What You Need

We'll look at what you need:

1. to create & publish content
2. to play content

To Create & Publish Content

To create and manage the content of your channel, you need a reasonably current computer with an up to date web browser. Internet browsers we recommend (in order of preference):

• Google Chrome 40 or later
• Safari 9 or later
• Firefox 38 or later
• Microsoft Edge
• Internet Explorer 11
• Opera 27 or later Of course the computer has to have access to the internet to make use of the internet browser.

Besides a computer, you can also use a mobile device to manage the content of your channel. A computer is recommended for creating and designing pages because you can use a full keyboard and mouse. Mobile devices that can be used for SmartSign2go are, among others:

• An iPad or iPhone with iOS version 9 or later
• An Android device (tablet or phone) with Android version 4.4 or later

To Play Content

Next to the hardware to display your content, you also need an internet connection, so that the player can access the content. Let's look at both.

Internet Connection

An internet connection is needed to get the player started. If during the day, the internet connection is lost, the player will either wait for the connection to become available again, or continue playing what it has played so far. See the company settings for more details.

The minimal speed and expected data consumption greatly depend on what type of content you play. Basically the use of video dictates this the most. If you use video, we recommend at least 2Mbit/s internet speed per player. Data consumption is really hard to predict, but if you upload your videos directly to our platform and use a capable computer, the video will be buffered once it is loaded and it won't use any internet data anymore. That's different for YouTube and Vimeo videos: those will be loaded anew at least once a day. All other types of content will either be buffered, or do not consume a significant amount of data. Typically, an average SmartSign2go channel without video won't consume more than 50MB of bandwidth per day.

Hardware

SmartSign2go is designed to play even on the simplest web browsers. But the more advanced the web browser, the more of SmartSign2go's features you can use and the smoother your channel will be played. Here is an overview of the installation options with their pros and cons.

A Smart TV With Built-In Web Browser

Pros

• You don’t need any other devices besides the TV; so it’s a nice and simple setup.
• Multi functional: if you do not want to play a SmartSign2go channel, you can also just watch TV.

Cons

• Most built-in web browsers do not have the ability to play video.
• Most built-in web browsers are quite slow, making playback of animated content less smooth.
• With some built-in browsers top and/or bottom tool bars stay visible during playback, which is not really what you want. Samsung TVs tend to have this limitation.
• Smart TVs require manual starting of the browser every time, which can become quite tedious after a while.

Examples

• LG consumer Smart TVs with WebOS 2.0 or higher
• Sony Smart TVs with Android

Any TV Screen With A Separate Playback Device

Pros

• A separate playback device is often a lot more powerful (and therefore faster) than a Smart TV, making playback a lot smoother.
• Allows you to select a decently priced screen, while selecting a device that best matches your performance needs.
• Ability to set it to startup automatically, e.g. every morning.

Cons

• You need to figure out how to neatly and safely mount the external device, although at least the ones that we offer are slim enough that this isn't a challenge.
• An extra device means additional cost.
  

Examples

• In a normal indoor space, any screen will often do, really.
• Playback device such as AOpen Google Chromebox Mini, Raspberry Pi 4b, etc.

A Professional Digital Signage Display With Built-In Playback Device

Pros

• Playback device is nicely built into the display
• These TV screens don't change a lot, so if you have many and need to replace one in a few years, you can often still get the same model
• They often have remote management capabilities
• They are available for several specialist situations, e.g.
  • extra bright for outdoor or in shopping windows
  • dust / water resistant
  • vandal proof
• Auto on / off via built-in timer, so that no manual operation is needed.
• Installation and support available from professional installation parties.

Cons

• The total setup is relatively expensive.
• Some manufacturers have their own closed signage platform so you cannot use these for SmartSign2go.
• Built-in players can be rather underpowered, so smoothness of playback should be tested before purchase.
• Additional costs for installation and configuration of hardware and software, which is usually left to the professional installation party from whom you buy the display.

Dashboard

When you first login to SmartSign2go, you are taken to your personal dashboard. From here you can create and publish your content.

Basic Building Blocks

You can see the basic building blocks at a glance:

• Pages: the individual slides with information
• Playlists: playback sequences of pages
• Channels: a collection of playlists that can be played back on any playback device

Click on any of the panels to open them and see your collections of pages, playlists and channels inside.

Multiple Dashboards

Apart from the fact that dashboards are the main container of pages, playlists and channels, they are also the main container of things that you upload or configure on a page, like images, videos and social media accounts.

The nice thing is that you can create as many dashboards as you like within your subscription. That way you can create isolated silos of content. In addition, you can grant each user access to specific dashboards. This is a great mechanism for larger organizations to give each department (for example) its own signage workspace.

If a user has access to multiple dashboards, she can easily switch between them with the dashboard selector next to the logo.

Other Sections

From the dashboard, you can quickly access other sections from the main menu (at the top of the page):

• Settings: takes you to all kinds of settings and background information, ranging from company settings, user management, player management, active screen overview, etc. Only "company administrators" have access to these settings.
• Help: takes you to this documentation
• Contact: information on how to get in touch with us

Pages

SmartSign2go content is made up of a sequence of pages. This is comparable to a slide in a Powerpoint presentation. So it all starts with creating a page. Click on the Pages panel to open it up first.

Clicking the Add button itself will immediately add a blank page to your Pages panel. But oftentimes you can add other pages as well by clicking the down arrow on the right side of the Add button.

The options you get depend on what's available to you, but these are the ones you might see:

2. From sample page: copy a page from the set of available sample pages
3. From other dashboard (if applicable): copy a page from one of your other dashboards (if any)
4. From company template (if applicable): copy a page from the set of available pages that have been shared as company templates within your company

Another popular way of creating a new page, is simply copying an existing one. Click on the page to be copied and select Copy:

Once the new page is added, it is time to create or edit it. Click on the page and select Edit from the popup menu. You will now be taken to the designer.

Download Page As Image

If you'd like to use a page outside of SmartSign2go, you can choose to download the page. In that case it is saved as an image to your computer.

The Designer

The designer is the most creative place of SmartSign2go. It is here that you'll construct and/or rearrange an individual page.

Basic Elements

It all starts with basic elements. You can create colored sections on a page using the "Box" element. Just drag it from the top left "Basic elements" box onto the canvas and a basic box shape will appear that you can now configure, resize and rotate.

It gets more interesting with the text element. When you add that to your canvas, it will automatically select the element and thereby open the associated properties box on the left hand side. Here you can configure the element as you like. You can edit the text within the element itself on the canvas.

Looking at the left hand side you'll see a number of properties of the text element, like the overall font type, the font size variant (of individual text snippets), the color, several styling options, list controls, alignment, ability to add a table, presence of an (overall) drop shadow, etc. If you change any of these settings, you'll see that reflected in the element on the page design immediately.

Refer to the Page Elements sections to read all about the elements you can put on a page.

Element Info

At the bottom right hand side of the canvas you'll find basic information of the element you hover over with your mouse pointer. If you select the element, most of that information will become directly editable.

Note that the reference resolution of a 16:9 page is 1920x1080 pixels, but that does not mean you can only play back at that resolution. Upon playback, the player will always seamlessly resize to the resolution of the playback screen.

Page Settings And Controls

On the bottom left hand side of the canvas you'll find a few clickable icons and some buttons to configure and control the page and the designer.

