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Performance Monitoring in Real Time

analytics

Performance Monitoring in Real Time

Real-time analytics allow businesses to quickly detect and address issues as they arise. It empowers your IT and network teams with faster decision-making capabilities and affords your business greater operational agility. In this article, we’ll show you how to monitor key performance metrics of your live events in real time using our advanced analytics platforms, Kollective IQ and Kollective Free Analytics .

This is our second article in a series of posts on real-time analytics. If you haven’t read the first article, explore How Real-Time Analytics Benefit Your Communications Strategy here .

Monitor Stream Quality in Real Time

Kollective IQ and Kollective Free Analytics provide several ways to track the stream quality of your event in real time. In the analytics dashboards, stream quality is represented by QoE (Quality of Experience). Start with the “Reach by QoE” tile in the views and experience dashboard. The donut chart displays the percentage of viewers experiencing each level of QoE, from excellent to bad.

Reach by QoE

In the example above, we notice that 1.35% of our audience has experienced bad streaming quality at some point in this event. Rather than waiting for our event to end, we can explore this data while our event is still in progress. Simply click on the section of the Reach by QoE chart you want to examine to bring up detailed statistics broken down by user. Clicking on the “bad” section of the chart reveals new data fields to help you diagnose potential issues (see below).

Reach by QoE analytics

While there are many columns in this report, highlighted are five of the most useful:

  1. Locality – The viewer’s country
  2. External IP – The viewer’s external IP address
  3. Number of Buffering Events – The number of separate buffering instances the viewer experienced
  4. Total Buffering Time – The amount of time spent buffering during playback
  5. Total Playback Time – The amount of playback time without buffering

Reviewing the detailed statistics on “bad” QoE scores reveals a series of users experiencing varying degrees of buffering. Some users are experiencing lengthy buffering delays, while it appears others abandoned the stream early perhaps in response to buffering problems. Looking at the most severe cases, we notice that most of these users are located in Canada and share the same external IP address (note: IP addresses have been obscured for privacy purposes).

In a few quick steps, we’ve determined that employees at a Canadian office are having buffering problems. Armed with this information, we can contact IT at this office to resolve the issue while our event is still running. We can also send the event as video on demand (VOD) to all employees at that location as soon as the event ends to ensure essential messaging isn’t missed.

Identify Buffering by Location in Real Time

The delivery and consumption dashboard in Kollective IQ and Kollective Free Analytics provides another method for monitoring stream quality in real time. In the previous example, you learned how to analyze groups of viewers that experienced the same QoE and identify potential geographic trends. In this example, we’ll start with geography and show how to quickly and easily detect issues.

Before diving into the example, let’s review the delivery and consumption dashboard. The primary areas of concern for this dashboard are the delivery map on the left and the four bar graphs on the right. The map contains a series of circles that represent event viewership for a given location (larger circles equal areas of greater viewership). The bar graphs list the top ten areas of viewership broken down by: external IP, locality, country, and city. Each field on the bar graphs has a corresponding QoE dot that represents the average streaming quality for that location.

Delivery Map Free Analytics for Microsoft Teams

Starting with a high-level overview, we see that all countries listed in the top ten have good QoE scores except China. Notice in the Views by City graph that the Shanghai office is performing poorly. Click on the Shanghai bar graph to explore this data or zoom into the delivery map to select the Shanghai office, excluding any nearby remote viewers.

Delivery Map City Example - Free Analytics

Since these graphs provide a quick QoE reference for the ten locations with the highest event viewership, it’s often the fastest way to detect buffering and stream quality issues for events in which ten or less offices are participating. However, with events streaming to more than ten locations it’s best to use this dashboard in conjunction with the “Reach by QoE” tile discussed in the first example of this article.

Track Microsoft 365 Video Performance in Real Time

Are you using Microsoft Teams or Stream to deliver live and on-demand video? Gain real-time insights into event performance and employee behaviors with Kollective Free Analytics today.

The post Performance Monitoring in Real Time appeared first on Kollective Technology .

To view our Partner blog, click here

What’s New in Kollective IQ?

