Locations

What is a Location

A Location is a physical or organisational unit inside a Company, such as a city, hotel, shopping centre or branch. Its Devices belong to it, and the Location is used for campaign targeting, Application Layer branding and shared operational settings.

Basic settings and opening hours

In the Location detail, you set its name and opening hours separately for each day of the week. Each day can be enabled or disabled, and an active day has its own from–to time range.

Opening hours also control display operation

Opening hours are not only an organisational setting. When the opening period ends, ScreenSoft Player deliberately stops sending the video signal over HDMI. A commercial display configured to react to HDMI signal presence can therefore enter Standby mode and turn the picture off. At the start of the next opening period, the player starts sending the HDMI signal again, waking the display and restoring the picture.

ScreenSoft therefore controls the screen operating period, defines the period in which campaigns collect their impressions, avoids unnecessary operation outside opening hours and helps preserve the lifetime of the commercial display. Opening hours consequently also affect the real playback time available for campaign planning and fulfilment.

Application Layer branding

Branding controls how the Application Layer looks on screens in the Location. You can set the menu title, Application Layer logo, overlay images for vertical and horizontal screens and the colour scheme of the interface.

Colours can be configured for the global application background, text and symbols, button/application backgrounds, application tiles, the primary panel and the secondary panel. This allows the kiosk to match the visual identity of a city, hotel, shopping centre or other Company.

Logo, icons and layout

You can upload a Location logo, adjust application icon size, choose the application layout and control media cropping in the Application Layer photo gallery.

Where a setting requires an icon, you can upload a custom file or choose one from the extensive built-in ScreenSoft icon gallery.

Application Layer photo gallery

The separate Application Layer photo gallery area is used to upload photos shown directly in the kiosk interface. The gallery can contain multiple images that the administrator can add or remove. Typical examples are photos of a city, municipality, hotel or shopping centre.

Enabling or disabling the photo gallery also changes the template and layout of the Application layer. The client can therefore choose an interface with or without the gallery according to the desired kiosk appearance and use case.

Accessibility / wheelchair mode

The wheelchair button moves the public kiosk controls lower on the screen so they are easier to reach for a wheelchair user. After the configured period, the interface automatically returns to its standard layout.

The three Branding timers

Activated handicap-mode time limit controls when the lowered controls return to their standard position.

Application time limit controls inactivity inside an open application. If a visitor leaves, the application will start closing after this period.

Countdown time limit for returning to the device default is the final countdown. A dialog such as 10, 9, 8… is shown; if the visitor does not continue, ScreenSoft returns to the default state.

Inactivity dialog

Branding also lets you configure the inactivity dialog text: its title, the message such as “The application will close.” and the button label used by a visitor who wants to continue.

Emergency

Emergency immediately takes over all affected screens in a Location. For example, if a city manages 20 screens and activates an emergency for that Location, normal campaigns and applications stop and all affected Devices display the emergency visual. It can be used for a missing child, security threat, natural disaster or another critical message. Emergency content remains active until an administrator manually deactivates it.