I haven’t been able to assign the desired display to the external screen. Specifically, I can assign the meters to the external display, but I want to see the user’s meters. I don’t know how to do this.
There is no “flexibility” when it comes to an external screen. I believe it is literally a duplicate of one of the system screen by default and there is no changing it.
Don’t expect to be able to use a touch screen either because the “touch” functionality has never worked (and never will). Again, it has to do with how A&H has implemented the external screen. As I understand it, effectively the system sees one large screen with every internal and external screen as one “system screen”. This means that the external screen makes up a very small portion of the total “screen” in the system and therefore the touches don’t map correctly.
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There should be a USB port in the back. If you plug a mouse in there (and maybe reboot, I don’t remember), a cursor appears on the external screen and you can click on stuff.
Incidentally you can also plug in a keyboard there if you don’t want to use the on-screen keyboard, or you can use a USB hub to plug in both.
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That means, you have to select the user meter on the main screen, to see that on the external?
With the “Meters” screen assigned to the external monitor, you also need a mouse connected so you can choose the tab you want to see.
To set up a “User” Meters tab, go to that tab on the surface, hold the “Setup” button, and choose “Custom Meter Setup.”
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Even so, it doesn’t display it; it only shows the first ones, meaning the input meters. I also thought that selecting it on the main screen would assign it to the external screen.
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It worked for me to click on the tab I wanted on the external screen.
To click on the external screen you need a USB mouse.
A tablet running Director, Mixing Station, or even the dLive iPad app would be vastly more useful than a VGA display and a mouse if you ask me. With Director you can even have a failsafe if the Surface goes down + a way of having a show file backup.
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We do both where I work. I found an old 4:3 LCD (which is the aspect ratio the dLive’s output is expecting) that I think was going to get tossed next time we cleared out storage, so I grabbed it for the FoH booth just leave it set to metering the inputs. That frees up Director to either have a different metering screen up or to be a 2nd station for an A2. Or for me when I’m having my A2 mix and I want to tweak something little without bugging them.
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Or…hear me out…two tablets with Director/iPad app/Mixing Station instead of an old crappy vga display. 
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Yeah, HDMI outs would be welcome. Also support for several different display formats. A pretty small but ultra wide screen display could be used as meter bridge right on top of the surface. A small standard touch screen for a scene display. Such things would be great.
Right now it is definitely a laptop or tablet with MS or Director.
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100%.
While it is “clunkier” because it requires more hardware to be carried around (a small nuc running DLive Director would be fine), this is the way to go. Not only will it work correctly with a variety of screen sizes and also with touch screens, it give you a backup in case the physical Surface crashes. While that is a very rare event, it has been known to happen and having a instance of DLive Director running along side will allow you to mix normally while the Surface is rebooted.
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Yes, that’s a good fallback too. It has to be connected to the mixrack, not the surface, of course.
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Interestingly, the surface will continue to pass packets through GigaAce even if you shut the surface down from the screen. It needs to be powered of course. I always have the mixrack connected to an AP regardless, but for me, the fallback is mostly that I can have show file backup that is constantly saving since the save/load system on dLive is clunky, and honestly a bit risky to use sometimes.