What is the screenshotting feature?

Fugo’s screenshotting feature offers an alternative way to display app content—such as dashboards or reports—on your digital signage screens. Instead of directly loading the app on your player, which can sometimes result in performance issues, Fugo takes screenshots of the app’s content and sends them to your screen. This ensures smooth and consistent rendering of data-heavy or complex visuals, even on less powerful devices.

Currently, the screenshotting feature is available for the Power BI app, but we plan to expand this functionality to more apps in the future.

Why use screenshotting instead of loading the app directly?

There are several situations where you might prefer to use the screenshotting feature instead of loading the app directly onto your player:

Better performance for data-intensive apps
Some apps, like Power BI, process large amounts of data to generate detailed dashboards. This can overwhelm your player, especially if it has limited computational power. With screenshotting, Fugo handles the data processing on a secure Cloud server, then sends a screenshot of the fully rendered dashboard to your screen. This way, your player doesn't struggle with loading the data.
Older or low-power devices
Some apps, including Power BI, only support the most recent browser versions (e.g., Chrome). If your screen or player has an outdated browser or lacks the power to efficiently process the app’s data, screenshotting ensures the content still displays without issues.
Minimizing long loading times
Complex dashboards can take a long time to load due to the sheer volume of data they process, especially when servers need to group and sum millions of rows. If the dashboard load time exceeds the duration you want to display it, you might only see loading screens instead of the actual content. With screenshotting, the dashboard is pre-rendered in the Cloud, and the screenshots are updated at regular intervals, providing a faster and more stable viewing experience.

How does screenshotting work?

Here’s how the screenshotting process works, using Power BI as an example:

Fugo logs into your Power BI account in a virtual browser hosted on a secure Cloud server.
The Power BI dashboard is rendered in this environment.
Fugo takes a screenshot of the dashboard’s current state.
The screenshot is sent to your screen and displayed as an image.
Screenshots are refreshed automatically at regular intervals (e.g., every PAUSE + 10 seconds) to ensure the displayed content is up-to-date.

Example: using screenshotting with Power BI

Let’s say you want to display a Power BI dashboard on your office’s digital signage screens, but your player struggles to load it due to the dashboard’s complexity or your player’s outdated browser. By enabling the screenshotting feature, Fugo can:

Reduce load times by processing the dashboard on a Cloud server instead of your device.
Avoid incomplete or failed loads that can happen when your player doesn’t have enough power or browser compatibility to handle the dashboard.
Ensure a consistent experience with automatic refreshes of the dashboard’s screenshot at a set interval, keeping the information displayed on screen current.

When should you use the screenshotting feature?

Consider using screenshotting when:

You’re dealing with large, complex dashboards that take too long to load on your player.
Your player or screen’s browser is outdated or lacks support for the app you're trying to display.
Your player doesn’t have enough processing power to handle real-time data rendering.

By moving the processing burden to Fugo’s Cloud server, the screenshotting feature ensures your content displays seamlessly, regardless of your player’s specifications.

How to enable the screenshotting feature in Fugo

At the moment, you can enable the screenshotting feature for Power BI, with more app integrations coming soon. Here’s how to activate it:

Open your Fugo dashboard and navigate to the Apps section.
Select Power BI from the list of available apps.
During the setup process, you’ll see an option to toggle on SCREENSHOTS.
Enable Screenshot Mode if you’re experiencing long load times, player compatibility issues, or browser limitations.
Adjust the refresh interval to determine how often you want Fugo to capture new screenshots of your Power BI dashboard (e.g., every PAUSE + 10 seconds).

Looking ahead

In the future, Fugo will extend the screenshotting feature to more apps. This will provide even greater flexibility for users with different device configurations, enabling them to display content seamlessly on screens without worrying about device limitations or load times.