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Schedule an individual zone ?

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Mark
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Does anyone know if it's possible to schedule an individual zone ?

I have a layout with 2 zones :

1) HTML zone which I am wanting to schedule a different webpage for each day of the week :

- Monday = monday.html

- Tuesday = tuesday.html

...

2) An image/video zone for the end user to update their own content into.  

 

I don't want to create 7 different projects (1 for each day of the week), because then the end user would need to update all 7 projects each time they changed their image/video content.

Is there an easy solution ?

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4 comments

  • 0
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    Brandon

    1) Does your player run 24/7?

    If so, the easiest solution would be to use Time/Clock events to switch between playlists (use Super States for easier management) from one day to another.

    The potential problem, especially if your player does not run 24/7, is that Time/Clock events only trigger at the specified date/time.  If the Time/Clock event is set for 00:05 on Tuesday and the player doesn't boot up until 00:07 on Tuesday, it will not trigger that event until the following Tuesday.  So it would be playing whatever the default playlist is, instead of Tuesday's list.

    Another approach would be to set up separate presentations for each day and use MRSS feeds or Dynamic Playlists for the content that is common between them.

     

    2) You can't make "read-only" or "locked" zones, so you can't restrict changes only to a specific zone.  However, you could have users just edit a Dynamic Playlist on BrightSign Network (if you have BrightSign Network subscriptions for your players) and use that in the presentation.  Alternatively you could have them edit MRSS feed, but that is XML and probably too complex for the non-tech-savvy.

    To control changes within zones, you may want to look at our partner's CMS offerings, for example Tightrope's Carousel supports BrightSign as an endpoint and is designed for per-zone access.

    https://www.brightsign.biz/partners/integrated-solutions

  • 0
    Avatar
    Mark

    No, the player won't be running 24/7, however it sounds like the Time/Clock event trigger option could still work. 

    If the player schedule starts at 8am every morning, then couldn't I schedule the content to update at say 08:05am each morning ?   

    Do you have any documentation or instructions on how to set up this feature ?

    Many thanks.

  • 0
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    Shaun

    Hi Mark,

    I don't check the support forums all that frequently these days since we started phasing out BrightSign players.

    That being said, I had a similar issue to yours.. The good folk at Brightsign assume you never turn the players off so they didn't build in a way to test times/dates etc... so you could jump back into a schedule. I asked about making them system variables a couple of years ago but was told it is not an issue users face, so not a priority to add.

    See the project in my G drive, as apparently you can no longer upload on the forum!. It's not perfect but it will get you to what you need.

    https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B4AICAjLEWKyTlhlQ1c4VUJPcWM 

    You need a variable called "time" and one called "day". You can test the time or day however, you can't do both at the same time, using "conditional targets". I re-rigged the program to split it out by days etc.. so you can get an idea of how it works.

    Time appears in the format HHMM based on the 24 hour clock and is updated every minute. The day of the week is pulled out as an int i.e. Monday = 1 and Sunday = 7. See the documentation for further things you can do.

    Your HTML zone should test the day using an event handler, or similar, then transition to the correct page. Your images and video zone can live side by side and edited as it has been previously.

    As a side note I've also used this to perform validity date checking from a CMS system using MRSS feeds from an Intranet site. To give you an idea of other uses.

    Cheers,

     

  • 0
    Avatar
    Brandon

    @Mark,

    Yes, if you know the players are powered up at a particular time, you can set the Time/Clock event for some time within that time.

    The easiest method would be to put the "sub-playlists" in a Super State, and attach the Time/Clock events to the Super State so they're active on all the enclosed states.

    A more modular approach would be to add an extra Image zone and put an Event Handler in that zone and put the Time/Clock events on them, sending Zone Messages to the other zone(s) to switch over.

     

    @Shaun,

    Zendesk made some changes recently, so some functionality has changed that's out of our control.

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