We have several levels of our lockdown procedure and I was wondering if there was a quick way to schedule specific layouts as a priority? With as few clicks as possible obviously. I can see I could schedule a layout in a Group, but that would require setting the dayparting, the layout, priority etc.
What I am hoping for is the ability to press 1 or 2 buttons to send out this specific layout to all displays until it is manually turned off. Is something like this possible\configurable? Or perhaps a future update?
You could use API (assuming you’re using 1.8 CMS), and call the changeLayout (with long duration) or create a new scheduled event with either always daypart or long toDt.
Then either manually or also via API remove the event from the schedule.
It would be best to have a layout that should be displayed in this case ready and a display group with all your displays as members, so then you could actually do that action in 1-2 clicks if needed.
In short:
Prepare the layout,
Prepare the display group,
Prepare suitable API call (you could even use something like Postman to send it if you don’t want to write a script/ api application for that).
Just having a look a the changeLayout you’ve mentioned. How do I get that as a script? I’ve never used Postman before so I want to try a script before investing time in Postman.
If you are able to provide some basics of what the API call would look like, I can modify it for our stuff.
It is actually based on the Postman, and you can use whichever language you want to write a script that will use this call (just need to remember to get the access_token before you call it). https://xibo.org.uk/manual/en/cms_api.html
It should be called just as form-data ie as in my guide and hopefully as in the collection you downloaded (if it is wrong there, please do let me know).
You may want to provide the duration as well, unless the layout duration is exactly how you want it - basically if you don’t provide the duration parameter in this call, then the layout to which you want to change there will remain on the screen for the layout duration.
As you have it now, when you call the first one, it will change for the layoutId 56, for the full duration of this layout, then go back to “normal” scheduled content on the player.
Ok. I’ve set the Lockdown layout duration, within the CMS, to 3600 seconds so when I run the call, it will display for 1 hour then revert back to the previous layout?
As for the second call, provided it all works with the first one and the layout is not needed for an hour, will it revert back to the normal content when run?
(I work in a school and it’s a little tricky to test these things during the day without freaking people out!)
Yes, assuming that layout id 20 is the “normal” content, then yes it would show that for the layout duration then reload and go back to the schedule (which probably is the same layout).
However if I may, I’d suggest you to simply use this call instead - Swagger UI
ie
Where in my example the the 23 is the displayGroupId on which I want to run it, in your example it would be 18 I believe.
As the name suggest, this call will revert the player to show the scheduled content and remove the layout imposed with changeLayout call.
Oh ok, that looks like it could be better. Do I enter anything into the body or do I just change my group ID in the URL to 18 and it should revert back?
That would be because your access_token for the Postman application has expired, you’d need to get a new one and then use other calls - the token is active for an hour after you request it.
Yeah I tried that after posting that, it did work but I think I’ll need to do some more trialling on it, some TV’s picked it up straight away and some didn’t at all, might be how things are set up here.
Also, is there a way to make the tokens not expire? Or is that a built in function?
