Carousel The Manual Ver 6.6.2

Release 6.6.
2
The Manual
c Tightrope Media Systems

Documentation on how to use and administrate Carousel
Version 6.6.2 Build 42
Printed August 16, 2016

2
Contents
I Introduction and Tour 11

1 Introduction 13
1.1 Welcome to Carousel! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
1.2 About Tightrope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
1.3 About This Documentation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
1.3.1 Turnkey and Software Only Versions . . . . . . . . . . . 15
1.4 Default Passwords . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
1.4.1 Windows Login . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
1.4.2 FrontDoor Login . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
2 The Essentials of Carousel 17

2.1 Note To Carousel Installers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
2.2 Note to Carousel’s Users and Administrators . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
2.3 What Does Carousel Do? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
2.4 Displays, Channels, Zones, Bulletins and Media . . . . . . . . . . 18
2.4.1 Displays . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
2.4.2 Carousel Players: Adding More Outputs . . . . . . . . . . 18
2.4.3 Zones and Channels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
2.4.4 Zones on Multiple Channels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
2.4.5 Bulletins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
2.4.6 Alert and Repeating Bulletins: Interrupting a Zone’s Bulletins 21
2.4.7 Full-Screen Alert Zones: Interrupting All of a Channel’s
Bulletins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
2.4.8 Crawl Zones . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
2.4.9 Channel Licenses, Display Engines and Players . . . . . . 22
2.4.10 Categorizing Zones with Tagging . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
II Planning and Setup 25

3 The Setup Plan 27
3.1 Designing Your Channel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
3.1.1 Planning Tips for Your Zones . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
4 Carousel’s Video Capabilities 31

4.1 Carousel Player Software Comparisons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
4.2 Video File Playback Performance and Resolutions . . . . . . . . . 31
4.3 Crawl Performance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
5 Introduction to Carousel’s User Interface 33

5.1 Logging Into Carousel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
5.2 The Main Menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
5.3 The Status Bar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
3
5.4 Quick Links . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
5.4.1 About Menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
5.5 Selecting Zones . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
5.5.1 Zones with the Pop-Down Menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
5.5.2 Zones with the Tag Selector . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
5.6 The Media Picker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
5.6.1 Selecting Media With Tags . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
5.7 Common Icons and Their Purpose . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
6 Setup Basics: Step-By-Step 41

6.1 Configuration Menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
6.2 Create Your Zones . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
6.2.1 The Zone Properties Form . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
6.3 Define Your Channels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
6.3.1 The Channel Setup Form . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
6.3.2 The Channel Layout Form . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
6.3.3 The Crawl Properties Form . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
6.3.4 The Date and Time Properties Form . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
6.3.5 The Background Audio Form . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
6.3.6 Adding Background Audio to Carousel . . . . . . . . . . 48
6.3.7 Adding a Seamless Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
6.4 Previewing Your Channel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
6.5 Initial Channel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
6.6 Where We Are At . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
7 Configuring Players 53
7.1 Closing the Display Engine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
7.2 Configuring the Display Engine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
7.2.1 Carousel Server . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
7.2.2 Time Settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
7.2.3 Display Settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
7.2.4 Live Video Input . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
7.3 Managing Your Players . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
7.3.1 Player Dashboard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
7.3.2 Channel Schedule . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
7.3.3 Monitor Control Schedule . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
7.3.4 Monitor Control Codes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
7.3.5 Notification Settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
7.4 Cached Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
7.5 Loading Zones . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
7.6 Not Licensed Status . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
7.7 TV Video Output . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
7.7.1 Physical Configuration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
7.7.2 Software Configuration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
7.8 Adjusting the Video Resolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
7.8.1 Standard Resolution Adjustments . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
7.8.2 Setting up a 9x16 Display . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
8 The Zone Settings Menu 71

8.1 The Network Tab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
8.1.1 Email Settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
8.1.2 Other Outputs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
4 Contents
8.2 Lists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
8.3 Display Engine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
8.3.1 Bulletin Pacing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
8.3.2 Default Transition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
8.3.3 Bumper Graphic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
9 The Configuration Menu: The Missing Pieces 75

9.1 Synchronizing Zones . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
9.2 System Configuration Menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
9.2.1 Zone Selection Style . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
9.2.2 Administrator Email Setup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
9.2.3 Zone Tags . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
9.2.4 External Data Source Authentication . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
9.2.5 Proxy Configuration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
9.2.6 System Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
10 Users and Carousel 79

10.1 Permissions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
10.2 Multiple People, Same Account . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
10.3 Setting Up The Approver . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
III Making Bulletins 81

11 Making Bulletins 83
11.1 Selecting a Template . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
11.2 Editing and Creating Bulletins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
11.2.1 Adding Style using HTML Tags . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
11.2.2 Checking your spelling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
11.2.3 Editing the Template of the Bulletin . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
11.3 Scheduling a Bulletin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
11.4 Bulletin Properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
11.4.1 Bulletin Dwell Time, aka Timing . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
11.4.2 Tracking Bulletin Impressions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
11.4.3 Bulletin Transitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
11.4.4 Sound File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
11.4.5 Bulletin Description . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
11.4.6 Bulletin Tags . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
11.5 Adding a Bulletin to a Group . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
11.6 Setting the Bulletin Type: Active or Repeating . . . . . . . . . . . 92
11.7 Duplicating a Bulletin on Multiple Zones . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
11.7.1 Selecting Zones with the Zone Selector . . . . . . . . . . 94
11.8 Confirmation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
12 Making Crawls 97
12.1 Multiple Crawls at the Same Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
12.2 Choosing a Crawl Zone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
12.3 Creating a Crawl . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
12.4 Scheduling and Properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
13 Alert and Full Alert Bulletins 99

13.1 Zone Based Alerts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
Contents 5
13.2 Full Screen Alerts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
14 Uploading Bulletins 101

14.1 Uploading Video and Pictures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
14.1.1 Picture Formats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
14.1.2 Video Formats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
14.1.3 Notes on Uploaded Pictures and Video . . . . . . . . . . 102
14.2 Uploading Flash . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
14.2.1 The Flash Properties Form . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
14.2.2 Flash Animation Timing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
14.2.3 Audio and Flash . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
14.2.4 Notes on Flash in Carousel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
14.3 Uploading Bulletin Packages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
14.3.1 Anatomy of a Bulletin Package File . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
14.3.2 Uploading a Bulletin Package File . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
15 Dynamic Bulletins 107

