Dashboard > Help > Digital Signage > Digital Signage - Slides

Digital Signage - Slides

Overview

This page explains how to maintain the content of your digital signage. Refer to the main Digital Signage page for other related information.

By default, every Display will cycle through all Slides. See: Assigning Slides to Specified Displays

NOTE: Slides created from accounts with Editor access, such as student leaders or other non staff persons, will need to be approved from an account with Administrator access before the content goes live.

The following fields control whether a Slide is currently shown:

To hide, show, or approve multiple slides at once, use the Action Menu.

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Create and Edit Slides

Adding a Slide

  1. Click the + button next to Slides in the App Dashboard.
  2. Enter a slide Title. Pick a descriptive title to help organize your content. This does not appear on the screens.
  3. Unselect Show if you do not want it to be displayed just yet.
  4. Optional: Override the default frame design by making a choice for Template:
    • Full Screen: Sizes your content to fill the screen.

Slide Content

There are a number of ways to provide the Slide content:

Editor

Click Editor to design your Slide right in the Dashboard. Refer to the Editor Guide.

Upload Image/Video/PDF

Images will fit the screens best if they have a 16:9 aspect ratio.

Microsoft Office documents or excessively large video files are not supported.

If you upload video and wish the audio track to be heard, check the Unmute checkbox. If you do not see the Unmute checkbox on the Add/Change Slide page please contact Appazur Support and ask whether this capability is available for your media players.

External URL

You can link to content hosted online, such as:

Click External URL, then:

You can paste in any public or unlisted YouTube video link. The URL will automatically be converted to the required type for embedding in the digital signage.

Calendar

This option will automatically show upcoming events from your public (district or school) calendar(s). Be sure to set a suitable title such as "Upcoming Events", as that will be visible on the displays.

Messages

This option will automatically show recent Messages to All. Be sure to set a suitable title such as "Recent Messages", as that will be visible on the displays.

Twitter

This option will show your latest Tweets, including images.

QR Code

Entering URL to share with your community. Viewers can point their cameras at the screen to browse to that website automatically. Be sure to include the "https://" part. Also be sure to set a suitable title, such as "Please take our survey".

Weather

Choose the number of days of weather information to show. Also be sure to set a suitable title such as "Weather Forecast".

Featured Items

Contact Appazur support if you would like to show content from your website photo carousel.

App Promo

This choice will show a screen with instructions for getting your Appazur mobile app. Be sure to set a suitable title such as "Get the App!". It may also be helpful to change the slide background colour.

Background Color

To choose a different, background color:

Microsoft PowerPoint

We recommend two options for displaying a PowerPoint presentation on your Digital Signage:

  1. Follow our Animation and Powerpoint guide to convert PowerPoint to a video.
  2. Export your slides as images, then upload them as described above.

External Content

Video / YouTube

You can upload video files to the Dashboard as described above, or your media can be hosted on a media server such as YouTube. Follow the instructions above for an External URL. For URL, you can enter a link to a YouTube video.

You can enter any link to a YouTube video like https://youtube.com/... or https://youtu.be/...

Due to YouTube rules, a special "Embed" URL is required, but we'll automatically convert the URL you enter if needed. If you enter the "Embed" URL yourself, you must add "&mute=1". Otherwise, the video will not play when the slide is shown.

If you link to a video and wish the audio track to be heard, check the Unmute checkbox. If you do not see the Unmute checkbox on the Add/Change Slide page please contact Appazur Support and ask whether this capability is available for your media players.

Google Calendar

Want to show a Google Calendar on your Digital Signage?

Note that the calendar must be public for these instructions to work. Contact Support for assistance with using a private calendar.

In Google Calendar, click Calendar Settings for the calendar of interest, and then over to the right of the row labelled Embed this calendar, find a link that says Customise the colour, size and other options. Clicking that link takes you to the Google Embeddable Calendar Helper. Turn off the user interface features that you don't want on your slide:

Then look in the box under Copy and paste the HTML below. The HTML code starts with "<iframe src=". Please contact Support for assistance with extracting the URL from this for your Slide.

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Action Menu

The action menu allows you to make simple changes to one or more slides. Check the checkbox next to each Slide you want to change, pick the action from the menu, and click Go. The actions are:

Slide Order

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Slide Order

To change the sequence of the slides, click on a dotted bar and drag.

Slide Order

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Assigning Slides to Specified Displays

Do you have specific slides to show at the gym, cafeteria, front desk, etc.?

By default, every Display will cycle through all Slides. However, you can also add Slides to Slide Collections, and assign a Slide Collection to each Display, so that a subset of slides can be chosen for each Display.

Examples:

To have a set of Slides displayed only on 2 Displays by the gymnasium:
  1. In the App Dashboard, under Displays, click on the first Display.
  2. Find the Slide Collection field and click in the box. The list of Slide Collections is initially empty. Type "Gymnasium" into the box, then click on the highlighted "Gymnasium" text that appears below. (You are adding the first item to a list of Slide Collections.)
  3. Click Save
  4. Go the second Display. Click in the Slide Collection field. Choose "Gymnasium" from the list and click Save.
  5. Now, the Displays will only show Slides that you add to the "Gymnasium" Slide Collection.
  6. In the App Dashboard, under Slides, edit each Slide that you'd like to include: Click in the Slide Collections field and choose "Gymnasium" from the list that appears. Then click Save.
To have a Slide displayed everywhere, including the gymnasium:

Once you have set the Slide Collection field for a Display, it will only show Slides from a matching Slide Collection. Slides with an empty Slide Collections field will only be shown on Displays with a blank Slide Collection field. However, you can choose multiple Slide Collections for a Slide. Therefore, to have a Slide displayed everywhere, including the "gymnasium", you need to set up a Slide Collection for all of the other displays as well:

  1. For all the non-gymnasium Displays, set the Slide Collection field. You might choose to enter something like "General".
  2. Choose both "Gymnasium" and "General" in the Slide Collections field for the Slide that you want to show everywhere.
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