Xibo

Multiple independant remote clients

Asked by Jeff C

My company is looking to start offering digital signage solutions. We are looking for software that meets the following criteria:

Centrally managed from a website clients can log into
Each client has their own unique login
Each client is able to manage each of their registered digital signs independently of the others in their organization
Each client is only able to see the digital signs registered to their organizations login
The ability to have a "reseller" account that can manage multiple clients

Is Xibo the software solution I'm looking for?

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Jeff C
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Dan Garner (dangarner) said : 		#1

We tick most of those boxes, however there is no built in support for what I would call "accounts", we have users and groups, but the account is the actual install (think word press).

I think there are some chaps working on it - but its not part of our road map at the moment.

What we would far prefer is a reseller platform where new accounts can be created, monitored and administered from one place - we are a long way off that though.

You could consider working with an existing company that offers Xibo reseller packages, there are a few of these around

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Jeff C (0i-jc) said : 		#2

Thanks for the reply.

Just so that I am crystal clear on it when I present this solution to the decision makers let me make sure of the following:

We have 2 clients with lets say 2 employees each. I create a group for each of the businesses and add their 2 employees to the respective groups. The employees can login with unique username and passwords and only be able to see and administer the displays registered to their groups?

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Dan Garner (dangarner) said : 		#3

Exactly - with one small caveat. Xibo was originally intended to be used as a "install per customer" solution - so it is really geared towards multiple groups within the same business.

For example, at the moment scheduling on a display is managed through user group permissions on displays, but managing the actual display is available to anyone given access to the display management page (they will see all displays).

We do plan on improving this, but its not there yet.

What we really need is a "business" or "account" concept to completely isolate everything within one install OR another layer above Xibo which allows you to easily add extra installs to the same server. We are on the fence at the moment as to the right approach.

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Jeff C (0i-jc) said : 		#4

From the standpoint of a business that is looking for software to offer managed digital signage to multiple different businesses, isolating each "account" from each other within the same install would be the way to go. Adding extra installs complicates thing way too much. Groups or users should really only be able to see the displays they are assigned to manage.

Also having "reseller" accounts that can create new groups (for clients they have sold the services to) and users, but are restricted to only managing those users and groups they have created would be a really valuable addition.

One last question (hopefully), is there any support for multiple displays (ie. display walls) from a single client or plans for it in the future? Obviously the client would need video hardware capable of running multiple displays, but in the world of video hardware, it is becomming increasingly difficult to find a card with only 1 display output.

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Alex Harrington (alexharrington) said : 		#5

> From the standpoint of a business that is looking for software to offer
> managed digital signage to multiple different businesses, isolating each
> "account" from each other within the same install would be the way to go.

Actually speaking as a business that does already offer those services with Xibo, it's not the way to go. It makes it hugely inflexible as your entire userbase will have to use a single version of the software - and in our experience people will want to stick with a version that's working for them and not upgrade, or upgrade early to a DP release to get new features ahead of time.

> Groups or users should really only be able to see the displays they are assigned to manage.

That's already the case - certainly with the 1.3 series of the software.

> One last question (hopefully), is there any support for multiple displays (ie. display walls) from a single client

Several people have done this already by treating the multiple heads as a single display with a large resolution. The client will then fill that entire display.

There's no support in Xibo for running multiple independent displays (ie not as part of a "video wall") from a single client machine.

Alex

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Jeff C (0i-jc) said : 		#6

Thanks for the additional info.

So I would have to wait for the next stable release as 1.3 is dev release. Not a big issue as I now know this feature is coming and I should be able to work around it for the time being.

Thanks for all your help Dan & Alex. I think you have a new user of this software.