Digital Signage

The Digital Signage module allows you to host your electronic slides on a Brightspot site. You can set the orientation and refresh speed for your slides. You can also connect in to the news and calendar information on your site (or another site) to display it on your signs.

If you don't already have a Brightspot website where you can host your digital signage, request a new site using the online order form.

Connect a Brightspot Sign to a Digital Display

Brightspot digital signage is available as a page on your website. It does not require device registration or anything like that. Your signage display will just need a way to show the web page.

Once you've published your digital signage, you'll be able to see the URL in the sidebar. Clicking on the link will open the sign in a new browser window.

Create a New Sign

Once you've logged into Brightspot and opened the site you want to use, click in the top Search bar to open the Search Menu.

In the bottom left corner, under the word Create, select Digital Signage from the dropdown and click New.

If you use digital signs frequently, you may want to have a Digital Signage button added to your Quick Start menu. This can be done in Sites and Settings > Main tab > Dashboard > Quick Start Settings.

Images

You can use images from your site's image library for your digital signage. You can add them individually in a basic list, or have them automatically appear with a dynamic list. You can set expiration times on images when you want them to be removed from the signage.

Videos

Brightspot digital signage also supports video—either MP4 uploaded to Brightspot or YouTube. It may take a second or two for a video slide to load. The video will play to the end, and then the signage will advance to the next slide. Closed captions will be displayed on the screen if they are available on the video.

Settings

The digital signage templates are intended for use on screens with 16x9 or 4x3 aspect ratio. The templates were optimized for 1920x1080 for the vertical template and 1080x1920 for the horizontal template.

Screen Layout

For a horizontal screen, select horizontal; for a vertical screen, select vertical.

Header

If you’d like to use the same header used across your Brightspot site, you can skip the edit options here.

1. Hide Header: set this toggle to the right if you’d like to hide the header
2. Logo: if you keep this as “Inherit,” it will fall back to the BYU logo

3. Navigation Title: this text falls back to what is set for the site and appears to the right of the logo in the header. To change, switch Inherit to Select

   1. Text Title: use to override the text used for the title

      1. Breadcrumbs and Subtitle text won’t appear in digital signage, but can be added for non-digital signage content in the main site header.
   2. Logo Title: use to replace the title text with a logo
   3. Titles Auto Generated by Section: this can be ignored for digital signage because Digital Signage doesn’t have a section. This is a capability which can be used on the main site header.
4. Transparent Header: this falls back to what is set at the site level. If your site is not using a transparent header, you can change Inherit to Override and turn the toggle to the right to use a Transparent Header. This will show your site title overlaid on the images.

Main Content

Here you can select the gallery of images to use.

1. Main Content: change none to Set in order to show the options for adding content.
2. In the main tab you can choose how Items should be added to the list.
   
   1. Basic allows you to add and rearrange items manually.
   2. Dynamic allows you to use list filtering options to automatically display content with certain attributes (such as tags).

3. Gallery Display Settings: Full Screen or Actual Size

   1. Full Screen: may crop the image if the image is not the exact proportion of the space available
   2. Actual Size: displays the full image with filler space around it if needed
4. Rotation Speed: number of seconds between slide changes, defaults to 10

Modules

Up to 2 lists will show on the right side for a horizontal template or at the bottom of a vertical template.

1. Event list: always displays events
2. News list: always displays articles

Preview

Because the preview window will not represent the exact proportions of the screen you will use, it is likely only useful for previewing the header and lists.

1. To show or hide the preview window, click the eye icon (or the X to close) in the top right
2. Clicking the SHARE button will open the preview in full in a new tab. From here, you can adjust the browser size to match the real proportions you’ll use.

Automatic Refresh Settings

When updates to digital signage are made in Brightspot, the front-facing page will automatically update after the amount of time set in the Polling Rate field.

1. This can be edited on the digital signage page in the Overrides tab, within the Digital Signage cluster.
2. A site-wide default can be set at Sites & Settings > Page Defaults > Digital Signage

Managing and Expiring Slides

There are several ways to schedule changes to Brightspot content. (See the Scheduling feature guide.)

One of the most effective ways to manage slides that will be removed at different times is to schedule an expiration date on each slide (on the image or video) as you add it. If you want to use this method, make sure you don't expect the image or video to be visible anywhere else on the site, since expiration archives the content.