15.1 The Clock Bulletins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
15.1.1 Analog Clock . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
15.1.2 Digital Clock . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
15.1.3 Countdown Timer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
15.2 The Weather Bulletins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
15.2.1 Select Location and Caption . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
15.2.2 Changing the Backgrounds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
15.2.3 Editing the Weather’s Template . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
15.3 The Weather Crawls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
15.4 Cable Display Bulletins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
15.4.1 Setting Cable Display Bulletin Properties . . . . . . . . . 117
15.4.2 Editing the Cable Display Bulletin . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118
15.4.3 Scheduling and Standard Properties . . . . . . . . . . . . 120
15.5 The RSS Bulletins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120
15.5.1 Creating an RSS Bulletin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
15.5.2 Scheduling RSS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
15.6 The RSS Crawls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
15.7 Twitter Bulletins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
15.8 Facebook Bulletins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
15.9 The Event Schedule Bulletins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
15.9.1 Creating an EDS Bulletin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
15.9.2 Setting Up Dean Evans EMS or Ad Astra for EDS . . . . 129
15.9.3 Dean Evans EMS Database Entries . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
15.9.4 Editing EMS and Ad Astra Properties . . . . . . . . . . . 130
15.9.5 Setting Up Resource25 for EDS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130
15.9.6 Setting Up Exchange Server 2007 SP1 and 2010 for EDS . 133
15.9.7 Editing EDS Properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
15.9.8 Editing an EDS Bulletin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
15.10EDS Bulletin Scheduling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
15.11Scheduling EDS Within Carousel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
15.12The Live Video Input Bulletins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
15.13Interactive Bulletins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138
6 Contents
IV Managing and Extras 141
16 Managing Bulletins 143
16.1 Bulletin Lists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143
16.1.1 Bulletins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144
16.1.2 Filtering By Tags . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
16.1.3 Groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
16.1.4 Moving Bulletins or Groups Within a List . . . . . . . . . 146
16.1.5 Copying and Moving Bulletins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
16.2 My Bulletins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
16.2.1 My Bulletins as the Administrator . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
16.3 Approving Bulletins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
16.4 Housekeeping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150
16.5 Reporting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150
16.5.1 Filter by bulletin type . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
16.5.2 Filter by bulletin status . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
16.5.3 Filter by bulletin tags . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
16.5.4 Export CSV Report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
16.6 Slide Show . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
17 Managing Media 155

17.1 My and Zone Tabs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156
17.2 File Formats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156
17.2.1 File Compatibility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
17.3 Logos and Irregularly Shaped Pictures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
17.4 Aspect Ratios . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
17.5 Media Asset Lists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
17.5.1 Items . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
17.5.2 Form Buttons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
17.5.3 Copying Media Assets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
17.6 Media Asset Properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
17.7 The Template Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
17.7.1 Editing a Bulletin’s Template vs. Permanently Editing a
Template . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162
17.7.2 Basics of the Template Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162
17.7.3 Walking Through the Template Editor Form . . . . . . . . 164
17.8 Media Tags . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175
17.9 Creating a Seamless Background for a Multi-Zoned Channel . . . 176
17.10Adding Media Packages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178
17.11Creating Media Packages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178
18 Extras 181
18.1 Screensaver . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
18.2 RSS Output . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182
18.3 Public Web Interface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182
V Appendix 183
A Installer’s Checklist 185
A.1 Carousel Checklist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
A.1.1 Preperation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
Contents 7
A.1.2 Setup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186
A.1.3 Verify Display Quality and Content . . . . . . . . . . . . 186
A.1.4 Verify Carousel Communication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
A.1.5 Clean Up Testing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
A.1.6 Communicate With the Customer . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188
B Web Page Snapshots 189
C Limited Template Editor 193

C.1 The Preview Window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196
D Custom Time Format Chart 197

D.1 Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 198
E PowerPoint: How To Import Slides 199

E.1 Saving PowerPoint Presentations As JPEG or PNG files . . . . . . 199
E.2 Making the Zip File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200
E.3 Importing the Slides Into Carousel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200
F Live TV Input (TVI) Devices 203

F.1 TVOne Hardware . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
F.1.1 Steps to setup TVOne T1-C2-750 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
F.2 AVerMedia Hardware . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204
F.2.1 Steps to setup AVerMedia in Carousel . . . . . . . . . . . 204
F.3 Contemporary Research and AVerMedia Hardware . . . . . . . . 204
F.3.1 Steps to setup 232-ATSC+ with AVerMedia in Carousel . 205
G Common Alert Protocol (CAP) 207

G.1 Communications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207
G.2 Workflow of CAP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207
H Remote Data Adaptor 211

H.1 Communications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211
H.2 Workflow of RDA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212
H.3 Elements of CarouselCommand . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
H.4 Elements of CarouselResponse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214
H.5 Schema and Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215
H.5.1 CarouselRemoteCommand XSD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215
H.5.2 Command Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215
H.5.3 Response Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219
H.6 RDA Schema . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220
I Clone Tool 231

I.1 Using the Clone Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231
I.1.1 Exporting a Channel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231
I.1.2 Importing a Channel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233
I.2 Advanced Settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235
I.2.1 Remote SQL servers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235
I.2.2 Remote media storage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235
I.2.3 Command line arguments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235
J CarouselDetective 237
8 Contents
K Release History 239
K.1 Carousel 6.6.0 Release Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239
List of Figures 241
Contents 9
10 Contents
I. Introduction and Tour
“I was born not knowing and have had only a little

time to change that here and there.”
—Richard Feynman
11
12
1 Introduction
1.1 Welcome to Carousel!

Thank you for purchasing a Carousel system from Tightrope Media Systems!
We have worked hard to make your new system versatile, easy to use and reli-
able.
Carousel is a family of web-centric digital signage products for common area display
networks. Carousel is used every day in schools, businesses, banks, hospitals,
religious centers and on television channels. The system displays a series of
bulletins in an ordered sequence and on a schedule specified by the bulletins creator.
These bulletins are displayed on screens throughout a building or between programs
on a television channel.
Tightrope’s mission is to design Carousel as a zero-training, zero-administration
system. Carousel is zero-training because it is designed to be easy enough for
anyone to create a bulletin without prior training. It is zero-administration because
it does not require intervention during normal operation, unless a new bulletin
arrives and requires approval1 .
Carousel has a few components that make up the system. The web foundation that
the software is built upon is called FrontDoor. All of Tightrope’s products utilize
this common platform in an effort to provide you with a reliable, easy to use and
instantly familiar interface to our system. FrontDoor is what manages the user
logins and rights on the system’s web interface. For further information you’ll want
to read FrontDoor: The Manual.
It is possible that your Carousel server has Tightrope’s Cablecast television automa-
tion system. If this is the case, you will want to read the Cablecast: The Manual for
further information. Using the Cable Display plug-in, described in section 15.4 on
page 115, Carousel works with Cablecast in several important ways. You will not
want to miss these features!
1.2 About Tightrope

Tightrope Media Systems is a manufacturer of broadcast and digital signage sys-
tems. We are the best at developing whole product solutions that deliver a tailored
experience and fantastic utility for our customers.
For more information on Tightrope Media Systems, please visit our web site:
www.trms.com
Email us at: [email protected]
1 Even here, Carousel automatically emails the administrator when the new bulletin arrives, thus
negating the need to check Carousel for new bulletins.
13
Our Address is:
Tightrope Media Systems
800 Transfer Road, Suite 1B
Saint Paul, Minnesota 55114
For customer service, please contact your dealer or Tightrope Media Systems
directly:
Email : [email protected]
Online Documentation : www.trms.com/support/documentation
Training Videos : www.trms.com/support/training
Blogs : blog.trms.com
Community Forum : http://getsatisfaction.com/trms
Phone : (866) 866-4118 / (612) 866-4118
The fastest way to get support is through email or the online support form. The
community forum is a great place to share tips and tricks, too.
Throughout this guide, the following conventions will be used:
This is a note. Notes are used to call attention to special information that may be
helpful to keep in mind.
This is a tip. Tips show unique ways to use the software, and tricks that have
been picked up by other users.
This is a warning. Warnings call attention to actions that may result in unforeseen
consequences, such as actions that delete large amounts of data or configurations
that might have network security implications.
This is a margin note. If we want to highlight a section of the text that is critical to a particular topic, we’ll
insert a margin note, like the one you see next to this paragraph. Margin notes
might also include small pictures of the user interface, when a figure would be too
cumbersome.
!→ If we need to call special attention to something that is critical, you might see the
symbol that you now see to the left.
When the text references a particular menu item, field or label within the software,
that text will appear as follows:
Example: Click on the Record button.
When we talk about or reference a menu in the software, we use a special style and
reference it in the margin. When we reference menus, we leave out the main menu
View: Pref- and we separate each menu with a colon (“:”).
erences. . . :
Channels Example: To change your channels’ names, go to View: Preferences. . . : Channels.
When the text references user input, “this format” will appear.
Example: Enter “1234” into the number field.
14 1 Introduction
When quotes are used to display user input, do not include them in your input unless
specifically told to do so.
You’ll notice that we’ve used a couple of ‘Examples:’ in this section. You will see
those throughout the text. They highlight. . . examples.
1.3 About This Documentation

