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How do I Schedule my Presentations?

Schedules control which Presentations and URL’s show on which Displays, and when they show. Why are URL’s included in here? Rather than limit you to scheduling only Presentations on your Displays, you also have the option to schedule just about any web page you want by specifying the URL. Because you can configure the Timeline, Distribution and Duration for a Schedule, as well as all URL’s and Presentation in that Schedule, the configuration options are endless.

A couple of things to keep in mind when setting up your Schedules:

  • A Display can only have one assigned Schedule at a time, but a Presentation can be assigned to as many different Schedules as you like.
  • The Schedule itself can be assigned a specific timeline to control the time of day/week/month/year it plays, or it can be set up to play Always – 24 hours/day, 7 days/week. Each Presentation and URL assigned to a Schedule can also be assigned a specific timeline and/or recurrence pattern. So you have a lot of scheduling options available to control when content is displayed.
  • When there is no content scheduled to show on the Display, the Display will be a blank black screen, and if a Display is not in a Schedule, it will show demonstration content.

Here are some scheduling examples:

  • A restaurant has 3 Presentations; Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner. All three Presentations are in one Schedule, that Schedule is assigned to All Displays. The Breakfast Presentation plays from 6 am to 10 am, the Lunch Presentation from 10 am to 5 pm, and the Dinner Presentation from 5 pm to 10 pm. When there is nothing scheduled to show, the Display will just show a blank black screen.
  • A company has 2 Presentations they want to show 24/7, each playing for 10 minutes. Both Presentations are in one Schedule, each with a duration of 600 seconds (10 minutes).
  • A hospital has a special Christmas Presentation that they want to show only on weekends in December, and there are other Presentations in that Schedule that play every weekday. All the other Presentations in the Schedule have no start or end date,but they have a weekly recurrence of Monday to Friday. The Christmas Presentation has a weekly recurrence of Saturday and Sunday, but it will have a start date of December 1st, and an end date of December 31st.

Let’s Add a Schedule

  1. In the menu bar, click the Schedules link.
  2. On the Schedules page, click Add.
  3. In the Name field, enter a name for the Schedule.
  4. To specify when this Schedule shows on your Displays, click Edit next to Timeline and pick your schedule preferences, or just go with the default “Always”.
  5. To choose which Displays the content in this Schedule plays on, click Edit next to Distribution and pick the Displays you want or check All Displays to send it to every Display in your Company.
  6. Add a Presentation or URL to the Schedule by clicking the Add link in the table at the bottom and click the Select link next to the Presentation you want to add or click the URL radio button and in the URL field type the URL for the web page you want to display.
  7. If your Schedule has more than one Presentation or URL in it, you can control how long it is shown for with the Duration field (in seconds). You can further use the Timeline to narrow down exactly when you want it to show, or just go with the default “Always”.
  8. Click Okay to save the Presentation/URL settings.
  9. Once you’re done adding all of your Presentations and URL’s click the Save button and your Schedule is complete.

Presentations and URL’s will soon be appearing on all of your Displays just the way you want them to.

Searching and Sorting your Schedules

There are a number of ways you can search and arrange data on the Schedules page. You can search for a single character, which will retrieve all Schedules that start with that character, or you can search where the term is found in the middle of the name; For example searching for “schedule” will retrieve “Bob’s Schedule”. Searches are not case sensitive, and you can search by the Schedule Name. Press Search or hit the Enter key on your keyboard to start the search, and pressing the “x” button will clear the search box. The list of Schedules is sortable by the up/down arrow next to each column header, and if you have more than 50 Schedules, scroll to the bottom of the page, and more Schedules will show up. By default, 50 results are displayed at a time, and older results are kept within the list when new ones are loaded.

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