Visual KPI Features

Visual KPI runs in the a web browser for end users. That means nothing to install or manage, no data stored locally (secure), and support for any device or screen size.

No need to refresh. As the data changes in your data sources, the visualizations update automatically in seconds. It’s modern design provides advanced speed without putting load on your data sources.

Visual KPI supports thousands of data sources, and there is no limit to how many you can use at the same time (one of our customers uses 100+ sources concurrently). Data from different sources can be mixed and matched, calculated, nested and more.

Visual KPI has DEEP integration with OSIsoft PI, AF (Asset Framework) and most OSIsoft tools. Our native integration with AF fully automates Visual KPI and lets AF control the hierarchy and all configuration.

If you already have KPI definitions or a hierarchy in a separate system, our RCS technology can map and read the metadata from your source, eliminating the need to build objects or groups in the Visual KPI Designer. Fully automated and changes as your metadata does.

One of the key differentiators for Visual KPI, real-time alerts notify users or groups when KPIs cross limits. Includes support for alert templates, escalating alerts and reminders.

Sometimes you need some tabular data sitting along side of your time-series data. Our tables feature lets you view maintenance logs, shift reports, or any other table you can query from a data source. Tables are fully searcheable too.

Visual KPI supports geolocation on any object in the system, and when used with a device that has a GPS receiver and our Near Me feature you can sort and filter your data by the distance from the location you are standing. It even changes as you move around.

Visual KPI visualizations and hierarchy are driven by attributes. Add custom attributes to dynamically create groups, organize and pivot groups of KPIs and more. Attributes can also be automated and change based on your data sources.

Downsampling means optimizing the amount of data sent to your device. You might want to look at a year of sub-second data on your phone, but why bring millions of points to your phone if you only have a few hundred pixels on which to show it. Visual KPI intelligently matches the data to the device and updates it in real-time as you zoom or drag the view.

We go way beyond working on all of your devices. We started with mobile back in 2005 and all of our visualizations are optimized for it. Big, round dials take up a ton of space and are hard to compare with each other, especially on a phone or tablet. Every one of our charts is designed to look great on small devices and compare with its peers.

Manual configuration in Visual KPI is easy with the Excel-based Visual KPI Designer. There is no coding and if you know the basics of Excel you already know 80% of our software. For automated configuration, see the Remote Context Service feature.

Visual KPI is an in-memory web server application that runs on Windows Server. We did this on purpose, because it means we can fit in almost any IT environment, integrate with almost every security scenario, and live just as easily on premise or in a private or public cloud environment.

You can embed any content that is supported in HTML. Want a video feed or HMI / process graphic on your dashboard? How about custom manual data entry forms linked from your KPIs? Just about anything is possible, even if we don’t include it natively. Oh, and you can embed our objects in other software too.

Network monitoring systems are another great data source for Visual KPI, and they become even more powerful when you combine their data with your other sources. How cool would it be to combine SolarWinds data with call center volume and social media sentiment?

Create as many drag and drop real-time dashboards as you want. They can also be grouped into unlimited profiles, locked down, secured separately, hidden or linked.

Collaboration is critical and sharing what you see in real-time can mean the difference between a small problem and a crisis. Every screen and alert can be shared easily and it only sends links, not data. The links are useless if they end up in the wrong hands, and they point back to the live application showing even what has happened since the alert or share took place. Context and speed are kings.

In most cases our customers are storing their OPC data in a historian and we read from that, but we also support OPC UA, DA, HDA and A&E when you add Visual KPI Enterprise ADI. It also adds a historian to store the real-time data and its history.

Say goodbye to endless projects. A full system is deployed in about 90 minutes and can be done via a web meeting. Once deployed, configuration is either automated (Remote Context Service) or easily setup using the Excel-based Visual KPI Designer. You can even try the software with your own data sources and on your own server for free for 30 days.

High-speed and slow moving or manual data are equally at home here. We have worked with everything from pico-second resolution (Google it) to data that only changes once a year. It doesn’t matter how fast your data changes, the important part is to know right when it does.

Relationships matter here. Some software just lets you create flat dashboards or displays but they don’t have relationships or a hierarchy you can drill into. Not only do we have a fully dynamic hierarchy, but performance is automatically rolled up at every level.

More than half of our customers have enterprise historians and we love them. We support pretty much all of them, including OSIsoft PI (and AF), GE Proficy, inmation, Wonderware InSQL, Rockwell FactoryTalk, Honeywell, Schneider, Yokogawa, ABB, AspenTech, OAS and many more. We also support all of the modern time-series databases like InfluxDB, Druid, TempoIQ and others. Ask us if you don’t see your favorite.