This is the Carousel Guide and is intended for the installer, administrator and user
of your Carousel system. This includes:
• Those responsible for installing and configuring Carousel for the first time.
We cover these topics in part II on page 25, Planning and Setup.
• Those who will adjust Carousel’s settings, approve other’s pages and other-
wise have greater control over the system. These topics are covered in part IV
on page 141, Managing and Extras.
• Those who will use Carousel on a day to day basis. Check out part III on
page 81, Making Bulletins for information on these topics.
1.3.1 Turnkey and Software Only Versions
Some systems come as turnkey devices–computers and servers with Carousel pre-
installed. Others come as a software only solution. To see information on installing
a software only solution see the Carousel Deployment Guide.
1.4 Default Passwords

When your Carousel Server shipped from our warehouse, the following usernames
and passwords were used.
We recommend changing these immediately.
1.4.1 Windows Login
Username : Administrator
Password : trms
1.4.2 FrontDoor Login
Username : Admin
Password : trms
1.3 About This Documentation 15

16 1 Introduction
2 The Essentials of Carousel
In this essential chapter we will cover Carousel vocabulary. After reading it, the
software’s mysteries will be yours and its use and setup will make much more
sense. It’s required reading if you are in any way involved in Carousel’s installation,
administration or daily use.
2.1 Note To Carousel Installers

If you are installing Carousel, either for your organization or as a systems integrator,
you should probably start this guide by reading Appendix A on page 185, Installer’s
Checklist.
2.2 Note to Carousel’s Users and Administrators

If you are a user of Carousel, most of the information in Part II on page 25, Planning
and Setup will be lost upon you. You’ll want to focus most of your attention on
Part III on page 81, Making Bulletins and Part IV on page 141, Managing and
Extras. We cover making bulletins and managing the content within Carousel in
these parts of the manual.
If you manage the user accounts for Carousel, then be sure that you check out
FrontDoor: The Manual. That is where we cover FrontDoor’s features, including
adding users to Carousel and changing their permission levels.
2.3 What Does Carousel Do?

Carousel is designed to manage and show bulletins, which are short graphical
messages, on common area displays or on your television channel. In order to
accommodate the widest variety of installations, Tightrope developed Carousel in
such a way that it can be configured to show bulletins in different places on different
equipment in different sizes on different displays with different aspect ratios —
variety requires a bit of explanation. :)
With that said, your need to read every bit of the information within this chapter will
depend upon whether or not you own a Carousel Server, or one of its bigger siblings:
Carousel Pro or Enterprise. Carousel Server has relatively simple installation
scenarios while the Pro and Enterprise editions include components that increase
the number of possibilities. We will call out the appropriate edition where the
distinction matters.
If you would like to follow along in a live Carousel system while you read this
manual, visit our demo website located at http://demo.trms.com and login using
our predefined administrator account. Pick one of the logins that most closely
matches your organization.
17
2.4 Displays, Channels, Zones, Bulletins and Media
We start by examining the most fundamental concepts of Carousel and how it helps
you to organize the content of your display. These building blocks include: displays,
channels, zones, bulletins and media.
We’ll take each, in order, and explain how they are interrelated. By carefully reading
this section, you will have a good foundation with which to continue. In fact, you’ll
see more than a few warnings in this manual that implore you to understand the
content that you’ll be reading here.
2.4.1 Displays
Your audience will see your system’s bulletins on, what we will generically call, a
display. Displays include televisions, LCD panels, plasmas or anything else that
can display the video that the Carousel Player can output.
All current Carousel Players have a computer display output of some kind
(VGA, DVI, DisplayPort or HDMI). To achive a traditional video output (Com-
posite, Component, SD-SDI or HD-SDI) you will need an additional piece of
equipement. Speak to your Dealer for more information.
F IGURE 2.1: Monitors can be in

16x9, 9x16 and 4x3 aspect ratios.
Since displays come in a variety of shapes and sizes, we must describe them to
Carousel before we use them. For systems where the target is a standard definition
television, this is simple: 1024 pixels across by 768 pixels high (hereinafter written
as 1024x768). For other displays, the number of choices increase dramatically, but
usually they are in a 16x9, 9x161 aspect ratio.
2.4.2 Carousel Players: Adding More Outputs
But what happens when you want to display something different on two sets of
displays? What happens if you’re operating two television channels and you need
1 Often, especially with LCD panels, you’ll replace the 9 with a 10 because computer manufactures
liked 768 pixels vertically instead of 720 or 1200 instead of 1080.
18 2 The Essentials of Carousel

different bulletins on each? What happens if you want one information channel in
the lobby and another in the lunch room? The answer depends on your goals.
You could, of course, buy a separate Carousel system and operate it independently,
but as we’ll see in later sections, this is a limiting proposition.
With a standard Carousel Server, you can add up to 14 additional Carousel Players
and Channels, for a total of up 15 unique displays. With Carousel Pro, the limit
is 300 unique displays. The number of unique displays for a Carousel Enterprise
system is determined by your server’s hardware.
2.4.3 Zones and Channels
Let’s look at a single display for a moment. It’s easy to imagine what our Carousel’s
bulletins will look like—each rotating through and looping around to the beginning
once they’ve all had a turn. Imagine the ability to display weather data, standard
bulletins and meeting schedule information simultaneously. Since Carousel Version
5.0, we introduced zones, which provide you with the ability to break up the screen
into several areas of unique information as seen in figure 2.2.
F IGURE 2.2: Here is an exam-

ple of a channel layout with five
content zones and a crawl.
If you have ever watched a 24-hour news channel, you’ll notice crawls and graphic
areas on the side of the screen while a dashing anchor delivers the ‘news’ in the
main area. Carousel can be configured in a similar manner.
In fact, you can even put your favorite 24-hour news channel in a corner of the
display, provided you have a set-top box and the optional video input card for
Carousel.
This magic is made possible by two key features of Carousel: channels and zones.
Channels are like an empty canvas that fills the entire display’s screen. You
tell Carousel that you want a channel with 1280 pixels across and 720 pixels
down. You name it something descriptive, like “Channel 15 CG” or “Tighty Hall -
Lobby”.
You fill the channel’s empty palette with zones. Each zone contains lists of bulletins
that follow rules laid down by the administrator and the creators of each bulletin.
When you add a zone to a channel, you’re adding another information area to the
players that display that channel in your Carousel system.
2.4 Displays, Channels, Zones, Bulletins and Media 19

Want to use multiple zones on a channel, but have them look like one seamless
presentation? Check out section 17.9 on page 176, Creating a Seamless Back-
ground for a Multi-Zoned Channel, which easily divides a channel-sized picture
into individual backgrounds for each zone on your channel.
The term player is used to describe any device that is acting as a display engine
for Carousel. A display engine is a piece of licensed software that accesses the
main Carousel system, in search of a specific channel of Carousel. Once the display
engine has contacted the server, it requests the bulletins for the channel that was
selected in the preferences for the display engine. It then retrieves the bulletins
that are assigned to the zones on that channel and then displays them accordingly.
Hereinafter, we will use the term player to describe this device.
Channels and Players are licensed in Carousel. Zones are not licensed and hence
there is no limit to the number that can be added to your system.
The simplest channels have one zone, and in this configuration the distinction
between channels and zones is almost irrelevant2 .
More complex configurations might have six or more zones on a single channel,
providing the audience with a vast array of information at any given time.
2.4.4 Zones on Multiple Channels
!→ In Carousel, you can place a zone on any number of channels.

