. Very simple and straightforward.
The ability to customize the interface a very nice feature to have in Robin, as it offers you to allow the UI to reflect the vibe/brand of your company, and not force its own brand on you.
When working with a large installation the amount of mouse clicking and dragging and setting of settings and make your hand a bit sore but the modular component setup of this software demands a lot of settings.
As a custom software designer myself I would like to see more group effective operations so I could effect a change at a property level instead of an individual player level.
Upgrading to a new version of the software I have left to the experts at FWI because it is rather complex. They state they are working on better ways to perform large upgrades.
Robin's UI is very well designed and modern which makes it a pleasure to use. Personally this a big factor for me enjoying a product and so I'm always happy to use Robin - moreover as a relatively new user the UI was quite quick to pick-up, whether that be using the online system or the Display app for rooms around the office.
I have rarely had to contact customer support, but when I have, they have provided quick answers to solve the problem I was having. The software is pretty easy to use and not too buggy, so I really haven't had the occasion to contact them needing support. And no users have ever had issues.
Simply put, FWi outperforms just about any other software solution by being more adaptable and more reliable, while being competitively priced for its class (top shelf). It's not as cheap as using "free" signage software that's in the cloud, or built into display screens (LG), but if you plan on doing more than running slides and you plan on doing it in multiple locations and screens, this is the platform to do it on - especially if your venues and needs vary across the network.
I haven't used any software like Robin. Other places I worked required an archaic way of doing things...like using pen and paper and a calendar book. Robin is sooo much better. I don't know how large companies make do reserving spaces without it. I would recommend Robin to anyone.