In addition there is another "control" on the top right: a dropdown list where you can set the zoom level to zoom in and out of the design canvas.

Page Properties

You can change the following basic properties of your page:

Draft Pages And The Approval Process

When you have the role of an author, any changes you make will result in the page entering a draft state. This means that the changes are saved, but will not yet be visible in any playlists or channels.

If an editor or company administrator opens the designer of a draft page, he will get the option to approve or reject the changes. If he approves these, the changes are immediately available in playlists and channels that contain the page. If he rejects the changes, they will be undone and the page will return to the state before the changes made by the author.

Shortcut Keys

In the designer you can use a number of shortcut keys to make editing even easier. Here's an overview:

Media (Images And Videos)

You can upload both media types (images and videos) to our platform. To do this, add the respective element to the canvas and a catalog of that media type will open up. You can then select the image or video to be shown in that element, or first upload a new one.

Use the "Upload image(s)" button to select one or more images on your hard drive to upload. Or simply drag images of your choice from your hard drive into the image catalog and the uploading will start.

Select the uploaded media file you like to use and click the "Use selected image/video" button. Alternatively, you can also double click the image or video to select it and return to the canvas.

Supported Media File Types

Folders

A number of items in SmartSign2go can be organized into folders; pages on the dashboard and images in the image catalog. This keeps large collections manageable.

Navigating

There is always one root folder. If the currently selected folder has subfolders, it will show a right arrow next to it. Click that to open the list of subfolders and to navigate to one of them.

Editing

Click on a folder name itself to open the popup menu and perform one of the available actions.

• Open: open that folder and show its contents. You can also double click on the folder to open it.
• Rename: rename the folder.
• Delete: delete the clicked folder and all of its content and subfolder contents!
• New folder: add a new subfolder under the selected folder

Moving Folder Contents

So far, you have seen how to change the currently active folder and view its contents. But what if you see the contents of folder A and you like to move it to folder B? How do you select folder B without moving away from folder A? Simply select the "Show extra path to drag to" option and a second folder navigation bar will open.

The difference between the top folder bar and the bottom folder bar, is that the top folder bar controls the content that you see and the bottom folder bar just lets you select a folder so you can drag content into it. So to move an item from the currently selected folder to another one, drag that item into the folder selected in the bottom folder bar.

You can also move items in bulk by selecting multiple pages, playlists or channels. You can do that by either dragging a rectangle around the items to be selected. Or you can select multiple individual items by clicking on them while holding down the CMD-key (on MacOS) or the CTRL-key (on Windows or Linux).

Background Page

When you are designing a page, you can set another page as its background. This has two great advantages:

1. You can easily create a consistent style across multiple pages.
2. When you put multiple pages in a playlist that share the same background page, the background page will always stay visible during page transitions. This makes it very well suited to put elements on that need to keep running without interruption across pages, like:
   • a ticker
   • the Streaming Audio app, to play audio seamlessly
   • a Foursquare app to welcome visitors that log in to your location

Page Transition Constraints
When pages share the same background page, the player will always use the fade transition between these pages. Since the background page needs to stay visible it is not possible to "slide" pages or turn them with a "3D cube" effect.

Background Page Of A Background Page

You can "layer" as many background pages as you like. One convenient application of this is to easily switch a page theme.

For example, say you create an "Acme Company template" background page that you use for many 100 of your pages. If you like to give it a seasonal touch for summer, autumn, winter and spring, then you have three options:

1. create a new background page each season; this is very inconvenient, since then you would need to change the background page to the new background page on all of your 100 pages
2. edit the existing background page
3. use the "background page of a background page" method, by using a blank "Acme Company template" as background of your 100 pages and then selecting the appropriate seasonal template as the background of the blank "Acme Company template" background page

Company Template

Company templates are only available in Enterprise subscriptions.

When you want to standardize the look of your content throughout your company, you can share pages as "company templates" that your coworkers can pick from when they start to create a new page. This allows you to -for example- create a default title page and default text page with correct positions, colors, fonts types and font sizes and more.

Sharing A Page As A Company Template

When you have created a page that you like to share as a company template, then:

1. click on the page
2. select Share from the popup menu
3. select a specific language if you like to limit the availability of this template page to users with a certain language; generally you will not choose a specific language here
4. check the Share within my company checkbox
5. click Save

The page is now available to all users within your company when they select Add > From company template. If you want to see this yourself immediately after sharing, then you need to reload the dashboard first.

Note that sharing one or more pages within your company will remove the Add > From sample page option, since this is now irrelevant.

Enable the Lock elements by default feature in the company settings, to prevent that users of your template pages accidentlly move elements in the editor thereby messing up the layout.

Using A Shared Page

When pages are shared within your company, you will find them by selecting Add > From company template in your Pages panel. If you select a page, it will copy the page over to your dashboard and you can then edit it as you like.

Background Pages

When you copy a page from any of the catalogs (like the company templates), it will also copy over any background page that the selected page has. However, if the background page already exists on your dashboard, then it will not copy a new one over but instead use the one that is already present on your own dashboard. Only when the original background page changes or you change the copied background page on your own dashboard, then a new one will be copied over again the next time you choose to copy a new page from a catalog.

Playlists

So you've created a number of pages. Now you want to create a "slideshow" of them. We call that a "playlist". A playlist is a sequence of pages, each with a certain playback duration. When playing a playlist, it will show each page in the configured sequence. When it finishes showing the last page, it will loop back again to the first page and start playing over again.

Basics

Add a page to a playlist by simply dragging a page onto the icon of a playlist. The page will be added to the end of the playlist If the playlist is open already, you can immediately drag the page into the desired spot. Change the order of pages by simply dragging them to their desired position in the playlist. Remove a page by dragging it out of the playlist.

If you click a playlist and select the "Edit" option you can preview a playlist by clicking the "Preview" button. The "Edit playback durations" button lets you set the playback durations of each individual page in seconds. The default playback duration of page X may vary:

1. if you added page X to another playlist before, then the default duration will be equal to the duration of the last updated occurence of page X in a playlist
2. if you never added page X before, but you did add another page to a playlist, then the default duration will be equal to the duration of the last updated page in any playlist on the current dashboard
3. if you never added any page before, then the default duration will be equal to 15 seconds

When your page contains a video, you can configure the video element to trigger the actual page transition. You do this in the properties of the video element itself in the designer. When you do this you, won't be prompted to set a specific playback duration for this page.

Lastly, you can also select the desired page transition. It is important to note that if you are using a sequence of pages with a common background page in your playlist, that a fade transition is always used between those pages, regardless of what transition you select here.

Note that if you drag in a draft page the original version of the page will be published. The conceptual changes need to be approved first for them to become visible.

Foreground Page

You might have noticed the special "Optional foreground page" slot on the right hand side. This is a special slot into which you can drag a page that is always shown in front of all other pages during playback. You can visualize this as a layer that permanently sits on top of all other pages in the playlist; the elements on that layer will be shown on top of the other pages.

Since a foreground page is permanently present during playback of a playlist, it is very well suited for elements that need to play permanently, like background music via the streaming audio app or a ticker with news, rss or own data. These are the same benefits as a background page has.