Example: Imagine that you have a Carousel Server and two different Carousel Players in the
same geographic region. In this configuration the system is capable of displaying
three different channels. You want to add a zone on each channel that shows weather
information. You could create three different zones, one for each channel. A much
more efficient configuration would be to create a single zone devoted to weather
bulletins and place it on all three channels.
Zones have pixel dimensions and all bulletins created from that zone will use those
dimensions. However, when you add a zone to a channel, you’re free to stretch it
in any way that is needed. Obviously, displaying a zone in anything other than its
native resolution will reduce quality, but sometimes this is desirable.
Example: Let’s say you have an LCD panel in your lobby that has several zones displayed on
its channel. One of the zones is called General Bulletins. In the rest of your building,
you are displaying that same general bulletin zone solely, using televisions on a
RF network. In the lobby, the channel reduces that zone to a smaller size, making
more room for the other zones. On the televisions, the full 1024x768 channel is
consumed by the zone, which has the same resolution.
2.4.5 Bulletins
Bulletins are single messages created in Carousel. There is a wide variety of bulletins
that can be created in Carousel, which can include graphics, text, dynamically
updated web pictures, streaming video, data from databases, RSS feeds. . . the list
goes on. In most systems, the majority of bulletins are created by users of Carousel
from templates. These templates define areas of a bulletin used for text, graphics or
any other media element that might be employed.
2 This was the only configuration possibility with releases prior to Carousel Version 5.0.

!→ Bulletins are always created in a zone. That is, you pick a zone in Carousel, and
media and templates that are associated with that zone are made available to you.
Once you’re finished making the bulletin, it’s added to that zone’s list of bulletins
to display.
It is very common in larger systems to have zones that serve the same purpose,
but for different audiences—such as two zones that show general bulletins in two
different lobbies. This is why Carousel makes it very easy to copy bulletins to any
combination of zones.
Example: A bulletin is created for the building’s general bulletin zone, but you also want the
same bulletin to display in different zones. To do this you simply copy the bulletin
from the general bulletin zone to the desired zone or zones.
When you tell Carousel to share a bulletin with another zone, it automatically
resizes that bulletin to the target zone’s pixel dimensions. When designing your
system, it’s nice to size zones to similar dimensions, especially if a lot of sharing
is likely to take place.
2.4.6 Alert and Repeating Bulletins: Interrupting a Zone’s Bulletins
There are times when the normal flow of things just will not do. Elections, weather
conditions, alien invasions—these special events demand special attention and you
may want to temporarily interrupt a zone’s normal flow of bulletins.
Carousel has two special kinds of bulletins: active repeating and alert bulletins.
Active repeating bulletins insert themselves every nth bulletin that is displayed.
Alert bulletins, when active, will interrupt all current bulletins. When the alert
bulletin expires or is disabled, the bulletins in the active bulletins will continue their
loop.
2.4.7 Full-Screen Alert Zones: Interrupting All of a Channel’s Bulletins
When something truly demands attention, a special zone can be used to remove all
other zones from a channel: the full-screen alert zone. When bulletins are active in
this zone, a Carousel Display Engine will automatically remove all other zones3
from the display and show this zone full-screen.
Full-screen alert zones, like regular zones, can be used on multiple channels. A
channel can have any number of full-screen alert zone associated with it, which
means that you can prioritize these zones on a channel to give you powerful control
to override other full-screen alert zones, as well as your channel’s bulletins.
2.4.8 Crawl Zones
Carousel has crawl zones that may be attached to a channel. They are invisible until
a crawl bulletin is activated. Once active, the channel will reduce all of the zones
on the display, providing the room necessary to show the crawl bulletin. The crawl
zone may be placed at the top or bottom of the screen.
Only one crawl zone may be added to a channel. However, a crawl zone may be used
on any number of channels and may include any number of crawl bulletins.
!→ Unlike regular zones, a full-screen alert will not remove a crawl zone.
3 Except crawl zones, which we talk about next.

2.4.9 Channel Licenses, Display Engines and Players
A Carousel system consists of:

The Carousel Server : This is the software/hardware combination that provides the web interface and
manages the bulletins for all of the zones. It also runs the database and
services that manage Carousel.
Carousel Channel Licenses : A Carousel system comes with one of these and more may be purchased. Every
channel defined in Carousel must have a license.
Carousel Player Licenses : Each Carousel Player or Display Engine connected to the server takes one license.
You may purchase more Player licenses if you have multiple Carousel Players
displaying one channel.
Carousel Display Engine : This is the software that generates the digital signage output on a display. The
display engine creates the magic by obtaining data from the server, caching it
locally, and then delivering the output to your display.
Multiple display engines may display the same channel; for example a bank with a
branch downtown and a branch uptown would each have a display engine per site
containing identical content. The determining factor for this configuration is that
the banks are at two different physical locations. It is important to note that only
one display engine can run on a computer at a time.
Carousel may be packaged in a variety of ways. For example, the Carousel Pro
Server includes the server hardware. Purchasing Carousel Pro Server and a Carousel
Player would give you everything needed to run a single channel on a single display
engine.
Carousel Enterprise is a software only solution that includes one channel license
and zero display engines or player licneses. To complete a Carousel Enterprise
installation, a combination of server hardware and software display engines, channel
licenses and/or Carousel Players will need to be purchased. You may also purchase
the channel license/display engine combo for Carousel Pro.
A display engine license may be purchased separately. This is called the Software
Display Engine. The Software Display Engine is installed on a compatible computer
and it addresses an existing channel.
2.4.10 Categorizing Zones with Tagging
Another feature that is important to Carousel is the ability to tag zones. Tags are
keywords that describe a zone4 . Example tags might be: Lobby, Cafeteria, Western
Region or Common Areas. A zone can have as many tags as you like.
Example: You might have a zone dedicated to a channel that is used for a display engine in a
library’s entry way. This zone may be tagged with: Library, Entryway, Common
Areas, East Bank, Minneapolis Campus, and General Bulletins. In a system with
300 zones, you may wish to ease locating this zone by selecting the ‘Library’ and
‘Entryway’ tags, which filters out zones that don’t have both tags.
Tags are also useful when you’re creating a bulletin and want it displayed on a
specific group of zones. Using the above example, you can drill down to all zones
in ‘Common Areas’ on the ‘Minneapolis Campus’. Alternately, you could select all
‘Library’ zones in the ‘East Bank’.
4 Tags also describe media, but that’s for chapter 17 on page 155.

This feature is extremely important in very large installations where there is a need
to filter choices in order to quickly find the zone, or zones, that you are looking
for. What is nice about this approach is that you can select a specific set of zones
according to your needs.

