Multiple Time Ranges for Playlists & New Notifications

We have recently made some updates to Venus Control Suite to help improve your experience in the software. Before you go on to read the rest of this post, be sure to check out our last post on Software Updates because most of what we’ll be talking about today is a continuation of those updates. […]

Daktronics Commercial Software Training on 1/24/2018

Categories: Venus Control Suite Training

We have recently made some updates to Venus Control Suite to help improve your experience in the software. Before you go on to read the rest of this post, be sure to check out our last post on Software Updates because most of what we’ll be talking about today is a continuation of those updates.

Multiple Playlist Time Constraints

Now that you’re all caught up, we can begin! Let me ask you a question. Have you ever needed to schedule the same message or playlist to play for a specific time period each day?

For example, a restaurant may want to schedule all of their breakfast messages to play between 6:00 a.m. and 10:00 a.m in the morning.  But, what if that same restaurant decided they wanted to start offering a late-night breakfast menu for all the night owls out there?

Before today, that restaurant would have had to create an additional breakfast playlist, add in all the breakfast messages to it, and then schedule it to play from 12:00 a.m to 2:00 a.m. Otherwise, they would have had to apply custom constraints to every single file in their breakfast playlist. Sure, both of these options are doable, but we decided to make it even easier!

Now, all they have to do is add another Time Range to the breakfast playlist and that’s it! So, if you ever want to schedule a playlist to play during multiple specific times each day, just follow the instructions below and then use all the extra time you just saved to do something fun!

    1. Log into Venus Control Suite.
      Log in
    2. Click on the Playlists tab in the Main Menu.
      Main Menu
    3. Click ‘Add New’ or double-click on an existing Playlist.
      Add New Playlist
    4. Click on the ‘Daily Time Range’ button on the top of the page. It looks like a clock.
      Clock
    5. In the ‘Set Playlist Properties’ window, click on ‘Set Custom Time Range.’
      Inherited from display
    6. Under ‘Daily Start Time’ type in when you want the playlist to initially start.
    7. Under ‘Daily End Time,’ type in when you want the playlist to stop for the first time.
      Dailt Start and End Time
    8. Click on the ‘3 dots and down arrow’ located to the right of the ‘Daily End Time.’
    9. Choose ‘Add Time Range.’
      dots and down arrow
    10. Under ‘Daily Start Time,’ type in the time that you would like the Playlist to start playing again.
    11. Under ‘Daily End Time,’ type in the time that you would like the playlist to stop playing this time.
      Second time range
    12. Repeat steps 8-11 until you have your playlist scheduled to play for all the specific times you would like it to play for each day.
    13. Click the blue Confirm button.
      Confirm
    14. Make sure you Add a Display and Add Media files to your Playlist and then click the blue Save button.
      Save

Trainer Tip: You can add up to 24 time ranges to any Playlist or individual Media File within a Playlist. Once you reach 24 time ranges, you will receive a notification that the maximum number of time constraints has been reached.  You can remove a Time Range by clicking on the ‘3 dots and down arrow’ next to the Time Range and choosing ‘Remove Time Range.’

Max allowed time ranges

Additional New Notification Added

Another new notification that you may see going forward is a Confirmation Message Dialog that will pop up if you modify your media associations.  “If you remove access to shared media, the media will no longer appear in the media library or playlists for the accounts that previously had access to the media.”

To remove a media file that is shared with a child (sub) account, complete the following steps:

  1. Click on the Media Management button in the Media Library.
    Media Management button
  2. Click on the Arrow button next to the Account you want to stop sharing your media with.
    Media Management Window
  3. Remove the checkmark(s) next to the content that you want to stop sharing.  You Will then see the new notification appear at the bottom of the Media Management window.
    Unshare
  4. Click Confirm.

Trainer Tip:  The Media Management button allows you to manage all the media for each of your accounts, rather than having to click on individual media files one at a time. If you do not see the Media Management button, then your media is automatically being shared down to all of your child accounts.

If you want to be able to choose which account you share each media file with, then you can go to Settings in the Main Menu, click on Account and switch your Media Management Mode to Manual.

Media Management Mode

Manual Mode

Arimo is the new Default Font in Content Studio

We previously posted that in the Web Compositor the “Arial” font has been replaced with a font named “Arimo.” These two fonts are very similar, so you shouldn’t notice any major differences when creating messages. This update has now been applied to Content Studio as well.

Arimo

Any messages that you have previously created using “Arial” will remain in “Arial,” but if you try to edit the messages, you will have to choose a different font to use.

Moving forward, “Arimo” will be the default font selection for all your messages. That just means that you will always start out using “Arimo,” but you can then change it to any other font you want.

If you do not see this update next time you launch Content Studio, please visit Daktronics.com.ContentStudio and download the software again to make sure you have all the latest updates.

Additional Updates

For those of you using Venus Control Suite Pro Ad Grid, we have improved the response time in the ‘Add Sale’ dialog when saving a new sale.

For those of you who have implemented webcam(s) into your Dashboard, the duration of the Webcam monitor on the dashboard was increased to 3 minutes before it needs to be refreshed.

We hope you find these updates helpful! If you ever have any ideas on how we can improve Venus Control Suite, please let us know.

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