Digital Signage Specifications - Law

Digital signage configuration and content is managed at the College of Law with the Four Winds Interactive signage product.  The live content types – including the text crawl, events listing, and headlines – can be edited directly, without making changes to the content management system.  Posters uploads require interacting with the content management system in order to set them to appear and disappear as desired.

Dimensions

• Width x Height in pixels
• Quote Panel  (item location: all\MultimediaLibrary\Digital Signage\02 - Image Regions\Left Panel)
  • 409x814
• Left Photo  (item location: all\MultimediaLibrary\Digital Signage\02 - Image Regions\PhotosL)
  • 307x444
• Right Photo  (item location: all\MultimediaLibrary\Digital Signage\02 - Image Regions\PhotosR)
  • 374x444
• Poster
  • 629x814

Live Content

Text Crawl

The text crawl at top consists of two elements, Title and Text.

Title must be updated with the help of the IT department.

Text is a simple .txt file available at G:\Law-Filer\ALL\MultimediaLibrary\Digital Signage\01 - Live Text Regions\Ticker Text.txt

Today's Events

The Today's Events panel rotates with the Recent Headlines panel every 30 seconds, and consists of a .csv file which can be edited in Excel.  Only events which correspond with today's date will be displayed.  This allows older events to expire, and future events to be added in advance, without the need to edit the file each day.  The signage system references this file once every minute, to allow for quick updates.

The file can be accessed and edited at G:\Law-Filer\ALL\MultimediaLibrary\Digital Signage\01 - Live Text Regions\Today's Events.csv

The column headers (date, time, location, and description) are critical and should not be changed.

Enter the date using format MM/DD/YY.  The Time, Location, and Description fields will be displayed as written.

If no events match today's date, this region will not appear.

Recent Headlines

The Recent Headlines panel rotates with the Today's Events panel every 30 seconds, and consists of a .csv file which can be edited in Excel.   This file has two columns, End Date and Headline.  The End Date allows headlines to expire without needing to edit the file to take down a headline.   The signage system references this file once every minute, to allow for quick updates.

The file can be accessed and edited at G:\Law-Filer\ALL\MultimediaLibrary\Digital Signage\01 - Live Text Regions\Recent Headlines.csv

Photo Regions

The photo regions accept images at the precise dimensions below.  Images added to the listed folders will appear automatically on the digital signage.

• Width x Height in pixels
• Quote Panel  (item location: all\MultimediaLibrary\Digital Signage\02 - Image Regions\Left Panel)
  • 409x814
• Left Photo  (item location: all\MultimediaLibrary\Digital Signage\02 - Image Regions\PhotosL)
  • 307x444
• Right Photo  (item location: all\MultimediaLibrary\Digital Signage\02 - Image Regions\PhotosR)
  • 374x444
    
    

Posters

Overview

All posters should be 629x814 px, which corresponds to the default export size of a letter-sized word file converted to .pdf.  The software will dynamically resize content that does not meet this standard, which can result in odd borders.

This region can accept common image files or PDFs. 

Uploading new posters

Posters are uploaded using the signage content management system.  While the process appears to be long, it can be performed quite quickly with practice.

• Visit https://4winds-cmx.syr.edu/CMWeb/ and log in with NetID and password.
• In the content library section, expand the Law folder and the 00 - Law Signage folders.
• Right-click the 00 - Posters folder and select Add New Content.
• In the popup that appears, select Image or PDF as necessary.
• Select and upload file
  • Next to the Location field is a button with an upward-pointing arrow.  Click this to set up the document upload. 
  • Browse to select the file.
  • In the Directory field, enter "\\law-filesrv-05.ad.syr.edu\all\MultimediaLibrary\Digital Signage\00 - Posters" without quotations (to save time, it may be helpful to copy and paste this info from a text file).  Enter your NetID and password, and select Upload.
• Set start and end times
  • Click the ellipsis button next to Suggested Recurrence.
    
    • This panel allows complex appearance behaviors to be set.  Generally, we need only to set the end date.
  • Set start date if desired (start date defaults to today's date).
  • Click the radio button next to End by, then select the day after the event date or the final date during which you want the poster to appear.
    • The item will now stop displaying at midnight on the selected day.
  • Click OK
• In the Duration field, highlight the default 30 seconds and set it to 15 seconds.
• Click OK
• Repeat the steps above for each new item you wish to enter
  • the Directory field during the upload step will remain filled for this session
• Deploy changes
  • Click the rocket icon at the top of the window
  • Under the Select Target dropdown, navigate to Law > Dineen Hall > Non-Library location
  • Click Deploy
  • IMPORTANT:  If you do not deploy your changes, they will not take effect.  The changes will also not take effect, and will not be saved, if you log out or allow the page to time out without first deploying.

Adding poster content to accessible website

• To comply with ADA rules, it is mandatory to add all poster content to the accessible digital signage website, which is compatible with screen readers and other tools for those with accessibility needs.
• Visit http://digitalsign.law.syr.edu/admin and log in with NetID and password.
• In the left menu, hover over Posts and select "Add New"
• Add a relevant title for the post.
• Exactly transcribe (or, if the poster is a PDF, copy and paste) the text of the poster.
• In the "Post Expirator" menu on the righthand side, add the date after the evnet date or the final date during which you want the poster to appear.
• Click "Publish"