II. Planning and Setup
“A goal without a plan is just a wish.”

—Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
25
26
3 The Setup Plan
If you are installing this Carousel system for another user, such as for a customer
because you are the systems integrator, you’ll need to have the questions that this
chapter raises answered before you can perform your installation. Otherwise,
you won’t know key information, such as the channels’ name, zone layouts, etc.
As the systems integrator, read this chapter, but understand that only customer
is going to be able to answer the questions within. As we mentioned in The
Essentials of Carousel, you need to use the check list in appendix A on page 185
to guide your installation.
The setup process in Carousel requires that you make decisions about the look and
configuration of your displays. You may want to show the weather on all of your
displays in one corner and meeting room information in another. Maybe you are a
television station and you want your station’s schedule always visible in the bottom
quarter of the screen with weather and general bulletins in the upper part. If you are
running a Carousel system with many channels, you may have some zones that are
shared across channels. You may have other zones that are similar in function, but
will show different information for different audiences. Carousel can meet all of
these needs.
This chapter will help you make decisions about your Carousel system’s setup. We
hope you consider it time well spent, saving you hours of work, reconfiguring your
system after you realize you got it wrong. Alternately, it could be a waste of time.
There is risk in everything. ;)
3.1 Designing Your Channel

As we discussed in chapter 2, channels contain one or more zones and those zones
can be placed on any number of channels. Every display engine tunes to a channel.
These facts hold the key to determining how your system will be configured.
For single channel systems, most of your decisions will be very obvious. Just
follow along and you’ll be able to pick out the parts of this section that apply to
you.
Dimensions of channel = your Your first step is to determine the size of the channel and what you want your
monitor’s resolution. channels to look like. The size will most often be determined by your display’s
output. Some common sizes are:
4x3 Standard Definition Television : 800 pixels across by 600 pixels down.
720p High Definition : 1280 pixels across by 720 pixels down.
1080p High Defnition : 1920 pixels across by 1080 pixels down.
16x10 : 1280 pixels across by 768 pixels down. (Many LCD monitors use this resolution.)
27
Other monitors, especially LCD monitors, may have additional resolutions. Check
with your monitor’s specifications and then test to make sure that the Carousel
player can use that resolution. If it can’t, you can usually get close enough so that
the player and the monitor will agree and display a high quality picture.
In this manual, we talk about a player for Carousel. This is any device with the
display engine software, including a Carousel Server, or some other device you
are using with a display engine.
Remember that channels, within Carousel’s world, refer to a collection of zones

that players can address. Therefore, while you are in the planning process, take
time to name your channels. Helpful names might be. . .
• Blackhawk Middle School
• Corporate HQ Lobby and Lunchroom
• Fennel Hall
• Eagan Office-Room 101b Wall Sign
In the above examples, the difference between zones and channels comes into
sharper focus. Fennel Hall might have weather, traffic information and general
bulletin zones for the audience in the building’s hallways. All of these zones are
placed on the channel that is being addressed by the players in Fennel Hall. The
naming becomes obvious when you understand the differences.
These names might not make sense to you, but remember: You are describing the
location of the displays that will be driven by the players that are addressing this
channel. You want to be able to identify them in a meaningful way within the
software, so choose a name carefully.
In larger installations, remember to make the names unique. If you are managing
25 lobbies, it is not enough to call a channel ‘Lobby’.
Finally, take note of the aspect ratio of your channel. Draw a box on a sheet of
paper that has the same aspect ratio1 . This will help you when you determine the
zones that will occupy your channel’s canvas.
3.1.1 Planning Tips for Your Zones
Single zone channels Channels must have at least one zone. In single zone configurations, channels show
one bulletin at a time, plus any crawls that may be active. In this configuration, you
will create one zone for the channel and its resolution will be that of the channel’s
resolution.
Even if you create only one zone for a channel, you can still add a crawl for
that channel. Crawls are special in that you don’t leave room for them on your
channel. Carousel will ‘squish’ your zones up or down when a crawl message is
activated.
Multiple zone channels Mixing multiple zones on one display or sharing zones across channels opens an
almost endless number of possibilities. You will add a zone to a channel when you
want a specific kind of information to always be visible, even while other bulletins
are displayed on other parts of the screen (figure 3.1 on the facing page).
1 That is, it’s as square or rectangular as your display is.
28 3 The Setup Plan

F IGURE 3.1: This example has
seven zones, five used for regular
content and two used for design
elements, each updating indepen-
dently. In a multi-channel system,
it is likely that three or four of
these zones would be used on other
channels.
You must understand zones and channels before you go about creating them
within Carousel. If you are wrong and want one zone instead of two or need a
zone sized differently, you will be in for a lot of effort duplication. Better to plan
first and get it right the first time!
In short, make a zone for a channel when you always want its information on the
screen.
Example: Do you want the weather always in one corner of the screen while other messages
rotate through? Then make one zone for weather and position it the corner. Do you
always want your meeting schedule or your station’s programming schedule in the
lower part of your screen? Then that would be another zone. Any time that you
want bulletins updated separately, you will create another zone for them.
Do not confuse categories of Do not confuse this with having bulletins of a specific category. That is, do not
messages with zones. make a zone just for sports and just for meetings, unless you really want two parts
of the screen to always show each category. It’s usually the case that you want
many different topics of bulletins on the same zone, with specialized zones for very
specific applications, like TV guides, meeting room schedules, traffic conditions,
weather, etc.
If you want a zone to show on more than one channel, make sure that you plan the
size and aspect ratio ahead of time. It’s is best to keep them the same size on each
channel. Otherwise the Carousel Display Engine will resize them for you, which
may slightly reduce their quality.
Example: You want the weather in the corner of all of your channels. All of the display
engines will be in the same city, so you make a single zone that will be used on all
of your channels.
Draw zones on paper before When you are planning the look of a channel, draw boxes for each zone on the
you make them in Carousel channel to give you a visual idea of the look before you set them up in Carousel’s
interface.
Also, consider situations where you have many zones that are serving a similar
purpose. Again, you may want to make sure that they are also sharing similar
dimensions, in case you want users to be able to send bulletins to multiple zones.
3.1 Designing Your Channel 29

Carousel will automatically resize the bulletin as it is copied across zones, however
zones with a radically different aspect ratios or sizes will not look as good as the
bulletin on the original zone (section 2.4.5 on page 20).
With multi-channel systems, the most important thing is to plan your zones and
channels, deciding what content will be on what zone and what zones will be
duplicated on which channels.
Tags for zones are important in While you are creating zones, it is important to establish the tags that you will
large installations. use for your zones, especially in larger installations. Not only do you not want
“Lobbies” and “Lobby” as tags, but you also want to consistently apply those tags
to all of your zones. If you have channels displayed exclusively in your lobbies,
make sure that all of them get that tag. Try to think of all the ways you may want to
group displays. You can add or delete tags at any time, it’s just easier to get it right
the first time. We introduced this topic in section 2.4.10 on page 22.
30 3 The Setup Plan

4 Carousel’s Video Capabilities
Carousel Players run the Carousel Display Engine. These devices are designed for
smooth, attractive playback of a wide range of content. Here are some guidelines to
follow:
4.1 Carousel Player Software Comparisons

Carousel has multiple types of Player Software available, each with their own
strengths. See figure 4.1 for this information. For information on how to change
your Display Engine mode, see section 7.2 on page 53.
F IGURE 4.1: A comparison

between the different available
Carousel Player software types.
4.2 Video File Playback Performance and Resolutions

