How to use the Gies College of Business Digital Signage Portal App

Instructions for using a portal application designed to simplify posting content to the Gies College of Business managed digital signs.

Digital Sign Basics

Making Entries Explained

The application can be found on the Portal here, or https://my.business.illinois.edu/digitalsigns/index.asp.

Manager view

Uploader View Menu

Select Show - The app only displays one slide show at a time. Use this drop-down menu to select the slide show to view.

Manage Slideshow Controls

Manage Slideshow menu

Slide Order - This field selects the slide order option for the selected show.
- Sequential - This options plays through the slide show in the seqence shown in the Current Slide Set queue.
- Random - This option plays through the slide show randomly shuffling the slide order.
New slide alert email - This field allows an email address to be set to recieve alerts when new slides are uploaded. This allows managers to know when there are new slides awaiting approval.

Submitting Slides

Input Fields:

Comments about your slide - use this text area to make notes to other managers or to communicate with departmental slide approvers.
Date Start/Date End - These fields show the slide display start and end date-times. These should be formatted MM/DD/YYYY, MM/DD/YYYY hh:mm:ss (24hr clock), or MM/DD/YYYY hh:mm:ss XM (12hr clock).
Dur (s): - This is the duration for which the slide will display in seconds. This field does not accept mm:ss notation. Ex. one minute and thiry seconds must be written as 90 and not 1:30.
Upload a new slide - use the browse button to pick your file then the upload button, to upload JPEG/JPG or PNG content to the application
Add a url slide - use this text field to add a url of web content or YouTube video

To submit your slide or URL you will need to click the respective Upload or Add URL Slide buttons.

Slide Tabs:

Slide Tabs

New Slides - a new, unapproved slide uploaded.
Approved - an approved slide that is scheduled for display in the future.
Current Override Slide Set - an approved slide during it's scheduled interval with only Override set.
Current Scheduled Slide Set - an approved slide during it's scheduled interval with only Sched set.
Current Slide Set - an approved slide during it's scheduled interval without Sched or Override set.
Expired - an approved slide after it's scheduled end date. (Expired slides are only kept for 30 days from the date of expiration)

Slide Metadata:

Submitted by - This field displays the netID of the slide uploader.
Date Start/Date End - These fields show the slide display start and end date-times. These should be formatted MM/DD/YYYY, MM/DD/YYYY hh:mm:ss (24hr clock), or MM/DD/YYYY hh:mm:ss XM (12hr clock).
Dur (s) - This is the duration for which the slide will display in seconds. This field does not accept mm:ss notation. Ex. one minute and thiry seconds must be written as 90 and not 1:30.
Seq: - This field allows slide sequences to be reordered. Default is 0. Slides will play in ascending, numeric order when the slide order is set to Sequential.
Sched: - This field allows slides to be scheduled to play at X number of minutes after the hour. Ex. enter "15" into the Sched field to play that slide at 15 minutes after every hour. This field also takes multiple values seperated by commas. Ex. enter "15,30,45" into the Sched field to play that slide at 15, 30, and 45 minutes after every hour.
Override - This field determines if a slide is an override slide. Default is "No". If a slide is set to override, only slides marked as override will be displayed between those slides start and end dates.
Aspect Ratio - This field determines the displayed aspect ratio of the slides. This is effected by the aspect ratio of the content display area on the digital sign. Most content area aspect ratios are 16:9.
- Contain (default) - This option enlarges the image till it is as large as the content area can contain without cropping. Letter/pillar boxes will be visible. (Long dimension scaling)
- Stretch - This option stretches the image to fit the aspect ratio of the content area.
- Cover - This option enlarges the image till it covers the entire content area, cropping edges as needed. (Short dimension scaling)
Default Slide - Makes a slide the default landing slide. This queue will only contain one slide.

Once a slide is in the New Slides tab, or any of the tabs, the slide metadata can be edited. This allows the slide parameters to be changed. Once the proper metadata has been set, choose Update.

Remember, if you make any updates to the slide, click that slide's Update button. Note: Only one slide may be edited at a time. If multiple slides are edited, only the slide where the Update button was clicked will be updated.

Deleting a Slide

A slide may be deleted by clicking its Delete button. Once a slide is deleted, it cannot be recovered

Setting a Default Slide

In this example below, there is no content in a slide show's current tab, a black "No slide found" page will be displayed to the signs.

This tends to make signs look "broken", we have provided the ability to set a default slide that will take the place of this screen.

Current Slide Set

You may set any slide in the Current Slide Set tab as the show's default slide by clicking its Default button.

You may remove your default slide by clicking Remove Default on that slide.

Uploading YouTube Videos

The Add a url slide field allows web content to be included in Digital Signs slide shows. Utilizing Google APIs on the back-end of the Digital Sign Portal Application allows play and timing control of YouTube videos.

Find the YouTube Share URL.
1. Click Share below the video pane
2. Optional - In the sharing pane, check the Start at box and enter a time in minutes and seconds for the video to start.
3. In the sharing pane, copy the share URL
Enter the URL into the Add a url slide text field and click Add URL Slide
Adjust the metadata and approve the video. Note: Only the URL will be shown on the portal page. Content will be properly displayed on the slides.

For YouTube videos, the Dur (s): is still used and the duration must be set for the length of video to be played.
Ex. To play a 1:30 video all the way through, the duration must be set to 90.
Advanced Ex. To play 30 seconds from the middle of a YouTube video, add the start time to the URL from the YouTube share pane (i.e. Start at: 1:45) and add the desired duration in the editor app (i.e. 30). This will play from 1:45 to 2:15 in the selected video.

Uploading Illinois Media Space Videos

Find the URL of the Media Space video and copy it.
Enter the URL into the Add a url slide text field and click Add URL Slide
Adjust the metadata and approve the video. Note: Only the URL will be shown on the portal page. Content will be properly displayed on the slides.

For Media Space videos, the Dur (s): is still used and the duration must be set for the length of video to be played.
Ex. To play a 1:30 video all the way through, the duration must be set to 90.

To Add or Remove user access

Submit a TDX ticket by email to; helpdesk@business.illinois.edu. Make sure to add, ITPAV - Digital Sign user access, to the subject field.