Request for feedback - custom TBA login message

[Michael Holloway]

I'd like to solicit feedback from you folks in the field about adding a customizable message to the TBA login screen. The idea is that you, the VAR, could optionally set a custom message in the portal that would be displayed on the login page of every TBA device you activate, below the login section. This could provide a way to personally identify the device to your customers if they happened to see an unrecognized IP address on the network and decided to pull the IP address up in their web browser. You could perhaps list contact information in case of network issues or outages, etc, maybe even post your holiday hours of availablity

Thanks go out to trial participant Ed Fairchild for suggesting this feature.

-mike

[Brian Bergin]

I guess that would depend on where and how it was placed and what information we could put on it.  Perhaps you could give us a few screen shot mockups of what you're thinking about.  Honestly, I don't see many small businesses using the portal themselves but instead the VARs using it as a support and management tool on behalf of the customer.  I don't need or want to see contact info for myself everytime I login so there'd also have to be a check box to disable that on a per-login and/or per-portal basis.

[Michael Holloway]

linksys.var@terabyte.net
I guess that would depend on where and how it was placed and what information we could put on it.  Perhaps you could give us a few screen shot mockups of what you're thinking about.  Honestly, I don't see many small businesses using the portal themselves but instead the VARs using it as a support and management tool on behalf of the customer.  I don't need or want to see contact info for myself everytime I login so there'd also have to be a check box to disable that on a per-login and/or per-portal basis.

This would be on the login page of the Thunderbolt Appliance itself, at the customer premises. The default message (at the portal) would be no message, but if a message is set then it could appear on the main login page of all Thunderbolt appliances under your control.

-mike

[Brian Bergin]

I have no problems with an informational screen there telling anyone who's nosie enough to browse to it what it is, but I'd hope the Partner would have a good enough relationship with the client that it would be clear what it is.  If we're going to do this I'd like to be able to add our logo to the screen in combination with Cisco's.

[Kurt Schumacher]

Nothing desperatley required in my opinion. Before installing something like a TBA, or any other system on a customer network, the permission must exist.

Fully backing Brian.

[Ben M Johnson]

Beyond that, really providing the client with a simple network "dashboard" that would show status of each device embedded on the page, with the ability to consume one or many RSS feeds so we can publish news, and the ability to add links, and custom html to a landing page on the device would be a better idea to me (that you can turn on or off easily) - that would be the default (if turned on).

We could wire up that page as a link from our LabTech (or Kaseya) client and call it "Check Network Status", so people we publish that link to could easily check to see if any device in their infrastructure is offline or in alert.

Way beyond scope of this post though.