Background Music

If your subscription allows it, you can also add background music to your playlist. Click the Music button to select one of the predefined radio stations or fill in the web address of a web radio station of your choice. In the description of the Streaming Audio app you find valuable tips for finding these web addresses and their constraints.

The background music player also cleverly interacts with other apps that play audio: When other audio starts, the background music fades out. When other audio ends, the background music fades back in.

If you play your playlist or channel in a web browser, make sure that your browser is configured to allow automatic playback of audio. If you've setup your playback device with one of our platform-specific apps or setup steps in our platform guides, then that is already taken care of.

Sharing Playlists

If you want to share content across dashboards, a very convenient option is to link to a playlist on another dashboard. You can do this by clicking Add > From other dashboard. The selected playlist will now show up as a "linked playlist".

The great benefit of this sharing method, is that updates made to the original playlist will automatically be reflected in this linked playlist.

In the Pages panel, adding a page from another dashboard behaves differently: that makes a simple copy of that page instead of linking to it.

"Customizing" A Linked Playlist

When linking to another dashboard's playlist, the only thing that is not copied is its foreground page (if present). Instead you can now drag in your own custom foreground page. This gives you the option to slightly customize the linked playlist.

Channels

The purpose of a Channel is to hold whichever Playlist(s) you wish to display and to generate a web address that your playback device can connect to. During the player registration process, you will be asked to choose a channel for your player to run. After registration you can change the channel assignment, if needed by visiting the Players section of settings. 

Multiple players can be assigned to the same channel to coordinate playback of the same content, or you can have some or all of your players assigned to their own independent channels so that each player can have independent content running.

Depending on your subscription, you do or do not have the option to schedule multiple playlists in a channel. If you don't then the channel only plays the one playlist that you have dragged into it.

Read more about scheduling playlists in a channel in the "Scheduling" section.

Basic Playback

Channels are displayed with an activity indicator on the left: if it's green, it means the channel is currently playing. If any players/screens are playing the channel, you will see the number of those screens under the indicator. You can hover over that number to see more details. On the right-hand side you see the first playlist that would be played if you were to start playing the channel right now. Underneath that, you can click on the eye icon to start previewing the channel. Hover over or click on the monitor icon to get the unique playback address of this channel. You can watch the channel by simply entering this address into any web browser you like. This is the simplest way to tune in to a channel. A better and more manageable way is through a "registered player", as we'll describe later.

Sharing Channel With Users Beyond Your Signage Screens

Since a SmartSign2go channel is just a regular web page, you can send its playback address to anyone for them to open in any web browser. However, this will count against the number of screen licenses you have purchased in your subscription. For sharing a channel with end users, the better option is to use the shareable playback address. This will show the same channel, but will not use up any screen licenses. Playback is limited to 30 minutes and one-time playback, though, after which a user can choose to play the channel again.

You'll find the shareable playback address by selecting the option Share in the dropdown menu.

You should take into account that some web browsers have certain playback restriction. Most noteably, mobile web browsers will typically not automatically start playing video or audio. This restriction is imposed on purpose by smart phone manufacturers to save data usage.

Restart Playback

You also have the option to restart the playback of the channel on all playback devices by clicking the channel and selecting Restart from the popup menu. All playback devices watching that channel will restart their playback within a minute or two.

Touch Navigation

In the channel settings, you can enable touch navigation. This enables the user to navigate to the next page by touching/clicking the right part of the screen or to navigate to the previous page by touching/clicking the left part of the screen.

Tilted Screen

Playing your content on a vertical (or better: "portrait oriented") screen is becoming more popular. We learned earlier how you can design vertical pages.

On a playback screen it is easiest if you can set your browser (or SmartSign2go app) to also display the pages vertically. If, however, you cannot set this and are stuck with a horizontal (or better: "landscape") screen orientation, then you can still simply hang the TV sideways and then set your channel to tilt the channel content clockwise or counter clockwise. You can do this by clicking on the channel and selecting the gear icon in the popup menu. In the dialog window that opens, set the screen tilt to either clockwise or counter clockwise.

Mirrored Screens

Apart from tilted playback, SmartSign2go also offers mirrored channel playback, in case you are using a projector to project an image on the back of a screen.

Scheduling

Scheduling is not available for all subscriptions, so this section might be irrelevant for you.

You can schedule your content to only be shown in a certain period, on certain weekdays and/or between certain times. You can do this on two levels:

1. within a channel you can schedule individual playlists
2. within a playlist you can schedule individual pages

Scheduling Playlists

You can open the channel schedule by clicking on the channel and selecting "Edit" from the popup menu. You can drag a playlist directly into that channel. Or even easier: you can drag a playlist onto the channel icon and then the channel schedule will open automatically. By default, a playlist is set to run continuously. You can click on the pencil icon to change the playlist schedule type to "incidentally".

This is how the schedule it works: a continuously running playlist will always play in the specified date period. It is only interrupted by incidental playlists on given weekdays in given time slots. Take the example below:

This tells the channel to play "Playlist 1" continuously from April 3 until the end of time. It will only be interrupted by "Playlist 2" from April 5 through April 14 on Tuesdays and Thursdays between 12PM and 1PM. So, say "Playlist 2" is 5 minutes long, it will repeat playback 12 times on those days between 12PM and 1PM before returning to "Playlist 1".

If you schedule more than one playlist with the same schedule type in the same period and on the same time, then those playlists will play one after the other, looping back to the first one again. So in the above example that means that if you like to play "Playlist 2" and "Playlist 1" interchangeably in those incidental time slots, then you need to add "Playlist 1" again with the same schedule settings as "Playlist 2":

The order in which playlists, that are scheduled in the same intervals, are played depends on their order in the channel schedule. You can change the order by dragging a playlist up or down.

Delete a playlist from the schedule by clicking on the trash can icon, or by simply dragging it out of the schedule.

Scheduling Properties

Scheduling Pages

Within a playlist, you can go one step further and that is to schedule individual pages. That means that you can control when a page within an active playlist should be shown or not. To configure this, click on a page in the playlist and select the gear icon. This opens a dialog box in which you can set the page to only show at specific moments in time by switching on the option "Limit the moments of playback of this page".

The properties you can set are almost identical to those of playlists in a channel schedule.

When scheduled, you will see a clock icon on the page in the playlist. Hover over the icon to see the schedule details.

Color Coding

Both playlists in a channel, and the clock icons on a scheduled page have a color coding that indicates their current schedule status.

Mixins

Mixin functionality is only available in Enterprise subscriptions.

Mixins are useful for larger company setups with multiple dashboards. Let's say you have a big company, with the head quarters managing the main dashboard and a number of other offices managing their own dashboards from which they play their channels. With mixins, HQ can periodically interrupt playback of all channels of all offices and have those channels play HQ's mixin channel instead. This is particularly useful, for example, in a scenario where playback of advertisements or HQ messages is mandatory in the office channels.

Configuring A Mixin Channel

1. On the main dashboard, click on the channel that should be mixed into the office's channels.
2. Click on the gear icon.
3. Check the Mix channel into extra dashboard channels every ... seconds.
4. Fill in the interval with which the playback of the other channels should be interrupted.

Let's say you fill in 600 seconds, then playback of the other channels will be interrupted every 10 minutes. The mixin channel will play exactly once: so once it is played, it will not start from the beginning again.

Only one channel can be set as a mixin channel.

