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Writer's pictureMatthew Merryfull

Everyone loves a dashboard



Howdy folks,


It’s been a little while since our last update, a slew of feedback came off the back of the last private beta release and testing which highlighted a number of things that needed to be addressed before we proceed with further expanded trials. One of those challenges has been to visualise telemetry for supervisory/management use - the promise of time-series data is all well and good, but what do you do with it once you have it? Good question.


We had started out with some proof-of-concept solutions to the problem and these were built right into the client application itself. We had done a bunch of investor talks and product demos and to be honest, we walked away from those thinking “we haven’t hit the mark, yet” The value proposition is strong but we weren’t quite delivering on the promise.


First things first, it had to be easy. Something I’ve always maintained in my professional career is that it is really, really hard to make things easy. There’s a delicate balance between over information and not enough. So many factors contribute to this - timing, cadence, format, colour, priority to name a few. Get them wrong and people start finding your platform annoying, lacklustre even, and eventually they leave.


Next, It had to maintain the level of security we’ve implemented throughout the product’s evolution - being that data is always anonymous throughout our system, but also needed to be of sufficient use to gauge productivity. This “last mile” closed the loop of the key problem we are addressing - work from home, actually works.


Our first attempts bundled this up with the client application in a single pane of glass and to be frank, it just didn’t fit right - the simplicity of the end-user app is what makes it distraction-free. Adding reports, user management functions, roles, plugins etc just clogged up the UI and it started diverging away from the core functionality of connecting teams and producing telemetry. We decided after a bit of back and forth that we really needed a dashboard that serviced the management functions of the platform. We wanted to maintain the simplicity of the client application but also introduce some familiar structure so functional areas were easy and intuitive to locate. So we’ve been busy building the dashboard interface.


Dashboard Highlight
A first look at the Huddlify Admin Dashboard


Through this journey what became apparent very quickly was different people, teams and organisations all function slightly differently to one another whilst our functionality was comprehensive, tailoring was needed to make it fit and didn’t get in the way. We wanted a way to extend the core telemetry functionality in a non-destructive way - in short, we wanted the ability to add specific customer information into the platform and allow it to be retrieved on the other side - sounds a lot like an API, right?


So in summary, we’ve knocked up a few new, pretty big features:


Dashboard:


Everyone loves a dashboard! So our team has knocked up a pretty damn awesome dashboard if I do say so myself! You can now view how the teams and organisation as a whole are performing at a glance. Customisation is on the horizon which will make dashboarding truly yours so you can keep an eye on what matters and make business decisions based on facts. We’re looking forward to sharing the implementation and structure in an upcoming release but for now, here are some sneak peeks of the how the time series data:



A chart showing user attendance
Actual per employee time series data - pretty neat, huh?

A chart showing attendance data
A precision view of the time-series data per employee (in dark mode, cause dark mode is for cool kids)


Workspace Administration:


We've been hard at work to make managing your remote teams as straightforward as it can be! Account settings, Payments, Subscriptions, user management, roles, rooms and workspace settings all from one place removes the clutter and reduces error by removing the unnecessary tools from the client application so you know that when you’re in the Dashboard, you are mentally in the right headspace and not context switching - which is where the majority of human errors occur.





A user interface showing settings that can be changed
Tailoring notifications and alerts helped to align features into individual businesses.

Reporting and Insight Capabilities:


We've added a magic touch to the raw data, helping you gain that “at a glance” insight you need in order to make informed calls quickly and with confidence! Our new external data API that lets you insert all your data from different corners of the digital universe and have them be tracked right alongside the time series - how neat is that! You can also get your hands on those sweet insights, all in one place. Plus, with our plugins framework on the horizon, making use of your data in a structured, time-series basis will be a breeze!


Webhooks Integration:


Webhooks! So very important. Informing external platforms and tools of occurrences from your remote teams is fundamental to building trust. Stay in the loop with real-time updates and notifications that keep your projects in perfect sync with your existing tools. Automate your workflows, trigger actions, and make your collaboration game strong. Because communication is key to success, so we went ahead and built it.



A web user interface that allows the configuration of an external webhook.
Webhooks seriously level up the playing field of work from home.


What's Next:


We're not stopping here, Our team is looking into some exciting new AI-driven features, extending access so combining platform and customer data is easier than before, and functional tweaks to make Huddlify even more awesome. We're all about giving you the tools you need to succeed and make managing work from home a walk in the park. We promised structured timesheet data, and it is on the way.


The education and understanding that our platform makes better use of technology and never stores ANY personal information has been the biggest ally to dispel any fears of big brother lurking. The tribal accountability has proven time and time again that teams work best when they work together - the good, bad and the ugly. The always-on intra-team communication is/was a welcome connection missing in the WFH paradigm. This pops up time and time again - it just works.


So that’s all from us for now. If you’re interested in hearing more, feel free to drop us a line from the website huddlify.com and someone from the team will get in touch for a chat.



Happy work-from-home!


Matt and the team at Huddlify.



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