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What’s New in Kollective IQ?

Kollective IQ, our advanced analytics platform, has new dashboards that will reveal some key performance indicators (KPIs) commonly used to assess event performance. The dashboards have been redesigned to help better understand the impact and quality of your events, engagement across the enterprise, and so much more!

Kollective IQ contains three primary dashboards:

  1. Views & Experience
  2. Delivery & Consumption
  3. Network Performance

Views & Experience Dashboard

The views and experience dashboard displays the reach, stream quality, and engagement of an event. Top-level insights are easily digested through the six key performance indicators (KPIs) displayed in the dashboard. Users can drill down to explore data on specific users by interacting with the graphs. If you hover over a tile, there are options in the upper right corner that will allow you to download or explore the data, and even set an alert for metrics that could be of particular interest.

Kollective IQ Views and Experience Dashboard

Quality of Experience (QoE) Score is an aggregate rating, representing the overall stream quality for everyone that viewed an event. This score is a combination of two factors — the quality of video received (measured by bitrate) and the time to first frame.
Reach indicates how many unique viewers streamed an event.
Max Reach represents the greatest number of simultaneous viewers during an event.
Average View Duration measures the average amount of time viewers spent watching the event.
Reach by QoE is a pie-chart organizing viewers by the level of stream quality they experienced during an event. Scores are displayed on a graded scale, ranging from excellent to bad. Click on the pie-chart to explore specific segments in greater depth.
Event Reach Over Time reports the reach for every minute of the event. This indicates audience engagement, allowing one to easily identify changes in attendance over the course of an event. Monitor this graph while your event is running for engagement insights.

With the views and experience dashboard, your team will understand:

  • How many people attended an event
  • When attendees joined and left an event
  • How engaged employees were during an event
  • Any issues with buffering and stream quality

Delivery & Consumption Dashboard

With hybrid work becoming the new norm, it’s crucial that businesses understand where and how their content is streamed to ensure video communications are successfully delivered throughout the enterprise. This delivery and consumption dashboard does just that. The intuitive graphs and interactable map enable the rapid identification of locations that experienced buffering problems during an event.

Kollective IQ Delivery and Consumption Dashboard

Delivery Map shows everywhere your event was viewed. Larger circles indicate areas with greater viewership. Users can explore and interact with the map directly. Click on clusters to view detailed data for specific offices or locations.
Views by Location are a series of four separate bar graphs that are broken down into geographic segments (external IP, locality, country, and city). Each graph lists the top ten places with the most event views. These charts include QoE dots that represent stream quality for each location. See a region with poor stream quality? Click on the corresponding bar graph to explore the data in more detail, uncover potential trends, and develop a resolution plan.
Views by OS details which operating systems were used to stream an event.
Views by Browser displays which browsers were used to stream an event.

With the delivery and consumption dashboard, your team will understand:

  • Where an event was streamed
  • Which offices participated most in an event
  • Where issues with stream quality and buffering occurred
  • What browsers and operating systems were used

Network Performance Dashboard

The network performance dashboard shows how much bandwidth was saved by using Kollective’s enterprise content delivery network (ECDN) to deliver the event. Kollective IQ’s dashboard offers a unique lens into network performance, allowing users to monitor an event’s impact on their network in real-time as an event runs and after it ends.

Kollective IQ Network Performance Dashboard

Total Savings is the total bandwidth savings for all viewers of an event, including those not capable of peering.
Capable Savings is the total bandwidth savings for all viewers of an event that were capable of peering.
Peerable Savings is the total bandwidth savings for all viewers that successfully peered an event (joined a cluster with other peers).
Peering Efficiency displays the percentage of bandwidth that was delivered through peering in relation to the size of each peering group.
Bandwidth Over Time shows the amount of bandwidth that’s consumed over the course of the event. This graph is an excellent indicator of the ECDN’s performance. The green portion of the graph represents the amount of bandwidth that was pulled from your network, while the blue portion displays the amount saved from peering.