Alternatives

In summary, mixins are a way to do a mandatory push of content from HQ to all other dashboard. Other dashboard users cannot opt out.

There are two more voluntary ways of sharing content with other dashboards:

1. on page level: other dashboard owners can choose to copy individual pages from another dashboard. That is simple and easy, but the main drawback is that any changes made to the original page, will not be available on the copies made of this page.
2. on playlist level: other dashboard owners can choose to link to a playlist on another dashboard. This is also easy and has the added benefit that updates made to the original are immediately reflected in the linked playlist.

With Playback Address

As explained in the Channels section, a channel can be played directly by opening its playback address (URL) in any web browser of your choice. Very easy. Just type in that address in the web browser's address bar and the channel will start playing.

One approach to setting up a Windows computer as a playback device, is to have it automatically start a web browser on startup with the channel address as its URL.

Since the channel address is just an regular web address, you can also share the address with others, e.g. in an e-mail. Or you can embed the channel in a web page, using an iframe element.

Shortcut Keys

During playback there are a few keys you can use to control playback.

Drawbacks

There are a few drawbacks to configuring a playback device to always start with a fixed channel address:

1. If you ever want the playback device to tune in to another channel, you need to reconfigure the playback device manually.
2. You also have to reconfigure a playback device manually if you should ever (accidentally) delete a channel and create a new one, since a new channel gets a new address.

The best solution is to simply register a playback device and set the channel to be played from the playback device settings page.

Through Registered Player

Instead of using a channel's playback address directly on a playback device, it is recommended to first register a playback device, so you can more easily manage it from your dashboard. To do this, use the web address http://play.playr.biz instead of the channel address. When you do this the first time, you will be shown a registration code.

This is also the default approach when you use one of our playback apps, like the Plug 'N Playr or the app for ChromeOS or Android.

On your normal desktop computer, head over to the Settings > Players page and register your player with this code. You fill in the registration code, give the player a meaningful name and then select the channel you like to be shown on the player.

After you filled out this most important information, you'll be taken to the player details page where you can optionally set a number of other properties:

Always check if the player time zone is set correctly, since this determines what the exact time on the player is, which determines what content is played when in case you have scheduled playback of your content.

From now on, every time the player goes to http://play.playr.biz it will look up what channel it has been assigned and it will then start playing that channel. So changing the channel on a player is now as easy as going to the player's configuration and selecting a different channel.

Categories

If you have a lot of players, you can group them into categories. You can create new categories with a name and description on the player list page.

Reloading

In the list of players you can see the current status of each player. This can either be "Idle" or "Playing". When it's playing, you can select "Reload" to have the player reload the channel's web address again (similar to reloading a web page in your browser). Playback will start anew within a minute or two.

This has the same effect as restarting a channel. The difference is that reloading a player only affects that specific player, whereas restarting a channel means that all tuned in players will be restarted.

(Automatic) Rebooting

When using our Plug 'N Playr playback method, our ChromeOS app or our Android app, you will get an extra player control option: "Restart". This allows you to reboot the player entirely in case of ChromeOS or Plug'N Playr or restart the app in case of Android.

In addition, you can set the player to automatically reboot itself daily at a specific time.

Player Identification

When you have multiple screens running it can be easy to loose track of what registered players are connected to what screens. That's where the Identify option comes in handy, which is available for playback devices that are currently playing content. If you select that option, the name of the playback device will be shown on the TV screen within 1 minute and will stay up for approximately 5 minutes.

Triggering Content Externally

This functionality is only available in Enterprise subscriptions.

Apart from triggering content to start at a specific time, you can also configure playlists in a channel to start playing when an HTTP request is received from another system. This opens up all kinds of new and creative ways to dynamically adapt the shown content to current actions and/or circumstances. For instance, you can have a physical device, like a button or motion sensor, set off the playback of specific content. Or you can hook up a service like IFTTT to take input from a plethora of sensors or triggers from external systems and use that to trigger start playing a specific playlist.

Events

It all starts by creating one or more events in your SmartSign2go settings with a descriptive name and a unique key. It's these events that you can trigger with an HTTP POST request, using that unique key, like so:

https://www.playr.biz/trigger/my-event-key

Of course we don't want just anybody to be able to trigger this event, so you need to supply your unique API key as an authorization header. You'll find your API key on your Events overview page.

Authorization: Bearer <YOUR API KEY>

Lastly, since you can have multiple screens playing the same content, you need to specify for what screen specifically you like to trigger the event. You do this by supplying the Code of the relevant playback device in the body of the HTTP request as a JSON structure, like this:

{ "playback_device": "<THE CODE OF THE TRIGGERING PLAYBACK DEVICE>" }

Those double quotes are important, but the < and > characters should be left out!

This implies that trigger content through events on registered playback devices. So be sure to register your playback devices when first setting them up, instead of having them play from a specific channel playback address.

The code of the playback device can be found by going to the list of playback devices and clicking on the name of the playback device to see the details.

Linking playlists to events

The last step is to indicate what content needs to be played when a specific event is triggered. This is done in a channel. Instead of scheduling a playlist in a channel to play continuously or incidentally, you set it to play upon event and then select the relevant event.

Once this is set, as soon as the event is triggered for playback device X, and playback device X is playing this channel, then regular playback is interrupted virtually immediately and the playlist associated with the event will start to play. The playlist will play once and then normal playback will be resumed.

Testing and troubleshooting

Here are some tips for when you want to test and/or troubleshoot this:

• You can easily test an HTTP request with a tool like Postman.
• When you get a 404 response to your HTTP request, either the trigger name is incorrect or the playback device code is incorrect.
• When you get a 417 response to your HTTP request, no currently valid playlist can be found that is linked to the triggered event. Be sure to double check the valid from/to date/times on the event-triggered playlist as well as the time zone of your playback device (which can be set by explicitly setting the device's location).

Monitoring Players

Player monitoring functionality is only available in Enterprise subscriptions.

If you have multiple screens running on several locations, it can be very convenient to have SmartSign2go monitor the activity of your players and warn you if one or more are inactive. This all starts out by first defining when you expect certain players to be active. From the dashboard, go to Settings > Activity Monitors and create an activity monitor by specifying:

Each schedule rule has the following properties:

Alerting

Once an activity monitor has been configured, SmartSign2go checks every 10 minutes if the players that are expected to be active are indeed active. If they are not, an alert e-mail will be sent to the configured alert email address(es). Alert emails are sent with an interval of 30 minutes.

An alert email also contains a "mute" button or link. This allows you to mute the alerts for either 8 or 24 hours. This can be very convenient for holidays, for example, when the generic schedule of the activity monitor hasn't taken this into account, but players are rightfully inactive.

Screen Count

A SmartSign2go subscription is limited in the number of screens (screen sessions) that can play your content simultaneously. The number of active screens that is playing at any given time is determined by the number of "web browser sessions" that are simultaneously accessing your channels. The SmartSign2go playback apps for Android, ChromeOS, etc. also count as "web browser sessions" and so do individual web browser tabs that are playing a SmartSign2go channel.

It isn't a problem when this maximum is exceeded briefly, but if the screen limit is exceeded for more than 20 minutes, the exceeding screens will display a message stating that the maximum number of screens has been exceeded. Go to Settings > Active screens to see the list of currently active screen sessions.

