Does data-set auto update? Suggestion of alternative solution

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1

I’m currently looking into using Xibo in our school to display teacher absences and subsequent effects for the students.

This is in essence a table of about 5 columns. One of these columns can contain quite a bit of text.
The table is generated by our online ‘school management’ system (and published through a browser, but that is another problem.
This system is update throughout the morning. Sometimes information is added during the day. The system automatically updates the webpage with the table.
Currently, our administration’s office prints out a new paper version in threefold and tapes it up in different places around the school after every change to the content.

Of all the options I found on the support pages and the forum, I think I have most control using a dataset. Can you only manually upload a new csv? Or does this happen every time the dataset is called upon?

The documentation mentions custom tasks. Could a custom task be written to do this update?

If I take a step back: is dataset the best option?
Other options would be, in my opinion:

  • website module: this works, but I’m afraid that not everything will fit on the screen(s) or that it gets scaled down reducing readibility.
  • Embed, with a script to scroll to the end of the page. Have only looked at this for a few minutes.

Thank you for any advice.

2

Assuming that you do not want to touch dataSets directly in CMS or manually import .csv file.
Then for now, I think I’d suggest to try the webpage module if those information are published this way and accessible to all players over network/internet.

Embedded html with custom js to scroll it might work as well, if that would be required.

If you’d have your .csv imported to DataSet then, changes could be made directly in the dataSet - and that would be automatically pulled by the players according to ticker/dataSet view module update interval.

Alternatively, if you do not want to make changes in dataSets (directly in CMS), then you could either manually import .csv when needed to the dataSet or perhaps try to create an API call to do that for you.
I guess it could have a task attached to it to run it at a predefined times as well.

Regarding API - that’s 1.8 series only, at least in a more reliable way, I don’t remember if 1.7 API covered this function.

3

Thank you for a fast and complete reply.

I’ll try and run a test with the webpage module for now and see from there.