Cloud features overview

When you register a BoothIQ kiosk to your cloud account, six features become available. The Cloud Sync tab shows them as a 3×2 grid of feature tiles. This article briefly explains each one and when you'd use it.

Who this is for: Operators evaluating whether to register a booth to the cloud, or wanting to use cloud features they already have.

The six features

1. Remote Analytics

What: View booth stats from the cloud dashboard on a separate device (laptop, phone, tablet).

When to use: Daily. Instead of walking up to each booth and signing in to admin to read the Sales tab, open the cloud dashboard from anywhere and see all your booths at once.

Examples:

  • "Did the booth at Venue A do better than Venue B last week?"
  • "Which booth had the most transactions today?"
  • "What's our top product across all booths?"

The cloud dashboard typically shows revenue charts, transaction counts, popular templates, and a fleet-wide summary.

2. Notifications

What: Get alerts on your phone or email when a booth needs attention.

When to use: When you operate multiple booths or aren't physically present at the venue all day.

Examples:

  • "Booth at Venue C just went offline"
  • "Booth printer is out of paper"
  • "Booth has been unable to sync for 30 minutes"
  • "Booth license is expiring in 7 days"

You configure which alerts you want from the cloud dashboard. Push notifications and email are typical delivery channels.

3. Template Sync

What: Push templates from your cloud library down to all your booths.

When to use: Whenever you upload a new template, change an existing one, or want to remove a template from your fleet.

How it works:

  1. Upload the template to your BoothIQ cloud library.
  2. Either let the automatic sync deliver it (within a few minutes) or trigger an immediate sync from the cloud dashboard.
  3. The template appears in each booth's Templates tab.
  4. Operators on each booth can enable / disable / categorize the new template.

This is much easier than physically walking to each booth and uploading a template via USB.

For more on operator-side template management, see Managing templates and categories.

4. Sales Reports

What: Financial summaries in the cloud, across multiple booths and date ranges.

When to use: End-of-week / end-of-month / end-of-year accounting.

Examples:

  • Total revenue across all booths for the month
  • Per-booth breakdown
  • Per-product breakdown across the fleet
  • Trends over time

Cloud-side reports are typically more sophisticated than the per-booth Sales & Analytics tab. They aggregate across multiple booths and are easier to share with accountants.

You can usually also export sales from the cloud, similar to the per-booth CSV export. See Exporting sales data for the kiosk-side equivalent.

5. Photo Backup

What: Cloud storage for customer photos.

When to use: When your venue requires photo records, or when you want a backup in case the kiosk's local storage fails.

Important: Photo backup is opt-in. By default, customer photos stay on the kiosk and are not synced to the cloud. You enable photo backup in your cloud account configuration.

Warning
Privacy note: Backing up customer photos to the cloud has privacy implications. Make sure you understand your venue's and your customers' expectations before enabling. See Data and privacy (coming soon).

6. Remote Config

What: Update booth settings from the cloud dashboard.

When to use: When you want to change settings without driving to the venue.

Examples:

  • Change the business name
  • Switch operation mode
  • Update the welcome subtitle
  • Change the logo

The kiosk-side Settings → Sync from cloud toggle controls whether the booth accepts cloud config. When that toggle is on, settings come from the cloud and the local fields are read-only on the kiosk. See Settings tab.

Note
Use case: You manage 10 booths and want to update all of them with this season's logo. Without remote config, you'd have to walk to each booth and upload the logo. With remote config + cloud-managed settings, you upload the logo to the cloud once and every booth picks it up automatically.

Which features do you actually need?

You don't have to use all six. Most operators start with Remote Analytics (because it's the easiest win) and add others as needed:

  • Single-booth operator: Remote Analytics, Notifications
  • Multi-booth operator: All except possibly Photo Backup
  • Operator with venue staff handling daily tasks: Remote Analytics, Notifications, Sales Reports
  • Operator with privacy-sensitive customers: Skip Photo Backup
  • Operator with stable venue layouts and templates: Skip Template Sync (if you only update templates rarely)

What features do not exist (yet)

For transparency about what cloud sync does not do:

  • Live remote view of the customer experience. No, can't watch a customer's session in real time
  • Live remote view of the camera. No
  • Pushing arbitrary code or scripts to the booth. No, security
  • Direct database access from the cloud. No
  • Customer-facing interactions (e.g. customer pays via the cloud dashboard). No

If a feature you want isn't in the list above, contact your BoothIQ point of contact to ask if it's on the roadmap.

Verifying the features work

Each feature has its own quick test:

  • Remote Analytics. Open the cloud dashboard from your phone; you should see your booth's recent stats
  • Notifications. Trigger a known event (e.g. take the booth offline); you should get a notification
  • Template Sync. Upload a test template; it should appear in the booth's Templates tab within a few minutes
  • Sales Reports. Run a session on the booth; the sale should appear in cloud reports
  • Photo Backup. Enable it, run a session, check the cloud's photo backup section
  • Remote Config. Toggle "Sync from cloud" on the kiosk and change a setting in the cloud; the kiosk should reflect the change

Next steps