Screens that exceed the screen limit for more than 20 minutes will show up in red.

Most of the time, excess screen sessions are caused by a player that accidentally has more than one browser window or tab open that is playing a channel. Use this list to determine which playback device is causing the problem. Click on any of the rows for more detailed information about that screen session.

Securing Your Channel

Channel security functionality is only available in Enterprise subscriptions.

By default, your channels are accessible by anyone who knows the exact playback addresses. Playback of content is done over HTTP because the playback of content usually is done in publicly accessible areas.

That access can be limited to only show on players that have been registered. This is a practical and simple way of protect your content during playback.

If you have an Enterprise tier subscription, you can take additional measures to protect your content during playback:

1. Use the HTTPS protocol (secure HTTP) to send content to your players
2. Whitelist a number of IP addresses or IP address ranges for playback - only playback devices with an IP address that matches the whitelist can access your channels

To use these settings go to the company settings page. These options allow you to do the following:

The Allowed IP Addresses and Playback only on registered players options are both enforced independently so if you use both options a registered player will not be able to playback your content if it's IP address is not one of the allowed IP addresses.

Embedding In A Website

Since a SmartSign2go channel is essentially a web page with a unique web address, you can also embed this in any website.

Embed Code

To embed a channel, add the following HTML code to your website at spot where the channel should be shown:

<iframe src="[YOUR SHAREABLE PLAYBACK ADDRESS]" width="[WIDTH]" height="[HEIGHT]" 
        scrolling="no" frameborder="0"></iframe>

Then follow the following steps:

1. Get the shareable playback address of your channel, which you can find by clicking on the channel and selecting Share.
2. Add https:// in front of the address, so that an address like www.playr.biz/channels/42AsaofX9Jy/show becomes https://www.playr.biz/channels/42AsaofX9Jy/show
3. Replace [YOUR SHAREABLE PLAYBACK ADDRESS] in the above embed code with the address from the previous step
4. Replace [WIDTH] and [HEIGHT] with the size you like the channel to have on your website. Keep in mind that it is best to have these dimensions be of the same aspect ratio as your channel. So, in case of the default 16:9 aspect ratio, you could choose a width and height of 960 and 540, for example.

Caveats

There are a couple things to be aware of when embedding a SmartSign2go channel in your website:

1. It is important to use the shareable playback address instead of the regular playback address, otherwise playback will count towards the available screen licenses.
2. A channel that is played via the shareable playback address will automatically stop playing after half an hour.
3. On most mobile devices (and specifically iPhones) video will not play automatically. This is a restriction imposed by the phone manufacturers to protect mobile users from unexpectedly consuming large amounts of mobile data.
4. Because the channel must be embedded via a secure HTTPS connection, it is not possible to display another web page within the channel using the Web page app with an unsecure HTTP address; therefore, that address must always start with https://.

Emergency Alert

The Emergency Alert functionality is only available in Enterprise subscriptions.

In case of emergency, you can quickly get an alert up on your screens. In the settings section, you'll find the Emergency alert option in orange on the right hand side. Select that to configure and activate or deactivate the alert.

Configure The Alert

After saving the configuration the emergency alert will be shown within on the selected screens within 30 seconds.

Set The Alert Content

Click the Edit emergency alert page button to create or update the emergency alert page. You will be taken to the regular page designer where you can create your own emergency alert page.

If your channels use a different aspect ratio than the default 16:9, then be sure to set the correct aspect ratio for this alert page as well.

Content Refresh Rates

Different apps refresh their contents with different intervals. Here's an overview:

Basic Elements

In this section we'll dive into the different basic elements that you can use on your page.

Generic Properties

Elements and apps are configured by setting their properties. Many elements and apps share a set of generic properties. Here's an overview of the most common generic properties.

Element Animations

During playback of your pages, there are two moments when you can schedule element animations:

1. when the page is becomes visible
2. when the page is disappears out of sight (because the next page is being shown)

For both moments you can configure element animations:

1. Page start animation + timing
   Select the type of animation when the page becomes visible and set the number of seconds the element should wait before it starts to animate.
2. Page end animation + timing
   Select the type of animation when the page disappears out of sight. The animation sequence starts X seconds before the page is hidden, where X is the highest page end animation timing of all elements on the page. So, for example, say there are three elements on the page: text, image and box with page end animation timings 2s, 4s, 0s, respectively. The animation then starts 4 seconds before the page hides, beginning with the box (at 0s), then the text (2 seconds later) and lastly the image (4 seconds later).

Pexels

Free stock videos can be directly downloaded from Pexels by going to the Pexels tab and browsing or searching for a video you like. Note that search can currently only be done in English. Once you've selected a video with the Use selected video button, it will be downloaded first (which can take a bit of time, depending on your network speed) and then uploaded to your own video catalog, after which it will be added to your page.

Box

The Box element lets you draw a rectangle of any size on your canvas.

Properties

You can configure the element using the following properties:

And finally there are a number of generic app properties that you can configure that you'll find on many other elements as well.

Line

The Line element lets you draw a line... solid or with a pattern.

Properties

You can configure the element using the following properties:

And finally there are a number of generic app properties that you can configure that you'll find on many other elements as well.

Text

Add your own static text to your page.

As soon as you select a text element, you can edit the text within the page itself. You can still drag the element by grabbing on to the edges of the element.

In edit mode, the shortcut keys for copying and pasting work on text only and not on the element itself. To copy the element itself, use the Copy button in the property box. To paste the element, deselect the text element first (e.g. by pressing the Esc key).

Properties

In addition to the property box on the side, the text element also opens up a separate text edit toolbar.

With this toolbar you can modify the following properties of pieces of text:

On the left hand side you can configure the overall settings of the element as usual using the following properties:

And finally there are a number of generic app properties that you can configure that you'll find on many other elements as well.

Some text animations might not work 100% as expected with complex blocks of text. In that case, please choose a different animation type or simplify your text block.

To add a table simply click on the Text tool in the Basic Elements section at the left. 

Next click on the table icon in the toolbar at the top as seen in the image below:

Once you've added a table you have many options for styling that table. Read on...

Clicking on a cell in the table will give you a pop-up selection for table and cell properties:

TABLE HEADER

Click this icon to add a header row to your table, which can then be styled further.

DELETE TABLE

Click this icon to remove your table from the canvas.

ROW TOOLS

Click the icon highlighted above in red to add or delete individual rows.

COLUMN TOOLS

Click the icon highlighted above in red to add or delete individual columns.

TABLE LINE & CELL STYLING

The border selections (Solid vs Dashed) affect all of the lines in the table. By default the lines are only visible while you're editing, but if you'd like to be able to see the lines in the table on your signage display then choose one of the border options. To remove borders simply select the option again.

The alternate rows selection is used for creating rows of alternating colors:

MERGING OR SPLITTING CELLS

Click the icon above to merge multiple cells into one or to split one cell into two. To merge cells drag your cursor across multiple cells to select them and then the merge cells option will be available. To split cells, place your cursor in the cell that you'd like to split.

CELL BACKGROUND COLOR

Click this icon to set a color for the selected cell's background color.

VERTICALLY ALIGN TEXT

Click this icon to align text in one or more cells in three different ways.

HORIZONTALLY ALIGN TEXT

Click this icon to align text in one or more cells in three different ways.

