What’s What? Let’s explain some of the fundamentals of Contribute Signage.

Today we are going to look at exactly what is what in Contribute Digital Signage. The idea is that if you understand why we do what we do, you will pick up the software a lot quicker.

Playback Devices

Playback Devices, this is the name that we give to the computer or device that is connecting to your TV, Monitor or Display to “play back” the signage that you create online. The number of Playback Devices that you have have depends on the license that you have purchased. Generally, you would assign a computer permanently to a screen to playback your signage, you would not be using your day to day computer for Digital Signage.

Playback Groups

Playback groups – this is a number of Playback Devices that have been grouped together for ease of management. For example, if you have three televisions that you want to display the same signage, rather than having to turn three devices on and off, assign the same layout to three separate devices, you are able to create the group, add the playback devices to that group and then in a single action, manage the group of devices rather than having to manage the three devices independently.

Create Signage (The Editor)

Create Signage, the editor. This is pretty self explanatory from a what’s what perspective. This is the area of the software where you are creating you Digital Signage layouts that you will then push to your playback devices. This is the graphical part of the software where you can add images, text, videos, widgets and create that all important layout from multiple file types. It is also the area of the software where you can update your layouts change a welcome message or an image and with a single click, your changes are made on your live screens.

Media Library

The Media Library is the place where you store all of your images and videos that you want to use on your layouts. We don’t limit the amount of space that you have we just ask you to be mindful and not store gigs and gigs of content that you are not using. To add media to your library, you can drag and drop your contact onto the bar, or click the upload button. We’ll cover this on one of the lessons.

Scheduling

Scheduling allows us to play what we want when we want on our playback devices. You are able to set a schedule that plays layout A from 6am to 8am Mon-Fri and then layout B plays from 8am to 5pm Mon-Fri – total flexibility of what is playing on your devices.

Crisis Management

Crisis Management is the feature that we hope you will never have to use. This is the ability to send crisis warning messages to individual devices, groups, or all devices at the touch of a button. A siren is played along with either the pre-defined warning such as “Fire Drill” for example or you are also able to send a custom message out to your devices.

Users and Roles

Being able to create additional users on your account is quick and easy. However, not all users you will want to have the same access level on the system. Therefore, what we have created is a means of controlling exactly what users are able to do on the system. An example of this would be if in a school you allow students to create signage – we know many do. Therefore, you would create a user for the students and you would most certainly remove their ability to send crisis management messages to the screens. What you certainly would not want is the temptation being too great for a student to send out a “Fire Drill” warning message to all your devices! With the user roles you are able to lock down the system so that the users are able to have access only to what you want them to.

There is no specific task for today but have a look around the online system from the account that you setup yesterday. Remember, there is no harm in trying a few things before the training!