Skykit Insights FAQ
New to Skykit Insights? Start with What Is Skykit Insights? Ready to connect your Google Cloud environment? See the Setup Guide. This page covers the questions that come up most often outside of those two.
📖 Terminology Tips
A few terms show up across all three Skykit Insights articles. Quick definitions if you need them:
- ☁️ GCP (Google Cloud Platform): Google's cloud computing platform. Your organization needs its own GCP account and project for Skykit Insights to connect to.
- 📦 BigQuery: Google's data warehouse tool. This is where your Skykit data lives and where your team runs queries against it.
- 🗂️ Dataset: a named collection of tables inside BigQuery. Skykit Insights delivers your data into a dataset called
insights_v1beta1. - 🔐 IAM (Identity and Access Management): Google Cloud's system for controlling who (or what) can access your project, and what they're allowed to do. This is where you assign Skykit's service account its role.
- 🤖 Service account: a non-human account used to grant a system (like Skykit's) programmatic access to your project, instead of using a personal login.
- 🎬 POP (Proof-of-Play): a record confirming that a specific piece of content played on a specific device, at a specific time.
- 📊 Display data: daily snapshots of device metadata (status, health, connectivity) used for fleet monitoring and trend analysis.
- 🔄 Standard view vs. materialized view: a standard view re-runs its query (and is billed) every time it's accessed; a materialized view stores its results ahead of time, which can lower query costs but adds storage costs. See the Setup Guide for more on managing this trade-off.
🚀 Getting Started
👤 Who Should Be Involved in Setup?
Setup typically needs someone with permission to create or configure Google Cloud projects, manage billing, and assign IAM roles — usually a GCP admin or someone on your IT team. After the connection is configured, a data analyst or BI team member can take over building queries, reports, and visualizations.
☁️ Do We Need a Google Cloud Account?
Yes. Your organization needs an active Google Cloud account, a Google Cloud project, and an associated billing account. Skykit provides configuration instructions and the service-account details needed to connect. See the Setup Guide for the full walkthrough.
📈 Data and Reporting
🖥️ Does Skykit Build the Reports and Dashboards for Us?
Not quite — Skykit Insights gives you access to the underlying data rather than a predefined dashboard. We provide starter queries and implementation guidance to help your team get going, but building out custom reports and dashboards is done by your own team, in the BI tool of your choice. If you need help scoping custom reporting or development work, talk to your Skykit representative.
🔗 Can Skykit Insights Connect With Our Existing BI Tools?
Yes! Because the data lives in Google BigQuery, it can connect to compatible tools like Looker, Power BI, and Tableau. Your team builds reports and visualizations in the tool it already uses. Compatibility and configuration steps can vary by platform.
🧩 Can We Combine Skykit Data With Our Other Business Data?
Yes. Since the data lives in a Google Cloud project your organization controls, your team can join it with data already in your analytics environment — CRM, revenue, campaign, audience, or operational data — to evaluate signage performance in a broader business context.
📶 Can It Help Us Monitor Whether Devices Are Online or Offline?
Yes, at the refresh cadence display data updates on (see "Is the data available in real time?" below). It's a good way to spot devices that need attention and reduce reliance on manually consolidated spreadsheets. Skykit Insights is meant to complement — not replace — time-sensitive alerting and device-management workflows.
✅ Can We Verify That Safety or Critical Content Played?
Proof-of-Play data can show whether specific content generated recorded playback events on the applicable devices, which creates a reporting trail for important communications.
💡 Important note: This doesn't guarantee that a person physically saw the message, and Skykit Insights shouldn't be treated as a replacement for emergency notification or life-safety systems.
⏱️ Is the Data Available in Real Time?
Proof-of-Play data refreshes every [XX] minutes. Display (device metadata) data updates via daily snapshots, so you're always working with the latest available snapshot plus full historical trend data. Exact refresh timing can vary by data source.
🔐 Security
🛡️ Is Skykit Insights Secure?
Your data is delivered into a Google Cloud project your organization controls, and access is managed through your own Google Cloud IAM roles and policies. During initial setup, Skykit may need temporary administrative access to help configure the connection — your team can set that access to expire automatically after a set period (see the Setup Guide's optional step on granting temporary access) so nothing needs to be manually revoked later.
💰 Cost
🧮 How Will We Know What Running a Query Will Cost?
BigQuery shows a cost estimate before you run a query — for example, "This query will process 180.36 MB when run." See the Setup Guide for pricing details and tips on managing query costs.
💳 Does Skykit Charge an Annual Fee for Skykit Insights?
Yes. Skykit charges a separate annual subscription fee that covers initial setup and ongoing maintenance of your data connection. Your Skykit representative can confirm current pricing.
☁️ Does Skykit Charge Us for Google Cloud Usage?
No — that part is billed directly to your organization by Google, based on your BigQuery query and storage usage. It's separate from the Skykit Insights subscription fee above, and Google bills it independently of anything Skykit charges.
🆘 Still Have Questions?
Contact Support@skykit.com for the fastest response, or reach out to your Skykit representative for account-specific details.
Related articles
- What Is Skykit Insights? — Skykit Insights
- Skykit Insights Setup Guide — Skykit Insights