CELL HIGHLIGHT OPTION

Click the above icon to open up options for highlighting one or more cells with a red outline, either thin or thick.

Image

Add a previously uploaded image to your page. Or upload the image first and then select it to use it as image on your page. Read all about how you do this and what image formats are supported in the media section in the explanation of the designer.

Properties

You can configure the element using the following properties:

And finally there are a number of generic app properties that you can configure that you'll find on many other elements as well.

Unsplash And Pexels

Free stock photos can be directly downloaded from Unsplash and Pexels by going to the tab of either of these services and browsing or searching for a photo you like. Note that search can currently only be done in English. Once you've selected a photo with the Use this image button, the photo will be uploaded to your own image catalog and be added to your page.

Video

Add a previously uploaded video to your page. Or upload the video first and then select it to use it as video on your page. Read all about how you do this and what image formats are supported in the media section in the explanation of the designer.

Processing After Upload

Web browsers cannot play all video formats: all of them support mp4 and most of them webm. If you upload your video in one of these formats, you can use it right away in your SmartSign2go page. A thumbnail of the video will be created in a few minutes.

If you upload the video in any other format, you need to wait for SmartSign2go to convert it into a format that's usable on the web, which will take some time (on average about twice the duration of the video). You don't have to wait for this to finish: you can add the video to your page and continue working. In this conversion the video will be set to a maximum resolution of 1920x1080 (Full HD) when you have a SmartSign2go Advantage subscription and 3820x2160 (4K) if you have an Enterprise subscription.

If conversion of your video fails or you like to convert your own videos to mp4 yourself before uploading, then we recommend using the free tool Handbrake.

Properties

You can configure the element using the following properties:

And finally there are a number of generic app properties that you can configure that you'll find on many other elements as well.

News

The News app pulls news from the RSS feed of your favorite news site. We have preconfigured several news sources from several countries.

When the app style is set to "single article" then each time the page is shown again during playback, the app advances to the next available article.

If you're missing your favorite news source, or maybe even your country, then there's two things you can do:

1. send us a quick e-mail to ask us to add that news source to the app
2. find the RSS web address of the missing new source and use the RSS Feed app to display the news through that

Properties

You can configure the app using the following properties:

And finally there are a number of generic app properties that you can configure that you'll find on many other elements as well.

The image size is relative to the app size. Drag the app bigger to get a bigger image. Adjust the text size accordingly to get the mix that you like.

RSS Feed

The RSS Feed app lets you include any standards compliant RSS feed into your page. This is convenient to pull in news from news sources that are not available in the News app. But obviously you can pull in all kinds of feed data, like traffic reports, updates from your own website, etc.

Once you click on one of the feeds, like the one below, you will be taken to a page that looks like code. This XML-based page is what you want for the RSS app. Simply copy the web address (URL) into the app. Once you've done that you can click refresh in the app a couple times to view what the latest posts are. 

https://www.nasa.gov/rss/dyn/breaking_news.rss

Remember that there has to be information available from your chosen feed, which isn't always the case. So if you add a feed and nothing shows up then most likely you just need to wait until the owner of the website publishes a new article.

When the app style is set to "single article" then each time the page is shown again during playback, the app advances to the next available article.

Properties

You can configure the app using the following properties:

And finally there are a number of generic app properties that you can configure that you'll find on many other elements as well.

The image size is relative to the app size. Drag the app bigger to get a bigger image. Adjust the text size accordingly to get the mix that you like.

Slideshow

The Slideshow app lets you select a folder in your image catalog. It will flip through all images in the selected folder with the selected interval.

You can drag the app to the desired size. Images will always be fitted into this app's outline. So this way you're free to mix landscape and portrait pictures and keep them within the necessary bounds.

Properties

You can configure the app using the following properties:

And finally there are a number of generic app properties that you can configure that you'll find on many other elements as well.

My Data

The My Data app lets you enter your own text and have that be treated the same way as a news feed or RSS feed. It lets you split your text into individual "messages" that can then be shown like an individual news article or in sequence in the shape of a ticker.

When the app style is set to "single article" then each time the page is shown again during playback, the app advances to the next available message.

Next to entering your text directly in the My Data app, you can also have the app retrieve your text from a text file you placed somewhere on the internet or from Dropbox.

Properties

You can configure the app using the following properties:

And finally there are a number of generic app properties that you can configure that you'll find on many other elements as well.

Extra Text Formatting

In your text you can use asterisks to display text in italics and bold:

• *: anything between a pair of single asterisks is formatted as italic text
• **: anything between a pair of double asterisks is formatted as bold text
• ***: anything between a pair of triple asterisks is formatted as bold italic text

Custom Column Formatting In Tickers

When you decide to split your text into columns for a ticker, you can also define your own custom format. This is essentially just a string of text in which the following characters have special meaning:

• c1, c2, c3, ..., cX: is replaced by the contents of column number X. The first column is referred to as c1, the second c2, etc.
• *, ** en ***: for extra text formatting, as described above

For example, applying the format ***c1*** (*c2*) - c3 to the text columns My title;My subtitle;My message will yield the following result: My title (My subtitle) - My message

When you decide to split your text into columns for a ticker, you can also define your own custom format. 

This is essentially just a string of text in which the following characters have special meaning:

• *: anything between a pair of single asterisks is formatted as italic text
• **: anything between a pair of double asterisks is formatted as bold text
• ***: anything between a pair of triple asterisks is formatted as bold italic text
• c1, c2, c3, ..., cX: is replaced by the contents of column number X. The first column is referred to as c1, the second c2, etc.

For example:

 Applying the above formatting ***c1*** *c2* - c3 to the text columns with "Column 1, Column 2, Column 3" typed into the "lines of text" field will yield the following ticker: 

You can instead choose from predefined styling options:

So, for example, if you would like the text in your ticker to be formatted with the first column in bold, the next column in italic and the next in normal font then choose one of the Bold>Italic>Normal options. Hit the curly arrow button to preview what the ticker will look like on your TV!

Weather

The Weather app shows the weather forecast for a particular location (city/village). You can either show hourly forecasts or daily forecasts. In case of a daily forecast, the maximum temperature for each day is shown in a large font and the minimum temperature is shown in a small font beneath that.

Time and date formats depend on the content language setting on the company settings page.

Properties

You can configure the app using the following properties:

And finally there are a number of generic app properties that you can configure that you'll find on many other elements as well.

Time

Display the current time of the configured location on your screen. Or configure a timer to countdown to a specific date and time.

The time format depends on the content language setting on the company settings page.

Properties

You can configure the app using the following properties:

And finally there are a number of generic app properties that you can configure that you'll find on many other elements as well.

Date

Display today's date of the configured location on your screen.

The date format depends on the content language setting on the company settings page.

Properties

You can configure the app using the following properties:

And finally there are a number of generic app properties that you can configure that you'll find on many other elements as well.

Birthdays

Display the name(s) of all people whose birthday it is today.

When first adding this app, click on the Birthdays button to open the birthdays editor. This is a table in which you fill out the names and dates of birth of all the people you want to congratulate via your channel.

If you have a two-column spreadsheet with names and dates that you like to paste int the birthdays editor, you can do that by copying that table from your spreadsheet (Ctrl+C (Windows/Linux) or ⌘+C (MacOS)) and pasting it into the birthdays table with shortcut key Ctrl+V (Windows/Linux) or ⌘+V (MacOS).

