For a successful and self-sustaining implementation of Smart City Project just like any other project, it is all pervasive that few important criteria are met with. An indicative checklist is presented herewith so that one can quickly assess the readiness of their institution for Smart City Project.

 All the applications have meaningful Graphical Display of vital information.

 You are able to look at the information from all the different applications on a single canvas.

 You are able to view relevant data from all the applications in real-time.

 The information can be presented from different applications so that it can be correlated easily.

 Critical data is presented so that it stands out automatically from the normal data.

 The applications provides the information only at relevant schedule/time automatically.

 You are able to access important information from your office as well as field.

 You get notifications of critical alerts anywhere you are in realtime.

 All the applications are capable of projecting reports to Video wall of the control center.

 The important reports from all the applications are emailed to on schedule.

 All the officers in institution are able to monitor applications of relevant domains.

 Various reports of the applications can be easily shared on the public facing website.

 All the application dashboard are capable of being customised as per end user requirements.

 All the application reports can be automatically viewed in presentation mode.

If any of the above checkboxes remain unticked and you wish to have that feature so that your Smart City initiative can be implemented in the proper perspective and you can have complete command of the institution, then SmartDashboard is the solution that you should be looking for.

SmartDashboard answers each of this concerns and more very elegantly so that you and your officers have full control over their domains and only on their domains anywhere, anytime and in realtime. It may be as a desktop monitoring station on their laptops or smartphone, or as a dedicated control stations or on video walls of your control room.

SmartDashboard extends your legacy applications by not only providing them with a customisable dashboard solution but also adding to them email based reporting, alerts and notifications of critical event, capability of being embedded to the websites and more.

SmartDashboard comes packed with so many features that are necessary and essential to become the center piece of any organisation’s I.T. applications jigsaw and also the crucial and critical tool of the management toolbox.

Some of the features that are quite useful to address the needs listed in the checklist presented above are explained below:

Does all your Applications have meaningful Graphical Displays?

If all your applications have is drab reports and they don’t have Graphical dashboards, charts, reports etc. then don’t sweat. You can simply configure SmartDashboard to pull data from those applications and create as many Graphical dashboards, charts, reports etc. of your choice.

You are required to look into many different applications?

Any organisation has so many applications and needs to monitor information from them all. The officers at times doesn’t have proper training of each application and also it is waste of time to login to multiple application to get reports. SmartDashboard allows to pull data from multiple disparate applications and render is on the same canvas.

Your data is stored in different locations and different formats?

Applications are developed and procured over a long period of time for any organisations and hence the data for each is not only located in different locations like network, web, ftp, local drives, etc. but also in different formats like SQL, CSV, XLS, JSON, XML, etc. making it quite difficult to have standard reporting system. But with SmartDashboard its one of its salient features that it can pull data from all this different location and in different format and renders them on the same canvas.

You want to have a realtime view of the data for important processes?

Many processes of an organisation needs to have a real time or near realtime information. Using legacy applications that provides paper based reports or multiple tabular reports are a drag in such a situation as the information will not be delivered at the speed at which it is required. SmartDashboard pulls the data from such legacy applications and displays them in a meaningful way in near realtime.

It’s difficult for you to correlate information from different sources?

The entire crux of the Decision Support System lies on the fact that the managers need to relate the output of one system with output of another system so as to make some sense. It becomes difficult with conventional applications as two reports are to be studied side by side or are to be taken to Excel and worked upon. Whereas in SmartDashboard, you can have reports from disparate systems rendered side by side for ease of correlation.

You want personalised view of the data for you?

It is understood that not all the users of an applications need the data presented to them in the same format. The layout of the data is preferred based on their expectation of the system. This is nearly impossible for the conventional system, whereas in SmartDashboard, each user can have his own personalised group, layout, arrangement and colour schemes.

Critical data is lost in the heap of normal data?

Conventionally the data/information is reported without any consideration to the criticality of a particular case and hence there exist a high probability that the critical data will be lost in the heap of other normal data and this may incur a huge cost. With SmartDashboard, the data falling in the critical range will be highlighted so that the manager never misses it.

You only want the reports to be displayed on schedule?

What is an information that is not given on the time that it is required? Similarly, what is the use of an information that is given when it is not required. Traditional system cannot provide such information automatically on Schedule, whereas with SmartDashboard, it is very easy to define the schedule on which a particular information or report will be required and thence it will be displayed on schedule.

You want the access to all the data from anywhere?

The SmartDashboard is having a responsive form factor and hence the SmartDashboards created can be used across a variety of devices like mobile phones, tablets, laptops, desktops, video walls, etc. If you are connected to your network then this feature helps you access your SmartDashboard whether you are in field or in the office using appropriate device of your choice.

You want to be notified of critical events anywhere you are?

