Scheduling Content Options

[KTaylor]

I currently have content running through a playlist, which is pulling from a gallery folder. These are all advertisements and messages, some of which expire at a particular date. What is the easiest way to automatically schedule these so I don't have to monitor the dates and remove them from the folder manually?

I've looked at the Schedule Builder but the only functionality I'm seeing is the ability to schedule to a specific date and time, but nothing recurring (for example, every 15 minutes switch to a different layout) and no way to set a piece of content to expire. Perhaps I have not worked through it enough but I'm having trouble finding documentation on this.

Any help is appreciated! Thanks.

[Brandon Triance-...]

I currently have content running through a playlist, which is pulling from a gallery folder. These are all advertisements and messages, some of which expire at a particular date. What is the easiest way to automatically schedule these so I don't have to monitor the dates and remove them from the folder manually?

I've looked at the Schedule Builder but the only functionality I'm seeing is the ability to schedule to a specific date and time, but nothing recurring (for example, every 15 minutes switch to a different layout) and no way to set a piece of content to expire. Perhaps I have not worked through it enough but I'm having trouble finding documentation on this.

Any help is appreciated! Thanks.

Hi there.

The functionality you're describing can be achieved by setting metadata on the individual content items and then creating gallery item rules in the Playlist Builder.

1) Each time you import a media file into Data Manager, in the file's properties, select "metadata" and add StartDate and EndDate. You can include StartTime and EndTime as well if you require this level of granularity.

 StartEndMeta.PNG ( 24.83K ) Number of downloads: 18


2) Once you have set the dates between which you'd like the media to be played, go to the Playlist Builder, and in the properties of your Gallery folder, select "Gallery Item Settings". Here, you can set the item rules such that items in this folder will play according to the metadata you have set on each content item. These rules only need to be set up once.

 GalleryItemRule.PNG ( 55.53K ) Number of downloads: 33


Please let us know if this solution will satisfy your requirements.

Thanks!

[KTaylor]

That is fantastic, thanks for the quick reply!

I also have another similar scheduling question. How do you suggest I schedule a piece of content to take over a screen only at a specific time and date, but return to the previous assigned content afterwards? For example, at all times I have a playlist assigned to a screen, but at the top of every hour I would like a layout to be played for 5 minutes and then return to the original playlist. Is it necessary to manually schedule all these times and have them recurring each day, or is there any easier way? Thanks!

[Brandon Triance-...]

That is fantastic, thanks for the quick reply!

I also have another similar scheduling question. How do you suggest I schedule a piece of content to take over a screen only at a specific time and date, but return to the previous assigned content afterwards? For example, at all times I have a playlist assigned to a screen, but at the top of every hour I would like a layout to be played for 5 minutes and then return to the original playlist. Is it necessary to manually schedule all these times and have them recurring each day, or is there any easier way? Thanks!

Hi there,

The "easier way" you mention was present in our Display 3 software and was called a "Spot Message". Basically, what it allowed you to do was override an assigned schedule for a period of time before returning to the scheduled content.

As I understand it, this feature is awaiting inclusion in Moxie. I don't know where it sits on the road map at this point, but I would expect to see it in some future release of the software.

In the meantime, I'm not aware of any simple approach to this problem.

The cleanest approach would probably be to use a script to monitor the system time and write a data value to a cell. You could then have a data-driven playlist containing both your current playlist and the layout you want to play for 5 minutes.

More elaborate approaches would include a manual schedule as you've mentioned, or you could possibly use IOLink to emulate "spot message" behaviour.

To do this, you would:

1) Have a data-driven playlist containing your current gallery playlist and the layout you want to play for five minutes.

2) In IOLink, set "Time" to be an input source, and then configure a number of input reactions to write appropriate data values into the cell being used by your data-driven playlist.

You could, for example, configure IOLink to write a value of 1 to Sheet 1, A1 at 9:00, 10:00, etc. Your data-driven playlist could then begin to play your 5 minute layout. At 9:05, IOLink could write a value of 0 to Sheet 1, A1, and this would cause the data-driven playlist to begin your gallery playlist. This will continue until IOLink notices that the time is 10:00, and the process would repeat.

You could set the Data Driven playlist to either play to the end of the current item in the gallery, or to interrupt it immediately depending upon your needs. Furthermore, if the length of the layout needs to be variable, you could use a "timeline ended" action to update the value of the cell in the DataPipe to revert to the gallery playlist.

It's a slightly roundabout way of achieving this functionality, but until the feature is included in Moxie, it might be the best way.

Please let us know if you have any more questions!