Upon playback, the app will show the name of the first person whose birthday it is today. The next time the app is shown, the name of the second person is shown, and so forth. When all birthdays have been shown, the app will start again from the beginning. If it's nobody's birthday today, the app will show "...". We actually recommend enabling the Skip page when this app is empty option to make sure the page with the Birthdays app is not shown at all when there are no current birthdays.

Properties

You can configure the app using the following properties:

And finally there are a number of generic app properties that you can configure that you'll find on many other elements as well.

Calendar

Display a Google or Microsoft Office365 Outlook calendar.

The date and time formats depend on the content language setting on the company settings page.

Properties

You can configure the app using the following properties:

And finally there are a number of generic app properties that you can configure that you'll find on many other elements as well.

Twitter

Show the latest tweets from yourself, from the people you follow, with a certain hashtag or matching advanced search criteria.

During playback, each time the page is shown again, the app advances to the next available tweet (depending on the exact configuration).

Properties

You can configure the app using the following properties:

And finally there are a number of generic app properties that you can configure that you'll find on many other elements as well.

Facebook

Show the latest Facebook posts from your personal or company's timeline.

During playback, each time the page is shown again, the app advances to the next available post (depending on the exact configuration).

Properties

You can configure the app using the following properties:

And finally there are a number of generic app properties that you can configure that you'll find on many other elements as well.

Yammer

Show the latest Yammer posts you have access to.

During playback, each time the page is shown again, the app advances to the next available post (depending on the exact configuration).

Properties

You can configure the app using the following properties:

And finally there are a number of generic app properties that you can configure that you'll find on many other elements as well.

The app can only offer up to 50 groups to select from. If the group you need is not in the list, then we recommend setting up a dedicated Yammer account for SmartSign2go that only has access to the relevant group(s).

LinkedIn

Show the latest LinkedIn updates from your company.

During playback, each time the page is shown again, the app advances to the next available post (depending on the exact configuration).

Properties

You can configure the app using the following properties:

And finally there are a number of generic app properties that you can configure that you'll find on many other elements as well.

Instagram

Show the latest Instagram pictures from yourself.

During playback, each time the page is shown again, the app advances to the next available picture (depending on the exact configuration).

Properties

You can configure the app using the following properties:

And finally there are a number of generic app properties that you can configure that you'll find on many other elements as well.

Instagram Hashtags

Show the latest Instagram pictures with a certain hashtag.

During playback, each time the page is shown again, the app advances to the next available picture (depending on the exact configuration).

Instagram Business Account

This functionality used to be available as part of the regular Instagram app, but for security reasons, Facebook (owner of Instagram) has moved this into their ecosystem. As a result you need to setup an Instagram Business account or change your current Instagram account to a business account. Step 1 in this tutorial tells you how to do this. Next you also need to link that Instagram account to a Facebook page of which you are an administrator as described here.

Properties

You can configure the app using the following properties:

And finally there are a number of generic app properties that you can configure that you'll find on many other elements as well.

QR Code

The QR Code app allows you to display any text as a QR code. If you enter a web address (URL), the app will try to shorten the address to keep the QR code as simple as possible.

Properties

You can configure the app using the following properties:

And finally there are a number of generic app properties that you can configure that you'll find on many other elements as well.

Maps & Traffic

The Maps & Traffic app lets you add a Google Map to your page and focus on a certain area. In addition you can enable live traffic information on your map.

Properties

You can configure the app using the following properties:

When selected, most of the map is overlaid with a semi-transparent layer that allows you to position the app on the canvas. But on the left hand side there is a little space left open to both move the map and set the desired zoom level.

And finally there are a number of generic app properties that you can configure that you'll find on many other elements as well.

Web Page

The Web Page app lets you embed a web page in your SmartSign2go page. This web page will always be retrieved directly from the device on which the SmartSign2go page is shown. So this also enables you to show web pages that are only accessible from within your own (company) network.

Properties

You can configure the app using the following properties:

In addition, when you select the Web Page element, it will show vertical and horizontal scroll bars with which you can position the web page within the app such that it only displays the part that you like.

Note that browsers do not always display web pages exactly the same. We therefore recommend to use the same browser for configuring the Web page app in your SmartSign2go page as you use for playing your channel. For all apps (ChromeOS, Android and Plug 'N Playr) this is Google Chrome.

Some web pages vertically center their content, like a Google Presentation or a Microsoft Office365 Powerpoint presentation. If you leave the web page height set to the default value of 3000, that content will be invisible at first. Be sure to reduce the web page height to match the actual height of the app to see that content.

And finally there are a number of generic app properties that you can configure that you'll find on many other elements as well.

Potential security issues

Security on the internet is an ever present concern and browser manufacturers constantly add new restrictions to ensure maximum security while the user browses the internet. This unfortunately also makes it ever harder to include one web page in another; in this case in a SmartSign2go page. We'll address the most common restrictions that you might run into with the Web Page app.

Web page does not allow embedding

Website owners have the ability to prevent their site from being embedded in another web page. In that case SmartSign2go is also unable to display that web page and the app will remain blank. If you yourself are owner of that specific website, then make sure that on your web server, the following is configured:

• Header Content-Security-Policy should either not be set or at least be set to frame-ancestors 'self' http://playr.biz http://*.playr.biz https://playr.biz https://*.playr.biz.
• Header X-Frame-Options should not be set. Note that setting the ALLOW-FROM option will not work, as documented by Mozilla.

Web page requires storing cookies

The best way to show a web page that requires storing of cookies is to:

• use the safe URL to the web page (the URL starts with https://) and
• in the company settings page check the Enforce playback over HTTPS option

Until version 94 of Google Chrome it is possible to show a web page in SmartSign2go that requires storing of cookies by starting the browser using the option --disable-features=SameSiteByDefaultCookies,CookiesWithoutSameSiteMustBeSecure. This is, however, only a temporary "work around"; please use the solution described above.

Cookie warnings

Some websites will show a cookie warning. There are two ways to deal with this:

1. Leave the warning in place and just scroll it out of view. This will immediately work on the playback device as well.
2. Accept the cookie warning on the machine you are managing your content on. But then the same warning will show up on your playback device. You will need to accept the cookie warning on your playback device as well.

Accepting cookies on your playback device

1. Make sure you have registered your playback device.
2. On the edit page of the registered playback device fill in the web address of the website it concerns in the Go to web address (instead of channel) field and save.
3. Connect a mouse to your playback device and restart it.
4. When the website is shown on the playback device, accept the cookie warning.
5. On the edit page of the registered playback device remove the web address again from the Go to web address (instead of channel) field and save.
6. Remove the mouse from your playback device and restart it.

Logging in to a website

Showing the content of a website that requires you to log in is practically only possible if you can select to stay logged in forever on that site. In that case, you must first log in to the relevant website from the playback device, indicating that you want to stay logged in forever. To do this, follow the exact same procedure as described above for accepting cookies on your playback device.