Carousel supports the following video file formats:
• WindowsMedia 9 and higher (.WMV)
• Quicktime 7 and higher (.QT)
• MPEG 1/2/4 (.MPG,.M4V)
• H.264 (.MOV)
• Standard AVI files supported by a default Windows installation, especially
DV (.AVI)
Carousel supports playback of these formats at resolutions up to 1080p/30 (720p/60
in the case of DV).
Also, high performance codecs, such as H.264, may stutter more often than lower
performance codecs, such as MPEG-2.
We’ve had the best luck using the WMV 9 Advanced codec and setting the bit rate
above 20mb/s. If given the option, keep the size and frame rate at “current”.
4.3 Crawl Performance

Carousel supports a crawl ticker, which appears at the top or bottom of the display.
Under most conditions, this crawl will not display excessive or distracting stuttering,
but occasional stuttering is to be expected.
31
Stuttering can be minimized by:
• Keeping the display resolution to 720p or lower
• Minimizing playback of video files that use high performance codecs (H.264)
• Minimizing playback of Flash animations with many moving components.
As of Carousel 6.2, a less graphically intensive crawl that “rolls over” has been
added to the Performance Graphics Manager. See section 7.2 on page 53 for
information on changing the Graphics Manager for the Display Engine.
32 4 Carousel’s Video Capabilities

5 Introduction to Carousel’s User Interface
This chapter shows you how to log into Carousel and will introduce you to many of
Carousel’s common user interface features. This chapter is important both as an
introduction and as a reference while you read other chapters. Instead of repeating
instructions on forms that appear multiple times within the software, we put them
here. At this point, some of elements of the user interface may not be relevant to
you. Just glance through the later parts of this chapter, knowing that you will return
here often as you read through the rest of the manual.
Remember, Carousel is a web application and you access it from your network.
There is no need for users to install special software to create and manage bulletins,
other than your favorite web browser. So let’s get started!
5.1 Logging Into Carousel

Provided that your Carousel system is on the network, you can login by simply
typing its IP address or network name into your favorite web browser.
F IGURE 5.1: The FrontDoor login
Once you see something like the picture in figure 5.1, type in the account information
for the administrator.
Username: Admin
Password: trms
This is the default password for the administrator account. Once your system is
online and ready, it is critical that you change this password.
Once you successfully log into the system, you’ll be greeted with the FrontDoor
menu. Setting up your FrontDoor server is covered in FrontDoor: The Manual, so
go read that reference if you’re curious about Server Setup or User Management.
For now, go ahead and click on the Carousel menu option.
5.2 The Main Menu

A fresh installation, with no channels or zones configured, will look like figure 5.2
on the next page. Carousel Servers or Carousel Pro Servers shipped from Tightrope
will come with a free Carousel Creative Channel installed and configured (typically
33
F IGURE 5.2: A Carousel System
that has not been set up
named ‘My First Channel’). So your Main Menu will look more similar too
figure 5.3.
If you are wokring on a Carousel Enterprise system with a fresh install you have
two options for following along in this chapter:
F IGURE 5.3: The Carousel Main

Menu
store.trms.com : Go to the creative store and purchase a professionally designed channel that will add
templates, backgrounds, pictures and other content that will look fantastic on
your displays!
demo.trms.com : Go to Tightrope’s demonstration site and log in using one of the example systems
that you’ll see. The log in information is included next to each example.
Once you’ve logged in, you’ll see a working Carousel system that will be
perfect to use as you follow along in this chapter.
34 5 Introduction to Carousel’s User Interface

Keep in mind that the zones and channel names used on the demonstration
system are probably not what you will eventually choose for your system.
First let’s look at the main menu:

New Bulletin : This is where you go to create any kind of bulletin, except Alert Bulletins. These
include bulletins created by users, uploaded through the web interface or
dynamically created by Carousel through data sources.
New Alert Bulletin : When you need to interrupt a zone’s bulletins for a special event, such as in an
emergency, you can use an Alert Bulletin. When active, an Alert Bulletin will
suspend all normal bulletins. When they are de-activated, the normal flow of
bulletins will resume.
Manage Bulletins : Once bulletins are in the system, you can change their order, move, delete and edit
them. The Manage Bulletins menu is also where you can approve bulletins
from other users and delete stale bulletins whose time has passed.
Media : Carousel utilizes media in bulletins that are created from templates. The Media
menu includes: backgrounds, pictures, video clips, sound files, templates and
media tags. Templates create the outline for a new bulletin, predetermining
the placement of text, graphics, video and the bulletin’s background.
Event Schedule : The event schedule is for use if you have bulletins that show scheduled information
that is entered directly into Carousel. This is covered in section 15.9 on
page 128, The Event Schedule Bulletins.
Extras : Includes screensaver setup and URL links for RSS feeds and a public web interface
for active bulletins see chapter 18 on page 181, Extras.
Zone Settings : This is where you establish settings such as who gets emailed when a bulletin is
waiting for approval. It also is where you can enable or disable the public
web output of carousel.
5.3 The Status Bar

The Status Bar at the top of the screen, illustrated in figure 5.4, is an ever-present
guide to what’s happening and where you are working within the software. Also,
in figure 5.4, you can see that we’ve helpfully labeled some of the bar’s fea-
tures.
F IGURE 5.4: The Status Bar
Zone Tabs : These tabs list all of the zones that are available to the current user. There are three
zone types: bulletin zones (labeled ‘Zones’, crawl zones and full screen alert
zones. We cover each in part 3, part III on page 81, Making Bulletins.
5.3 The Status Bar 35

→ : This label highlights the zone that you are currently working on. It is extremely
Current !Zone
important to label because everything in Carousel tends to center around the
current zone that you are working on.
Current Menu Location : As you navigate through the software, you are presented with different menus. The
navigation of these menus is displayed in this label. You’ll notice that the
current menu is shown as text, while previous menus are hyperlinked. You
can navigate to previous menus by selecting these links.
Do not use the forward and back buttons in your web-browser while
working in Carousel.
Status Message : Carousel uses this area to communicate information such as a warning or the result
of an action you took.
Configuration Button : This button is available only from the main menu and only to users that are given
permission to change Carousel’s configuration. This is where you are pre-
sented with access to all of Carousel’s internal configuration settings. We go
into detail on this subject in chapter 6 on page 41, Setup Basics: Step-By-Step.
5.4 Quick Links
F IGURE 5.5: Quick Links
The quick links at the top of the bulletin (figure 5.5) are always with you within
Carousel’s interface. They provide shortcuts to many menu items, such as making
alert and standard bulletins, managing bulletins and returning to the main menu. In
addition, there is a link to log out, return to the main menu and to exit to FrontDoor’s
main menu.
5.4.1 About Menu
The About Screen is accessible only from the quick links at the top of the screen. If
you call in for technical support you may be asked to navigate to this screen which
gives you current version information.
5.5 Selecting Zones

There are two ways to select zones within Carousel. One is through the standard
menu, shown in figure 5.6 on the facing page. The other is through a tag selector
window, shown in figure 5.7 on the next page.
All zones will always be shown in the pop-down zone menu for the built-in
administrator account, admin. Other user accounts may have limited access
to zones, in which case; Carousel customizes the menu according to granted
permissions. See FrontDoor: The Manual for further details.

