Working with surfaces
Create a surface
This procedure describes the high-level steps of creating a surface.
Go to Business Configuration > Surface Editor.
Click File > New.
Select surface group (surface type), device type and resolution. When selecting a resolution, you can only select among the predefined resolutions for the device type. For generic device types, you can add resolutions in Settings > Manage resolutions.
Select an operation profile and the time after which the screen should return to showing the surface start page.
Drag and drop the wanted components and widgets to the surface and adjust the properties as wanted.
If needed, create any additional pages.
When done, save and give the surface a name that makes it easy to identify.
Preview surfaces
Surfaces can be previewed with the built-in preview function in the Surface Editor. Note that some parts of previewing a surface will not work, e.g. vertical messages. If the fonts available on the central agent differ from those on a distributed agent, there might be discrepancies between the preview and actual look of the surface.
To preview a surface, open an existing surface or create a new surface and click File > Preview and then click OK.
It is also possible to view surfaces in a regular browser. In the table below, you find the URLs for running a surface in a regular browser.
Surface type | URL |
|---|---|
Touch screen | https://<visit_manager_url>/touchScreen?unitId=<branchPrefix>:<unitId> |
Media display or positional display | https://<visit_manager_url>:<port>/graphicalDisplay?unitId=<branchPrefix>:<unitId> |
If you have several units in a branch, and the unit type allows to enter the number of units as in the following example, you must add the unit number to the unit ID (without space).
For example:
http://localhost:8080/graphicalDisplay?unitId=GBG:WebServicePoint_PositionalDisplay_WebCFU2
Connect device to surface
Devices that should show a touch screen surface, media display surface or a positional display surface must be configured to connect to the Qmatic system with the the server IP, the websocket port, the branch prefix and the unit ID, For Qmatic Certified Hardware devices, this is done in the Qmatic Kiosk or Qmatic Display app configuration pages.
Manage playlist content for surfaces
Playlists can be shown on media displays or positional displays and are rolling lists of images, videos and links. The content of a playlist is displayed in the channel player area, which is a component you add to your media display or positional display surfaces in Surface Editor. For a playlist to be shown on a surface, it must be scheduled for that particular surface.
Create new playlist
Go to Business Configuration > Context marketing and select the tab Playlist Editor.
Click Create new playlist and give it a name that makes it easy to identify.
Optionally, add a description and a playlist icon.
Drag and drop content to your playlist from the media library to the right.
Save.
If you want to show the playlist on a surface, you must schedule it for the wanted surface.
Edit playlist content
Go to Business Configuration > Context marketing and select the tab Playlist Editor.
Open an existing playlist or create a new playlist.
To delete an item from the playlist, click Delete.
To add new content to a playlist, drag and drop item from the media library to the right. To upload new media, click Upload new image/video and select a file. The click Upload. For links, click Create new link and enter the URL. See Accepted media formats for playlists.
Once an item is added to a playlist, you can change the position (for images and video) and duration (for images and links). Duration is the time the item is displayed in the playlist. For Position, you have the following options:
Centre: No scaling or other change. If the image is smaller than the area, borders are inserted around the image. If the image or video is larger than the area, only the center of image is in view.
Fill: Aspect ratio not changed. Scale to fill the whole area and centering, thus parts of the image are out of view. This option is only available for images.
Fit: Aspect ratio not changed. Scale to have the whole image or video in the area, thus borders are inserted where necessary.
Stretch: Stretch and shrink so that the image fills the area completely and nothing is outside the area. This option is only available for images.
When you are done, save.
If you want to change on which surface and when this playlist is shown, you must change the playlist schedule.
Create a playlist in a playlist
It is possible to insert a playlist into another playlist. Drag and drop the wanted playlist from the All playlists area to the left into the playlist.
Schedule playlists
For playlists to show on a display, they need to be scheduled. This is done on the Scheduler tab in the Context Marketing application.
Go to Business Configuration > Context Marketing and select the tab Scheduler.
In the Playlist Schedule section, find the display you want to add a schedule to. Note that only displays that have the channel player component are shown in the list.
Click on a day to make it the start day for the playlist. Then select a more precise time of the day when the playlist should start playing.
Select a playlist. If you don't have any playlists yet, start by creating one.
To set an end date, select a date and then a time of the day. Then click Stop to stop playing the playlist this date and time. You can also select another playlist to be played instead.
Note
The playlist which is scheduled over midnight will be the playlist used for the following day. Scheduling a playlist for the current day requires it to have start time 00:00.
When you are done, save.
Accepted media formats for playlists
Images:
jpg
jpeg
png
bmp
Video:
ogg
ogv
webm
mp4
Links:
The link must start with http://
Note
The content will not be displayed if the link is a redirected URL. Also, it is not possible to set how much of the URL that is actually displayed in the channel planner component.
Note
Due to safety regulations concerning https, there are problems with using https pages, such as Google, embedded in frames. If you want to use free standing https pages, please contact Support.