There are certain situations where it can be difficult to get a page to reliably refresh. In those cases, here are some tricks:

How to force a refresh for stubborn web pages

1. The first thing to attempt is to add ?ABC=123 to the end of the URL (web address) that you're trying to display. This should force the browser to refresh. For example: http://www.myserver.com/soms/path/image.png?ABC=123

2. This next trick is most useful for getting a single image to refresh. For example, let's say that you want to be able to upload an image to a web server and have it automatically display on the signage and also have it automatically refresh if you change the image.

Upload the image to your server. Let's assume that your image is labeled as image.png

Next upload this HTML file to the server in the same folder as the image (right click this link and choose "save link as". image.html This file contains a small bit of javascript code that references the "image.png" file. If your image will be named something else or is an image format other than .png then you'll need to modify the html page accordingly using a text editor such as Windows Notepad.

Finally, inside the SmartSign2go design portal you will want to use the Web Page app to display the image.html page, which in turn will import the photo for you. Now if you upload a new image with the same name as the original image, then it will automatically refresh.

Keep in mind that the page will refresh EVERY time it loads and so it is good to keep the image size as small as possible to limit bandwidth usage. You can extend the time that the page is displayed to reduce the number of times the page is refreshed in a day.

Price list

With the Price list app, you can easily create a table of products with a title, description, price and "sub-price". You can format each of these four product fields individually. Each item then takes on this style, allowing you to create a uniformly formatted table in no time.

Properties

This app has a couple of properties that can be configured for the entire table and a couple that can be configured for each individual item property.

Table properties

You can configure the app using the following properties:

There are also a number of generic app properties that you can configure that you'll find on many other elements as well.

Product field properties

When you select one of the product fields in the price list, you will get to configure the following style properties for all fields of the same type:

When editing the text, you can press TAB to move to the next table cell or Shift + TAB to move to the previous table cell. If you press TAB when you are in the last table cell, a new product will be added to the table. You can also add and remove products by using the buttons in the property box.

YouTube

The YouTube app is only available in Advantage and Enterprise subscriptions.

Add a YouTube video to your page, by simply copying and pasting the web address (URL) of the video.

YouTube video owners can turn on ads to be shown in their videos. Unfortunately these will also show in the bottom of the SmartSign2go YouTube app. If you yourself are the video owner, make sure you disable ads in YouTube itself for the best viewing experience.

Properties

You can configure the app using the following properties:

And finally there are a number of generic app properties that you can configure that you'll find on many other elements as well.

Specifying multiple videos

When using the web address of a video contained in a playlist (copying the web address of a video that is part of a playlist) or of a playlist (copying the web address of the page of a playlist in YouTube) the YouTube app will assume the intention is to play all videos in the playlist. The Properties of the YouTube app will show an informational message when this is the case. The playlist part of the web address can easily be identified. It is the part of the web address that starts with 'list=' followed by a code consiting of letters, numbers and dashes or underscores. It ends at a '&' or the end of the web address.

When multiple videos are specified in the web address field these videos are all played from the start of the list to the last video in the list each being played from start to finish. When the whole list has been played, playback is resumed from the first video in the list.

If it is not your intention to play the videos of a playlist and only want to play one video; make sure to remove the 'list=playlist-id' part of the web address. Please note that you do not remove the '&' following the playlist ID since that is not part of the playlist ID. Make sure the web address contains a 'v=' followed by a code consisting of letters, numbers, dashes or underscores. This part of the web address specifies the video you want to show. If you have questions about this subject please contact support@smartsign2go.com" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(22, 148, 202);">our support.

Vimeo

The Vimeo app is only available in Advantage and Enterprise subscriptions.

Add a Vimeo video to your page, by simply copying and pasting the web address (URL) of the video.

Properties

You can configure the app using the following properties:

And finally there are a number of generic app properties that you can configure that you'll find on many other elements as well.

Streaming Audio

The Streaming Audio app is only available in Advantage and Enterprise subscriptions.

With the Streaming Audio app, you can play a wide variety of web radio stations directly from your SmartSign2go page. We have already selected and categorized a great number of popular radio stations for you to pick from. But if you like, you can also play another radio station of your choice, if you know its web address. Also, there are a number of websites that list thousands of these radio station URL's or allow you to search for them, such as:

• http://www.radiosure.com/stations (use the search box)
• https://www.radio-browser.info/#!/ (use the search box)
• http://www.hendrikjansen.nl/henk/streaming.html

The app icon you see only serves as a placeholder in the designer and will not be visible during playback.

If you like to play background music in your entire playlist, we recommend using the background music setting of a playlist instead.

Properties

You can configure the app using the following properties:

And finally there are a number of generic app properties that you can configure that you'll find on many other elements as well.

Supported Audio Formats

If you use your own web address, you should be aware that not all browsers support the same audio formats. To be 100% sure that a certain stream works on a specific playback device, we recommend you simply test it. Here's an overview of the known supported formats per major web browser (latest version):

Monitoring

The Monitoring app is only available in the Enterprise subscription.

The Monitoring app lets you play multiple SmartSign2go channels in a grid within one page. This allows you to monitor the content that is currently being played in one or more channels at a glance.

This app is also convenient in certain video wall setups. Say you have one computer and 4 screens next to each other. You have one super wide browser window stretched across all screens. Now create a channel with a single page with just one Monitoring app across the full width, which shows 4 channels in a row. That is the channel that you set to play in the super wide browser window. The channels within the Monitoring app can now be designed for regular (individual) screens.

Channels played within a monitoring app do not count towards the allowed number of screens in your subscription. Only the main channel that plays the page with the monitoring app is counted.

Properties

You can configure the app using the following properties:

And finally there are a number of generic app properties that you can configure that you'll find on many other elements as well.

CAP Alert

The CAP Alert app is only available in the Enterprise tier subscription and on the emergency alert page.

The CAP Alert app lets you display one or more CAP alert messages that are avaible on the configured web address in the CAP XML format. A CAP alert typically contains 1 or more messages (stored in info blocks). These can be different messages or the same message in different languages. When active in a channel, the app will show these messages one after the other with an interval of 30 seconds. In the designer you can cycle through these yourself using the refresh button next to the Web address of CAP service.

Properties

You can configure the app using the following properties:

And finally there are a number of generic app properties that you can configure that you'll find on many other elements as well.

Custom Apps

Custom apps are only available in the Enterprise tier subscription.

Even though SmartSign2go provides out-of-the-box support for displaying content from many online sources on your TV screen, there are still so many more sources that you might want to pull data from and present that on your TV screen in a nicely formatted way. This can easily be achieved by creating your custom app for such a source.

App Availability Per Dashboard

When you create a custom app it will be available on all dashboards by default. From the custom app overview you can select the On dashboards option for a particular custom app to configure on what dashboards it should be available.

Creating Custom Apps

In the settings section, click Custom apps in the column on the right hand side to access the list of own apps that you have created. You can add and edit your own apps and remove existing ones, provided that they are not currently in use.

The way it works is that you write your own Transformation logic in the Javascript programming language to transform the data from your source into one or more "articles". An "article" is much like a news article and can be shown either one at a time upon each new page transition or as a ticker of multiple consecutive articles.

Base Properties

You start by configuring a number of base properties. Some of these are core to the app and its structure, which means that they cannot be changed by the end user when he/she uses the app in the designer. Other base properties can be changed by the end user and the values you configure here will be the app's default values in the designer.

Advanced Options

The advanced options section provides you with a couple of specific parameters that you might need to get your app to work correctly.