This first set of recommendations applies to all types of subscriptions.
Within Hi-Def Signage you can create as many dashboards as you like. A dashboard is a fully autonomous container of content. If you like to give different departments in your organization control of their content, then creating a dashboard per department is the way to go.
Along with that, it is advisable to create user accounts that only have permission to access content on a specific dashboard.
In most organisations the goal is to combine (part of) the content of different departments onto the screens. Combining content can be done in several ways. The way that seems the easiest at the start may lead to extra work in maintaining and organising that content later. We advise organisation to share and combine content in the form of playlists (not pages).
For combining content it is best to use a separate dashboard to combine the content of the different departments into channels that can be used throughout the organisation. It is also possible to combine the content on the dashboard of a specific department as long as it is clear to all which department is responsible for combining the content.
Combining content using playlists goes as follows:
We advise the strategy of combining content in the form of playlists to enable;
When using these tips together with creating a uniform style using background pages (see next paragraph) you can very efficiently create and manage professional-looking content even for large organisations.
To enforce the use of a uniform company style across all pages, it is wise to use background pages for all of your content pages. By default, users will always have to manually select the proper background page of a newly added blank page. This can be easy to forget or tedious to do. To get the proper background page from the get-go, there are two alternative options:
If your company uses Google or Microsoft user accounts for many/all services, then you might want to use those for Hi-Def Signage too. The great benefit is that the user can simply log in with her/his Google/Microsoft credentials. When the employee leaves the company, you only need to disable her/his Google/Microsoft user account to prevent her/him from logging into Hi-Def Signage in the future.
If you don't want all users to be able to publish content without supervision, then you can restrict publish permissions by giving users the author role. With this role, they can update content, but when they save it, it will be saved as a draft. A user with an editor or company administrator role needs to approve the draft before it is/can be published.
To prevent a user from accidentally moving key elements around on a page when using the designer, you can enable the option Lock elements by default in your company settings. This way, when a user edits a page, none of the existing elements can be moved or resized by default. Only when the user explicitly unlocks the page can the elements be moved and resized again.
In your company settings, you can predefine a set of colors that will be offered to the user when she/he opens a color picker in the designer. By setting this to the colors that match your corporate identity, it becomes a lot easier for your users to pick the right colors.
Channels can be played simply by visiting their unique channel playback address, e.g. http://login.hidefsignage.com/1234/5678. As a result, configuring a playback device is as simple as setting the web browser to open this playback address.
However, we recommend taking one extra step during setup and that is to register your playback device. You do this by configuring the web browser to open http://login.hidefsignage.com/play. Only the first time will you see a registration code, with which you register the device in the Players section of the company settings. Subsequently, you can configure which channel should be shown on that playback device. The nice thing is that this enables you to conveniently switch channels later if you so require.
In addition, you can configure several other options for that particular playback device, like its time zone (so that it properly applies content schedules), its content language (so that it displays things like dates and times in the appropriate format) and its content read speed.
If you do not want just anyone to play your channel content (if they have somehow managed to get hold of your channel playback address), then go to your company settings and set the option Allow playback on something other than All devices. That way you can only play a channel from devices that are registered through the procedure described above.
A Pro subscription is very much tailored for use in larger organizations/enterprises. If you have a Pro subscription, the next recommendations are for you.
Next to adding a blank page, the user can also choose to start with a copy from the "sample pages" collection. However, these sample pages are quite generic. Instead, you might want to create your collection of company-specific sample pages (or "templates") which a user can choose from. You can start a company template collection by creating one or more pages that you like to share in this manner and then selecting the Share option on the page on the dashboard. Select Share within my company to add this page to your company template collection. You can even restrict this page to only be shared with users who work in a particular language.
To fully enforce the use of company templates, be sure to go to your company settings and enable the option User cannot add blank page when there are company templates. This way the Add button in the page section will open the company template collection for a user to choose from, instead of adding a blank page to the dashboard.
Also, note on the company settings page the option that says When copying a page with background page from another dashboard. This allows you to select one of two options:
In short: be sure to choose the option that matches the procedures that you have agreed upon with all departments.
If you have a corporate style guide, then one or more company fonts are most probably also a part of that. As a Pro user you have the option to upload your fonts and selectively enable and disable certain system fonts. This way you offer your user optimal guidance towards picking the right font when creating content.
Hi-Def Signage comes with several apps to access online services and display their data. Chances are that there are specific data sources that you like to request data from to display on your screens in a way you prefer. With a Pro subscription you can create custom apps, that access JSON or XML data, which you can then transform into individually formatted articles or a horizontal ticker.
Mixin functionality allows you to set a playlist to interrupt the regular playback of one or more channels on different Dashboards every X minutes playing its content. These channels do not have to be on the same dashboard as the mixed-in playlist. This makes it ideal for pushing content managed by a central department to channels on dashboards that are managed by other departments or local branches.
Learn how to use mixins for efficient management of content that is relevant to the whole of the organisation.
In the Players section of your company settings, you can always see at a glance what playback devices are currently playing and which ones are not. That requires a user to actively watch the list to "monitor" these devices.
Instead, you can choose to create an activity monitor, which will monitor if playback devices are active when they are supposed to be. When they are not, you will receive an email message listing the devices that are currently unexpectedly offline.
As an additional layer of security on top of or instead of "only playback content on registered players", we enable Pro users to only allow content to be played from a specific IP-address or IP-address range. This can be configured in your company settings.