With the network performance dashboard, your team will understand:

  • How much bandwidth Kollective’s ECDN saved your network
  • Bandwidth utilization over the course of an event
  • How well your event was peered

Kollective IQ – A Perfect Addition to Your Communication Platform

Adding an advanced analytics platform like Kollective IQ supercharges your broadcast event reporting, yielding actionable insights to help you understand employee experiences and maximize performance.

The post What’s New in Kollective IQ? appeared first on Kollective Technology .

To view our Partner blog, click here

Webinar Recap: What Great Analytics Reveal About Microsoft Teams Live Events

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Microsoft Teams Live Events have become an indispensable tool for enterprise communications. From high production events like company-wide town halls to crisis communications requiring quick turnarounds, Teams Live Events can engage and connect distributed workforces. To ensure these communications are successful, Live Event reporting is crucial.

In a recent webinar, What Great Analytics Reveal About Microsoft Teams Live Events , Garrett Gladden, Director of Product Management at Kollective, outlined the importance of understanding Live Event reporting data, identifying key performance indicators (KPIs) for Live Events and how adding an advanced analytics platform provides those insights where and when you need them.

Let’s Talk Teams

Teams Live Events are an extension of Teams Meetings meant for one-to-many communications. With Live Events you can broadcast to up to 100,000 attendees no matter their location or device.

Garrett was joined by Raphael Barini, Microsoft Modern Workplace Technical Architect at the time of the recording, who ran a quick demo on creating and running a Teams Live Event.  In the demo he covered:

  • How to set-up a Live Event in Teams
  • A breakdown of the different options you have when creating your event
  • Best practices for inviting attendees
  • Starting and managing the event as a Producer

The ease and simplicity of Teams Live Events allows anyone in the organization to set-up an event to relay important messages efficiently and at scale.

Data Needs Meaning

Teams Live Events produce a large amount of data. To be of any value in running a successful event, that data needs meaning. Finding that meaning, Garrett explained, requires two things – recency and relevance. Recency requires accessing the data when you need it which, to be actionable, is during the event. To achieve relevance, that data needs to be surfaced where you need it, in a centralized and easy to use dashboard.

Meaningful (and Easy) KPIs

Teams Live Events provide Attendee Engagement reports you can download after the event but does not provide actionable data in a usable format while the event is in process. To access this data as well as additional insights into video performance and employee engagement in real-time Garrett recommended using an advanced analytics platform like Kollective IQ .

Using a Southeast Asia business strategy planning event as an example, Garrett detailed the metrics you can access from a Teams Live Event with Kollective IQ. The event was held during COVID-19 lockdowns with the majority of attendees joining the event from home. The high-level analytics pictured in the dashboard below show that the event was a success.

Teams Live Events metrics with Kollective IQ analytics

Quality of Experience (QoE) Score shows what the experience was for everybody receiving the event content. The score is a combination of two metrics – the bitrate or quality of the video they received and the time to first frame or how long they waited for the video to arrive.
Average View Duration measures whether viewers stayed for the duration of the broadcast or dropped off letting you know how much of the content was consumed.
Reach indicates the attendance rate for the event and is measured by unique viewers.
Bandwidth Savings is the amount of bandwidth saved by using Kollective’s Enterprise Content Delivery Network (ECDN) to deliver the live event.
Peering Efficiency is another indicator of the ECDN’s performance and in this example shows that high concentration regions were able to share content at the edge, pulling the Live Event from a peer rather than the network.
Geo Explorer shows where the content was consumed.

This data quickly answers the questions:

  • Did attendees have the experience that we wanted?
  • Did people watch for the duration showing that we effectively communicated with them?
  • Did we reach the number of people that we targeted?
  • Did we reduce strain on our network?
  • Did Kollective’s peering do the heavy lifting instead of our network?
  • Where and by whom was the content consumed?

For a deeper understanding of the data or specific users, Kollective IQ allows you to drill down into and explore each of these metrics.

Teams + Kollective IQ

Microsoft Teams lets you produce and distribute live events to your entire workforce no matter their location or device. Adding an advanced analytics platform to the mix lets you visualize your attendee experience and network performance and make real-time adjustments.

