Scheduling screen content: repeats, priority and overlays

Scheduling is how each screen knows what to play and when. In Casty every entry in the schedule is an event: a piece of content, the screens it plays on and the times it runs. Repeats carry an event forward on their own (every morning, every Monday, the third Thursday of the month), and three tools decide what happens when two events want the same screen at once: priority, interrupts and overlays.

What an event is made of

You add events from Schedule, then Events, then Add Event. The form has four steps (Content, Displays, Time and Optional), and each one asks a simple question.

Content is what plays. Most of the time it's a layout you've designed, but you can also schedule a campaign (several layouts taking turns), a playlist shown full screen, or a single image or video from your library. Two more types, interrupt and overlay layouts, come up further down. If the difference between layouts, playlists and campaigns is still a bit hazy, this explainer sorts it out.

Displays is where it plays. Tick single screens, or tick a display group to cover a whole venue in one go. I'd use groups wherever you can, because a screen added to a group later picks up everything already scheduled to it.

Time is when. Choose Custom and type the start and end, or pick a daypart.

Optional holds the name, the repeat settings and the priority. Give every event a name you'll recognise in three months' time: "Weekend lunch menu (garden room)" tells you what it is and where at a glance.

Dayparts: name the parts of your day once

A daypart is a named slot with a start and an end, such as breakfast from 07:00 to 11:30. You set it up once under Schedule, then Dayparting, and pick it from a list whenever you add an event, so the times only live in one place.

That pays off the first time your hours change. Move lunch to start at 11:00 and every event using the lunch daypart follows, with nothing else to edit. Dayparts also take exceptions for single days, which suits a cafe that opens an hour later on Sundays. There's more on this in dayparting menus.

Two dayparts are always there. Always means all day, every day. Custom means you type the times into the event itself.

Repeats: set it once and let it run

On the Repeats tab you choose how often an event comes round, by the minute, hour, day, week, month or year. Weekly repeats let you tick the days, so a quiz night poster can run on Mondays and Tuesdays only. Monthly repeats handle patterns like the third Thursday of the month, handy for a comedy night that never lands on the same date twice, and you can also repeat every other week.

Set the start and end times on the first day the event runs. The repeat settings carry them forward, so a lunch menu from 12:00 to 15:00 on one Saturday becomes 12:00 to 15:00 every Saturday after it.

Always fill in Until, too. An offer with an end date stops on its own and the screen goes back to its other content, so nobody has to remember to take it down. Without one, last month's two-for-one sits there until a customer asks for it at the bar.

Deleting a repeating event deletes the whole series. If one week needs to be different, leave the series alone and add a one-off event over the top with a higher priority.

When two events want the same screen

By default, two events that overlap on one screen both play, in turn. Often that's exactly what you want: a food menu and a promotions playlist sharing the bar screen through the afternoon, each getting its go. Priority, interrupts and overlays are for the times you want something different.

Priority

Priority is a number on the Optional step. Everyday events sit at 0. An event with a higher number plays in place of everything lower for as long as it runs, and when it ends the screen goes back to its usual events by itself.

In the Casty demo, The Crown (a pub in Bristol) uses this for a Sunday match. The fixtures board goes on every screen, kitchen pass included, from 13:30 to 16:30 at priority 1. The kitchen menu stays in the schedule at priority 0 and comes back as soon as the match event ends. The pub fixtures tutorial walks through the same set-up, and promoting live sport covers what to put on the screens.

Be careful with the end time. A priority event covers every lower priority event on those screens, other promotions included, so use the lowest number that does the job and check it finishes when you think it does.

Interrupts

An interrupt layout takes a set share of every hour and leaves the rest of the schedule alone. You set the share in Share of Voice as seconds per hour, and the form works out the percentage for you (300 seconds is 8.33% of an hour). In the demo, The Crown gives its quiz night promotion five minutes an hour on the bar screen on Mondays and Tuesdays.

Interrupts suit anything with an agreed amount of airtime, such as a drinks supplier's advert you've promised so many minutes an hour.

Overlays

An overlay layout plays on top of whatever is already on the screen. It's for small things that should stay visible whatever else is running: a strip along the bottom with tonight's kick-off time, say, or your logo in a corner. Build the overlay as its own layout with content only where it should appear, and use Preview on the Content step before you schedule it, so you can see what it'll sit over.

Display order and plays per hour

Two smaller settings live on the Optional step. Display Order sets the order events play in when several are scheduled at the same time. Maximum plays/hour limits how often an event plays in an hour on each screen, and 0 means no limit. The priority, interrupts and overlays help page has all of these with screenshots.

The default layout fills the gaps

Every screen has a default layout, and it plays whenever nothing is scheduled: before the first event of the day, after the last one and in any gap between. Pick something that's fine at any hour, like your logo with your opening hours. An offer with an end date, or a menu for one part of the day, will sooner or later end up showing at the wrong time.

An event set to Always is a different thing. It's part of the schedule and takes turns with your other events, while the default only appears when the schedule is empty. The default layout help page shows how to set one.

Checking what will play, before it plays

Click Calendar View on the Events page and pick a day to see its events. For the full picture, open the Agenda, choose Specific point in time and click a time. It lists everything due on a screen at that moment, with each event's priority, which answers "what will the garden room show at four on Saturday?" without a trip to the garden room.

Each screen runs on its own time zone (UK screens use Europe, London), so content starts at local time. Screens pick up changes when they next check in with Casty, which can be a few minutes after you click Save. If you can't wait, Collect Now on the Displays page asks a screen to check in straight away.

The full walkthrough of the event form is in schedule content on your screens, and the scheduling section of the features page lists everything the schedule can do.