Large Dashboards

The customer asked for a rolling dashboard solution for display on large TVs that could present live reports to their user groups, displaying data retrieved through database queries, Power BI reports, and files on the network, with the timeframe for each display configurable in seconds and minutes. They wanted to pull current transactional information from multiple data sources such as databases and Excel sheets, and to display pre-existing reports and data files directly rather than recreating the data just for the displays.

Sembit suggested separating the display technology from the data access, which was both cheaper, with no extra Power BI licenses, and more modular. The customer set up automatic timed report exports from their data sources, running every 10 minutes, to ensure fresh data was always ready to display, along with a network folder hierarchy for resource sharing. General displays would show general items, while specific displays would show both the general files and the more specific ones. This allowed the entire system to be managed from a single set of folders.

Sembit created a custom Windows app, configured to use the same hook as the Windows screen saver. The app is configured to watch a particular file folder containing a list of resources. A file-naming convention let users specify how long to display each file, so a file named SalesList.15.png would show that image for 15 seconds. For scrolling marquee text, Sembit used a simple XML file format with the text and scroll speed specified inside the file.

Because the customer also wanted the content on a website, we built an internal web application that showed the same content as the screen saver. Its configuration file maps a URL subpath to each folder to be displayed, and we checked Windows file permissions for each user so the site only shows content applicable to them, making administration easy. For spreadsheet charts, we created a tool to export charts with appropriately sized labels, which they used to schedule image exports as needed. We also added a PDF viewer component and a video player component so they could show PDFs and videos.

The customer deployed the solution to multiple screens throughout their offices at multiple sites, including the sales team's office, the lunchroom, and many other locations. Because all sites could access their intranet, every screen could be updated from a single network share. Sales staff could keep up-to-date on their stats, and all employees could enjoy the content produced on the large screens.

This rolling dashboard project shows how a modular, file-driven approach can turn ordinary office screens into living views of the latest data. By separating display from data access and supporting images, scrolling text, charts, PDFs, and videos from a single network share, Sembit created a flexible, easy-to-administer way to keep every office informed.