The SmartDashboard comes with an inbuilt notification engine, that will allow you to get notifications and critical alerts even if you are not logged into your SmartDashboard. This notification and alerts reaches to you even if you are in the field, if you are connected to your network. This feature lets you use SmartDashboard also as a notification system for your legacy applications which doesn’t support alerts and notifications.

You like to be reported instead of being stuck to the monitor?

Many job roles don’t allow user to sit before the computers and monitor the system. It doesn’t even allow them to check the mobiles now and then. Some jobs will take you out of your network connections. In such situations SmartDashboard can email you your reports periodically on the schedule chosen by you. This features allows you to use SmartDashboard as an email based reporting engine for your legacy applications.

You need to establish a command center?

A huge organisation has many domains and subdomains to be monitored and controlled. This requires for establishing of a command center which will watch over for normalcy of operations and quickly dispatch solutions to critical events. SmartDashboard system is designed and developed so that it can act as the main backbone of the command center so that different critical events can handled by different persons of the command center.

You need your officers to have control of their data?

Delegation of rights and responsibility based on job roles is how each organisation works. SmartDashboard allows the main administrator of the system to create logins for each user. Then rights and permissions can be given to each user based on his job role so that he has access to all the data that he needs of all the applications in his domain and nothing more.

You want the reports to be embedded on your website?

All the organisations have their public facing websites and many a times it is needed to put data from line of business applications to website. This will be a task which will requiring time and effort in case of the legacy applications. But SmartDashboard its just matter of copying and pasting a line of code onto the webpage of your website and the SmartTab will be rendered on the website.

You want to save time developing dashboards for various systems?

Developing Dashboards for each and every application of the organisation will be a daunting and costly task. This can be easily handled by outsourcing the dashboarding tasks to SmartDashboard. Dashboards of various systems can be developed in SmartDashboard and then simply embedded into the line of business applications.

You need to personalise the look and feel?

All the elements in SmartDashboard, right from the colour and style of graph or chart to that of the entire SmartDashboard including that of the SmartParts and SmartTabs can be changed to match the likings of the user. And the settings that the user have selected are stored and persisted so that the user will always get the setting of his likings when he logs into SmartDashboard.

The SmartDashboard creation process from legacy application data is quite easy and is just a chore. It is just a process involving four simple steps as depicted below

Step.1 : Creating Smart DataSources that pulls data from Legacy Application data stores

The first step in the process of creating a SmartDashboard is to create a Smart DataSource. This DataSources are configured to pull data from different locations like Local Drive, SQL Server, Network Drive, FTP, Google Drive, Dropbox, Emails, REST, etc. The data can be in any of the formats like XLS, CSV, ODF, JSON, XML, SQL, etc. This DataSources can also be configured to be automatically refreshed on specified intervals so that fresh and relevant data is being pushed to various SmartPart consuming the data from these DataSources.

 

 

 

 

Step.2 : Creating SmartParts that consumes data from the Smart DataSources.

The second step involves using a the DataSource created in step one to render a graph using any one of the SmartPart from the SmartPart Library of nearly 50 members. Creating this SmartPart and customising it to your liking is as easy as using Microsoft Excel to create a graph/chart. You can create multiple SmartParts from the same DataSource by slicing and dicing it or by using it as it is. Even one SmartPart can be used again and again with different DataSources too.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Step.3 : Creating SmartTabs by laying out various SmartParts on it.

A SmartTab is a tab which host different SmartParts created using different DataSources. The layout of the SmartTab can be chose from several precanned layout templates from the layout gallery. Within the selected layout the SmartParts can then be arranged simply by dragging and dropping them to their intended locations. These layouts are completely personalised, so that each use will get the different layout of the SmartTab as per his choice and also the arrangement of SmartParts within it. What more? The user can even have style and colour of the SmartTabs and the SmartPart Panels to his liking.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The layout gallery comes with 20+ predefined templates that covers nearly all the use case scenarios but more can be easily added to it on demand from the end users.

Step.4 : Creating SmartDashboard by adding multiple SmartTabs to it.

A SmartDashboard is collection of multiple SmartTabs that are styled and arranged to the liking of the user. The SmartDashboard has three different modes, the normal editing mode, the full screen editing mode and the full screen presentation mode.

The SmartDashboards created are responsive to the form factors and hence can be used across a variety of devices like mobile phones, tablets, laptops, desktops, video walls, etc. For presentation mode the SmartDashboard automatically cycles through each of the SmartTabs as per the duration set by the user.

Thus creating a SmartDashboard is very easy and the learning curve associated with creation of the Smart DataSources, SmartPart, SmartTabs and ultimately the SmartDashboard is very flat and can be easily mastered. The SmartDashboard comes with a series of video Tutorials to help you learn and implement SmartDashboard.