Kollective IQ offers you:

  • Persona-based workflows with stellar UX
  • Delivery of ALL data to clients, with data mining, exploration, and custom
  • calculations
  • Custom visualizations and dashboards
  • Data exportability with many formats to many destinations

Test out Kollective IQ’s valuable and actionable insights for Teams Live Events today.

The post Webinar Recap: What Great Analytics Reveal About Microsoft Teams Live Events appeared first on Kollective Technology .

To view our Partner blog, click here

Kollective IQ Analytics: Ship Data to Anyone, Anywhere

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Kollective IQ Analytics: Ship Data to Anyone, Anywhere

 

With Software as a Service (SaaS) adoption increasing across the enterprise, data accessibility is cornerstone to selecting an enterprise content delivery network (ECDN) analytics platform. Not only do you need to be able to mine and explore all data collected by the system, you need to have the option to share valuable insights with your team and key stakeholders. Kollective IQ analytics offers users the ability to ship network and virtual events data to anyone, anywhere.

Easily Share Metrics, Dashboards & Visualizations

Do you need to send an event report to the VP of Communications and presenters, so they know how your last event went? Does your CIO need to know how much bandwidth the ECDN saved over the past month? It’s simple. Just choose the dashboard, metric or visualization you want to share, then schedule who it should go to and how often. Send data daily, monthly or customize distribution.

Eliminate Data Silos

Shipping meaningful data when and where you need it is easy with Kollective IQ. To break down data silos even further, Kollective IQ integrates with Webhook and Amazon S3, both of which can be connected to Microsoft Power BI for automatic data importing.

Try Kollective IQ Analytics for Microsoft 365 Live Events for 90 Days

Are you using Microsoft Teams, Stream or Yammer to deliver live video to your distributed workforce? Gain deeper insights into event performance and employee engagement with Kollective IQ for Microsoft 365 Live Events. Try it today for 90 days. It’s free to sign-up and our ECDN is included for the first 30 days so you can establish baseline network capacity while planning for employees to return to the office.

The post Kollective IQ Analytics: Ship Data to Anyone, Anywhere appeared first on Kollective Technology .

To view our Partner blog, click here

Kollective IQ Analytics: Progressive Disclosure

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Data is the most valuable currency in today’s modern workplace, but if it isn’t actionable, it isn’t worth much. At Kollective, we understand that if you want to make the smartest, most informed decisions about your enterprise video strategy or network performance, you need data designed for the way you work. That’s why we created the Kollective IQ analytics and intelligence platform with role-specific workflows enhanced by progressive disclosure.

Progressive disclosure is a term coined by user experience (UX) experts to describe the techniques and design patterns that simplify how an individual interacts with a user interface (UI). Here’s how it works in Kollective IQ.

How Progressive Disclosure Works in Kollective IQ

When you first sign into the platform, we give you a 30,000-foot view of how your live events or enterprise content delivery network (ECDN) are performing. These high-level insights include overall quality of experience (QoE), geographic consumption, reach, bandwidth savings and peering efficiency.

From there, you can drop down into the 10,000-foot view. At this vantage you can start analyzing trends for specific data sets and visualize how performance has changed over time.

Want more granular insights? No problem. Kollective IQ can provide insights all the way at the ground level with a single event, user and/or location. All the data collected by Kollective IQ is available for you to mine and explore. Whether you want to want to dig into employee engagement insights from the latest CEO Town Hall or if you need to know how content traversed the network in a remote office location, Kollective IQ makes it easy to do so.

Try Kollective IQ Analytics for Microsoft 365 Live Events for 90 Days

Are you using Microsoft Teams, Stream or Yammer to deliver live video to your distributed workforce? Regardless of where your employees are working, you can gain deeper insights into event performance and employee engagement with Kollective IQ for Microsoft 365 Live Events.

Try it today for 90 days. It’s free to sign-up and our ECDN is included for the first 30 days so you can establish baseline network capacity while planning for employees to return to the office.

The post Kollective IQ Analytics: Progressive Disclosure appeared first on Kollective Technology .

To view our Partner blog, click here