5.5.1 Zones with the Pop-Down Menu
F IGURE 5.6: When there are only

a few zones, a pop-down menu will
appear when you hover over any
zone tab that has more than one
zone.
The ‘>’ signals the current Notice that in figure 5.6, the first selection, Building/Video, has a greater-than ‘>’
zone. arrow next to it. This is to highlight that this zone is currently selected.
5.5.2 Zones with the Tag Selector
In a system with multiple zones Carousel allows you choose how you view the list
of zones. By default, Carousel will display systems with less than 151 zones in a
pop-down menu and systems with greater than 15 zones in a Zone Selector window.
At the start, all of the available tags and zones are listed. When you select a tag on
the left side, only zones that include that tag will be shown. In addition, only tags
that are also in the remaining zones are shown. That is, if there are no zones that
have both the “Minneapolis” and “Saint Paul” tags, then “Saint Paul” would
not appear after you selected “Minneapolis”.
F IGURE 5.7: When you select tags

on the left, Carousel will filter out
tags and zones that don’t match the
selected tag. You can keep selecting
tags until you find the zone(s) that
you’re looking for.
The tag selector will appear when you want to switch zones or when Carousel asks
if you want to copy a bulletin to other zones. When copying a bulletin, you can
use tags to filter down to exactly the combination of zones that you are looking for,
instead of having to pick through the entire list.
1 This number is defined by the user Main Menu:Configure:System:Zone Selection Style
5.5 Selecting Zones 37

You can set the threshold for when Carousel uses the pop-down list and when it
uses the tag selector. We cover this topic in section 9.2.1 on page 76, Zone Selection
Style.
5.6 The Media Picker

There will be times when you need to select a background or picture2 . When this
happens, you can pick one from a pop-down list, or use Carousel’s media picker
tool, illustrated in figure 5.8.
You get to this screen by clicking the select link next to any background or picture
pop-down list.
F IGURE 5.8: The Media Picker
Both the ‘My’ and zone backgrounds/pictures are unique to that zone. That is, if
you switch to another zone, you will see a unique set of backgrounds or pictures
listed in both the ‘My’ and backgrounds sections. For more info on My versus Zone
Media see section 17.1 on page 156
To select a picture when you are using it in a bulletin, click anywhere within the
picture’s box.
5.6.1 Selecting Media With Tags
One of our favorite features of Carousel is what we call the tag pile. The tag pile
is. . . a pile of tags. Actually, it’s an alphabetical list of all of the tags that have been
defined for the pictures within a zone. Clicking on a tag will filter out any picture
that lacks the selected tag. You’ll see that because you will then be looking at a
2 To keep things simple, in this section picture means the same thing as background and vice-versa,
since they are treated the same in the media picker

F IGURE 5.9: Selecting media with
tags.
sub-set of all of the available backgrounds, tags that are no longer valid will be
grayed out. As you can see in figure 5.9, there are three colors for tags:
Dark Brown : Tags that you have selected.
Light Brown : Tags that are selectable.
Light Grey : Tags that are not selectable because no pictures or backgrounds match the current
filter.
Tags are a great way to drill into a set of pictures and they are especially helpful
when you have a large number of pictures to sift through.
If after selecting a tag you decide that you no longer want to include it in your
filter, you can click the next to the list of selected tags at the top of the media
picker.
We cover the task of adding tags to backgrounds and pictures in chapter 17 on

page 155, Managing Media
5.7 Common Icons and Their Purpose

This section includes the common icons that you will see throughout Carousel.
Move Size : These four arrows are used for two purposes: to move a graphic element or to resize
one. When it is used to resize, you resize from the bottom right. Clicking the
right arrow widens the element and the bottom arrow makes it taller.
Remove : This icon is visible when you are filtering by one or more tags. It appears to the
right of the filter by label and you click on it to remove the filter that it is
next to.
Copy/Move Bulletin : Used when you want to copy or move a bulletin, either to another zone or within
this zone. It is also used to move a bulletin to the saved or stale bulletins list,
which we talk about in chapter 16 on page 143, Managing Bulletins.
Delete Bulletin : To delete a bulletin completely, use this icon.
Select All : This little arrow appears above lists with checkboxes preceding each item. Once
you click it, it selects all items in the list. If they are already selected, it will
deselect them.
5.7 Common Icons and Their Purpose 39

Edit Bulletin : Once a bulletin is made, you can edit it by selecting this icon.
This icon is also used to edit a group of bulletins. You can change the display
name for the group and you can change each bulletin’s on/off time within the
group.
View Full Screen : This icon, and another variation of it, appears when you have the option to magnify
a preview in another window.
Refresh : This appears when a preview may be refreshed. Generally, this happens after you
have edited a text box when making a bulletin.
Spell Check : Carousel includes a spell checker. Clicking this icon will automatically check the
spelling of all fields in the bulletin that you are editing.
Edit Template : To edit the template of a bulletin that you are making, you can click this icon. If you
would rather make minor edits, you can try the quick-edit palette, described
in section 11.2 on page 84, Editing and Creating Bulletins.
Un-group : When bulletins are grouped together, you can break off each slide in the group by
clicking this button.

6 Setup Basics: Step-By-Step
In this section, we walk through the process of configuring your Carousel sys-
tem.
Sorry to repeat ourselves, but, it is absolutely necessary that you understand

channels and zones and how they work on your system. You will make decisions
during this section that will take a large amount of time to undo. Read chapter 2
on page 17, The Essentials of Carousel, if you have not done so already.
To set up Carousel, you’ll have to log in with an account that has full access to
Carousel. Typically, the admin account is used for this purpose. We covered the
login process in section 5.1 on page 33, Logging Into Carousel.
Once you are logged in you will most likely be greated with a menu that looks
much like figure 5.3 on page 34.
Systems shipped from Tightrope will have a Creative Channel called ‘My First
Channel’ already installed on them. You may want to follow some of the steps
listed here to edit that channel (including chaning the names of the channel and
zones).
6.1 Configuration Menu

Main Menu: Configure To create a new channel click on the Configure button to the right of the status
bar.
F IGURE 6.1: Configure Main
Menu
6.2 Create Your Zones

Once you have logged in and navigated to the Configure menu, your next step will
be to create and configure your system’s zones.
Main Menu: Con- Step 1: Click on the Zones menu item.
figure: Zones
Step 2: Click the Add New Zones button and type in the name of your zone. Select the type
of zone that you want to create: Bulletin, crawl or full screen alert. We explained
each type in section 2.4.5 on page 20, Bulletins. When you’re finished, click the
add link (figure 6.2 on the following page).
41
F IGURE 6.2: Adding Zones
6.2.1 The Zone Properties Form
F IGURE 6.3: The Zone Properties