Trends (line charts, run chart) are a huge part of operations monitoring or any time-series visualization. Our automatic, ad-hoc and managed trends feature up to 20 pens per trend, time offsets, multi-scale, multiple cursors, export to table or CSV, threaded trend comments, calculations, snap-to mode, drag/zoom/pinch, future data support and more.

We call it “in-the-moment” or “live” analytics. We support everything from pivoting based on attributes, filtering by status or geolocation, and even automatic pareto charts showing which KPIs are performing better or worse over a specified time range. And of course everything updates as your data does.

Visual KPI “reads” data in real-time from your data sources without the need to move anything or create a new master data source to manage and maintain (unless you need one). This makes it a fairly lightweight application that sits out in front of your data and eliminates much of the headaches of traditional BI project. It also means you can evaluate the software quickly without making any changes to your existing systems.

You can search for any object in the system (groups, KPIs, charts, tables) from any page and receive immediate results with their live status as you type. See the ad-hoc groups feature to see what else search can do.

Use the search feature to make a group of KPIs or other objects regardless of how the admin setup the hierarchy. These ad-hoc groups have access to all the power of a normal group including multiple visualizations, filters, grouping and more.

Did you know our maps can support moving assets like trucks, trains, ships and even people? Just like most attributes, geolocation can be read directly from a data source which will result in your assets and their KPIs moving on the maps as they move in real life.

Every object in Visual KPI can be embedded, with or without its associated navigation, into any software that will accept a URL. Want our trends, GeoMaps or rollups in Sharepoint, your HMI or another portal? No problem.

Some data sources just aren’t meant to be read from by software. They might be old or just not meant for this purpose, but that doesn’t stop us from reading from them. With the DropZone feature of our Enterprise ADI product, we can catch csv exports, binary files and more and create/store the the time-series history.

There’s no way to list them all here, but visualizations include single KPI charts (trend, sparkline, bullet, SPC, etc.), group visualizations (rollups, KPI map, GeoMap, etc.), managed charts (bar chart, embedded content, gantt, pareto, pie, XY/scatter plot, tables) and ad-hoc visualizations.

Visual KPI was build to fit within your IT environment without imposing new requirements. And because its an in-memory IIS application we automatically support every security technology (RSA, VPN, 2FA, appliances, etc.) that Windows Server supports. Contact us if you have questions.

You are in control of the experience with no need to code. You can change status colors, naming, the language (even add your own), add your own logo, and even control what happens when you click on something. There are site-wide defaults and the ability to override those defaults on individual objects.

Wondering if we can handle your data requirements? Oil refineries often monitor many thousands of KPIs that are sampled up to hundreds of time per second and stored at full resolution for decades. We also handle the requirements of nuclear power, satellites, electrical grids and others. Scale is a prerequisite.

You can do simple or complex calculations on the fly and even across multiple data sources. Parameters feature lets you use nested calculations and include up to 10 separate data sources.

Roll-ups are one of the most powerful and unique aspects of Visual KPI. They guide you right to where your problems are, regardless of how many metrics you have or how deep they are in the hierarchy. They also let you summarize totally different types of data (like machine data and finance data) in the same hierarchy. The ultimate contextual tool.

Create your own trends or other visualizations right from the browser, including reading new values from data sources even if they haven’t been defined as objects in the system.

We focus on monitoring, alerting and visualization, which means support for machine learning, artificial intelligence and future data are critical. The architecture lets you add your favorite vertical services for ML and AI and even correlate them with your real-time data on the fly or even alert on deviations from the models.

In addition to overall security (authentication, encryption, etc.), you define right down to the individual object who has access. This means multiple people could log in to the same page and see different sets of information based on their priveleges.

Time-based dashboards blur the line between monitoring and reporting by allowing you to time-bind and entire dashboard. Think about your daily, weekly or monthly report as a link where people can go deeper or scroll forward or back in time. No more manual report generation or static pdfs. Yay!

Give you the ability to use up to 10 data sources (including calculations and multiple tags/values each) inside of a single field of a KPI or a nested calculation. This also allows you to automate your attributes based on remote data (e.g. what is that machine making or that train carrying right now?; What is the start time for this batch?). Fairly limitless.

Click anywhere on a trend or drag to highlight a time range and enter comments or reply to others (threaded discussion). Comments are stored in Visual KPI and can be exposed as visualizations.

Statistical Process Control (SPC) is just a toggle away on any KPI. Automatically generates calculated control limits and displays the four critical Western Electric SPC rules. Imagine adding SPC in minutes instead of days or weeks.

The Group Map visualization lets you define the status of a group based on the behavior of the KPIs in it and show select KPIs for the group in fixed positions. Group status can be determined by the worst performing KPI, most recently changed KPI or custom options.

Support for standard integration protocols like JSON, ODBC, Odata and more allow us to integrate with almost any source. Interfaces are easy to create and their simplicity makes them lightning fast and lightweight.