Best Practices for Four Winds Sign Playlists

What are some things to keep in mind when organizing content on my sign playlist in the Four Winds content manager?

Below are some best practices to keep in mind when organizing content for your sign playlist:

• Always finalize your content before deploying.
• If an item no longer needs to be displayed or is not ready to be displayed yet, but you do not want to lose the organization of it, right-click the item in the Network Overview section and select Unschedule.
  • This can be useful when planning changes to new templates or preparing events.
  • Details of these items are still deployed within the Deployment file even though the content itself will not be.
• If an item is no longer needed within a template, then it can be removed by right-clicking the item in the Network Overview section and selecting Delete.  Please note that items should be Unscheduled and saved/deployed prior to removing it completely.
  • This item no longer exists within the Deployment, but can still be used from the Content tab area as needed.
  • This can also be done with templates, however; a confirmation box will appear asking if you are sure you would like to delete it.  Again, this is only deleting the single usage of the template on your sign.
  • Failure to remove the item from the template before deleting it from the system completely in the Content tab area can and will lead to corruption of the template.  This will result in an error displaying every time content is attempting to be deployed to the signs.  An additional "Ignore" button will need to be clicked until a ticket is made to have your template fixed.
• Longer sign playlists may want to display an item that is important multiple times in the order.  This can be done by dragging and dropping the same item from the Content tab at the bottom into the appropriate region in the Network Overview.
  • This is also how multiple templates of the same type can be used within the same sign or sign playlist.
    • This is useful for scheduling content switching over at certain times or in preparation of switching content for an event or template change.
• Previewing your sign playlist helps to determine if a sign will display correctly.  This can be done by selecting a sign or template and then selecting the play button at the top of the Network Overview section.
  • The play icon will be replaced by the stop icon and the schedule to the right will be replaced by a shrunken version of the preview.
  • Videos do not always preview properly even if they do play properly on the sign.
  • AEM content feeds, when previewed, do not shrink to scale, but maintain their 1920 x 1080 size.
  • Preview controls can be used to check content faster and indicate possible issues.  The fast forward icon will jump to the next item in the selected region.  The warning icon, when black, indicates that there was an issue with previewing an item.  This may be the first indication that an issue with a piece of content may be occurring.

For additional assistance, please contact Information Technology Services at 419-372-0999 or through chat.