A TV dashboard is just a dashboard designed to display on a TV screen, usually hung on an office wall. It allows a team or company to monitor productivity, attainment to goals and performance vs previous periods—all at a glance. Making data accessible to everyone in an office motivates teams and individuals to focus on the right metrics, continuously improve performance, help each other out and compete for the top spot.

With Databox, there is no difference. When you build a Databox Databoard (our name for a multi-device dashboard), they automatically work on every device. This is because Databox Databoards consist of Datablocks, which have a consistent width to height ratio that works on all devices. On TV and desktop, you can choose the size of each of these Datablocks, if you want a line graph to take up more space than say a gauge chart. In our mobile app, we automatically adjust these to fit into your mobile screen and allow you to scroll up and down to see the other Datablocks.

Yes. The easiest way to do this is to Loop multiple Databoards together. Looped Databoards act like a slideshow that scrolls from one dashboard to the next automatically. You can even control how long each dashboard displays before it moves to the next one.

You don’t have to, but you can. In Databox, you can build multiple dashboards with the same or similar data. You may want to have a simpler dashboard for your TV display, so it’s easy to read at a glance. Since the data automatically updates, you just build each dashboard once and always see it the way you want for each device.

Typically, with TV dashboards, companies select fewer metrics and simpler visualizations. This makes it easy for people to glance at them when they want to check current (or real-time) performance quickly. Monthly reports can also be simple, but typically enable more in-depth analysis, and have a lot more detail, additional metrics for drilling down into why performance is trending in one way or the other. TV dashboards more commonly show performance to goal, as well as metrics that show how many times an individual (or team) has done something (eg # of sales calls) and the results they’ve achieved (# of deals closed), while reports more frequently show current vs historical performance (e.g. revenue booked month-over-month) and efficiency metrics (e.g. close rate.)

TV dashboards make data accessible, help your team spot issues when they arise and before they become bigger issues, align everyone’s focus around the right metrics and motivate your team to improve performance and exceed targets.

Companies are producing more and more data locked inside more and more tools. Most individuals and teams won’t know which metrics are more important or even how to check them. And even if they do, it’s often time-consuming to get it. With a TV dashboard on an office wall, your team can see and interpret their KPIs with just a glance. Because the data is so accessible, it’s easy for everyone on your team (from your CEO to your brand new employees) to spot issues that need to be addressed and opportunities for improvement.

Because a TV dashboard is usually on a wall in a shared space in your office, it gives everyone access to performance data. It makes it clear to your whole team (or company) which metrics and which goals are most important. And when everyone knows what metrics are most important, they can all work together to improve them. Perhaps most importantly, when TV dashboards are designed well, they show the correlation between the work (or output) your team is doing and the outcomes they produce, allowing everyone to understand how (and how much) they’re contributing to the company’s success. Additionally, by making data available to other team’s and executives out in the open, individuals (and teams) will feel compelled to achieve targets and exceed past performance (and fear the shame of not meeting performance expectations).

TV dashboards can empower your team members to make informed, but quick decisions in real-time by providing up-to-date data. This can help them monitor results as they execute their daily activities and implement new initiatives. Of course, any dashboard or real-time report can do this, but since there is limited space on a TV dashboard, it forces you to select a limited number of the most important metrics that can be consumed in a short amount of time.

If you’re not sure how to design an effective dashboard, we recommend taking our free business analytics course. In it, we’ll teach you how to align your team around the right metrics and set goals. You’ll also learn the difference between metrics that track the work you do (output metrics) and the ones that show your results (outcome metrics), leading and lagging indicators and the importance of setting quantity (eg new sales revenue) and quality (eg sales close rate) goals. On your TV dashboard, you’ll want to show a mix of these types of metrics, especially when they can give you a complete picture of a team or project’s performance. After you choose your metrics, you’ll want to think about how to visualize each metric and how prominent each metric should be. As an example, if you want your team to see a specific metric from their desks to encourage them to hit specific activity targets, you might want your key output metrics to take up a large portion of your TV screen. If you want to give managers a leaderboard to see how each team member is contributing, you’ll want to set up a daily leaderboard.

With the Databox Dashboard Designer on your computer, you can make changes to your dashboards at any time and instantly see the changes on your TV. So, if your team’s short or long-term focus or objectives change, you can quickly update your dashboards. Need to add or remove a metric, change a visualization, add in a historical comparison, update your goals? No problem: just login to Databox and make the change. All changes will instantly be reflected on your TV dashboard.

The equipment needed to setup a TV dashboard is low cost and easily available. You no longer need expensive, specialized hardware or a digital signage solution. The easiest way to get a TV dashboard up and running quickly is with a Smart TV. Just open the browser on your Smart TV and go to http://tv.databox.com to get your four digit code. Then login to your Databox account, fin the dashboard (or dashboard loop) you want to display and enter the code. You’ll see the dashboard on your TV screen as soon as you do. If you don’t have a Smart TV, you can use a laptop, computer or external device like an Asus Chromebit, Google Chromecast, Amazon TV Fire Stick, Raspberry Pi or Airtame. With any of these, you can login to the Databox app and just open the dashboard directly. These devices allow you to treat your TV display like a computer monitor and just navigate to your dashboard. For more details, read our help documentation. Learn more

Put your TV dashboards on a wall where the right people will see it. For a sales or support team dashboard, put it close to their desks so they can see how they’re doing without getting up. If you’re tracking financial metrics, put it where finance sits. If you’re tracking manufacturing, logistics or inventory data, put it on the manufacturing floor or in shipping, respectively. For company-wide dashboards, put it outside your executive offices, in the lobby, meeting rooms or cafeteria so everyone can see how different teams are performing.

With Databox, you can build your first TV dashboards in minutes using our native integrations and one of our 200+ dashboard templates. If you need to visualize data from other applications or systems, you can set it up yourself or hire our team to push in data via Zapier or Integromat, visualize data from a Google sheet or SQL Server database. You can also customize any dashboard using our Designer, no coding required.