Page
Click the name of zone that you just added and you will see it’s properties form,
illustrated in figure 6.3. The following steps will help you edit the zones proper-
ties:
Step 1: Re-edit the name as needed.
Best practice is to prefix zone names with the channel that they will be on. For
example, “Library-”. If they will be on multiple channels, another prefix might
be appropriate, such as “All Channels-”.
Step 2: Tag the zone as needed. If no tags exist or you need a tag that does not yet exist,
add it to the Tags field and then click the add button. You can add more than one
tag at a time, by simply entering commas between them
Step 3: Type in a description. This should describe the purpose of the zone and, if known,
where it will be seen.
Step 4: For bulletin and full-screen alert zones, choose the size of the zone, in pixels. This
step is incredibly important to get right! This is where all of your planning comes
into play as knowing the correct dimensions of the zone will determine the size of
all of the media and templates that are created within it. If you get it wrong, then
42 6 Setup Basics: Step-By-Step

you will have to redo everything or resize all of the media within, which may reduce
quality.
Crawl zones don’t have dimensions. They go on the top or bottom of a channel.
The channel determines the fonts and colors for any zones that appear. See
section 6.3.3 on page 46, The Crawl Properties Form to learn how to adjust the
crawls appearance on a specific channel.
Step 5: If you’re walking through these steps for the first time, the resize media link will
be of no help. It is for when you mess up the size of a zone, add a bunch of media,
reset the size of the zone and now want to make all of the media conform to the new
size.
Step 6: The Use server’s time settings check box locks this zones time settings to that of
the Carousel server. If the zone is in another time zone, then uncheck this box and
choose the time zone for the geographic location that these zones will be displayed
in. That is, if your zone is used in the lobby of the Bangalore, India office, go ahead
and select “5:30+”.
Step 7: The items hidden by the Show Zone Synchronization Settings tab are outside of
this walk-through. See section 9.1 on page 75, Synchronizing Zones for detailed
information on synchronizing zones.
Step 8: When you’re finished, click the Save button.
Step 9: Add additional zones by going back and repeating from section 6.2 on page 41 until
you are finished.
6.3 Define Your Channels

Now that all of your zones have been created, we’re ready to define the channels
that your system is licensed for.
Navigate back to the main configuration screen by clicking on the Configuration
link at the top of the screen, or click the Configuration button on the status bar of
Carousel’s main menu. Then click the Channels menu item.
Main Menu: Configure:
Channels Step 1: Click the Add Channel button to start the configuration of a channel.
Step 2: Your new channel will be called “New Channel”, and Carousel will automatically
open the the Channel Setup Form.
6.3.1 The Channel Setup Form
In Channel Configuration, you’ll see the menu in figure 6.4 on the next page. We’ll
start with the first menu item and click Channel Setup to edit your channel.
Step 1: You will see the form in figure 6.5 on the following page. Name your channel in the
Name field. Remember to name it something that will remind you of the location
of the displays that are addressing this channel.
Step 2: If this channel is to have a crawl zone associated with it, then choose that crawl
zone in the pop-down labeled Subscribe to Crawls from zone.
Step 3: If the channel is to have one or more full-screen alert zones, click on the Click here
to configure subscriptions link.
6.3 Define Your Channels 43

F IGURE 6.4: The Channel Config-
uration Editing Menu
F IGURE 6.5: The Channel Setup

Form
Substep A: Any full-screen alert zone that you may wish to add to this channel
may done on this form, shown in figure 6.6. Select all of the zones
from the pop-down list and click the Add button. Keep repeating until
all of the full-screen alert zones have been added.
F IGURE 6.6: Adding full-screen
alert zones to this channel.
Substep B: Full-screen alerts are prioritized from top to bottom. That is, if both the
first and the second zones have bulletins in them, then the bulletins in
the first zone in this list will be shown, but not any of the zones beneath.
Just drag each item around on the list as needed to re-order the list.
This way, you can have a special full-screen alert zone that is used
for emergencies and other zones that you use just to override the
normal display. If an emergency happens, even the other full-screen
alert zone’s bulletins will be overridden.

F IGURE 6.7: You can re-order the
list by dragging and dropping the
items.
Substep C: If you’ve added a zone that you didn’t mean to, just click the checkbox
next to the name and click the Delete button.
Substep D: When you’re done, click save and the new settings for the full-screen
alerts on this channel will take effect.
Step 4: To save your changes for the channel’s setup, click the Save button on the Channel
Setup form.
6.3.2 The Channel Layout Form
Main Menu: Configure: Next, we will edit the channel’s layout, which defines the placement of each zone
Channel Configuration: that will use this channel. To begin, click the Channel Layout menu item from the
Editing <Channel Name>: Channel Configuration (figure 6.8) menu and follow the steps below:
Channel Layout
Step 1: First, choose the channel’s resolution, which will match the video output of the
Carousel player(s) that are addressing it in the Output Display fields. Common
resolutions are entered by clicking on the shortcuts just below the fields.
F IGURE 6.8: The Channel Layout

Menu
When you are setting up a portrait display, then you will want to remember to flip
the width and height dimensions from what would be considered landscape. For
example, “1280x720” becomes “720x1280”.
Step 2: Next, we’ll add one or more zones to our empty display. Pick one from the Available
Zones pop-down list and click Add.
Step 3: You’ll see a zone properties form appear, like in figure 6.9 on the next page. Also,
you’ll see the preview window update to show you the default position where your
new zone will appear.
Step 4: Reposition and size your zones with the Size and Position fields. If you place
your zone outside of the channel’s boundaries or overlap another zone, you’ll get a

F IGURE 6.9: Zone Properties
Form in Channel Layout
F IGURE 6.10: A zone added to the

preview
warning message. Correct these conditions before continuing.
You can select a zone to edit from the preview window by clicking on the box
the represents its size and position.
Step 5: Keep adding zones until you are finished by going back to step 2 on the preceding
page. Once you are finished, click the Save button.
Make sure that you don’t see any black on your channel’s display. This would
denote a hole in the channel’s canvas. You want to be sure that all zones touching
all edges of the channel or another zone.
6.3.3 The Crawl Properties Form
Main Menu: Configure: If you’ve specified a crawl zone for this channel, select the Crawl menu item
Channel Configuration: from the Channel Configuration main menu. The Crawl Settings form adjusts the
Editing <Channel Name>: display properties of the crawl for this channel. Review figure 6.11 on the next page
Crawl Settings as you read through this section.
By default, the crawl will appear on the bottom of the display. To make it appear on
the top, click the Top radio button.
The speed is adjusted by the Speed radio buttons. There is no hard and fast rule
as to how fast a particular player will display a crawl. The middle selection is

F IGURE 6.11: The Crawl Settings
Menu
generally considered readable. Faster speeds may result in some jerkiness on some
displays.
The Font items adjust the color, font and size of the text. Click the color wheel
button to reveal a palette of colors. Alternately, enter a specific color in the field
below the color wheel, using the Hex color code.
The background of the crawl is a solid color, adjusted by the Background color
wheel.
To adjust the number of pixels separating the edge of the monitor and the crawl,
enter a value into the Offset field. The default value of “5” pixels is a pretty good
starting point for most LCD or Plasma monitors. NTSC/PAL television screens
may need a value as high as “15”.
Once you are finished with the Crawl Settings form, click the Save button to save
your changes.
6.3.4 The Date and Time Properties Form
Carousel can display the date and time as an overlay on your channel. We can
Main Menu: Configure: adjust the properties of this display from the Date and Time item in the Channel
Channel Configuration: Configuration menu.
Editing <Channel Name>:
To turn the date and time overlay on, click the Enabled checkbox at the top of the
Date and Time Settings
form. This is enabled by default.
The Placement pop-down will determine where the time/date display appears.
Cycling is a nice option if you are worried about monitor burn-in.
Adjust the font’s typeface, size and color within the Font section of the form.
The Format fields offer some control over the format of the time and date. Pick
from the presets offered or click the Custom option. If you pick Custom review
appendix D on page 197, Custom Time Format Chart.
The Background Rectangle section is used to adjust the appearance of the back-
drop of the time and date.

F IGURE 6.12: The Date and Time
Menu
If you don’t want a rectangle behind your time and date, then set the Opacity to
“0%”.
In the Background Rectangle Outline section, you may enable and adjust the
appearance of an outline around the backdrop. The settings are self explana-
tory.
In the Horizontal Offset and Vertical Offset field, you are adjusting the distance
from the edge that the time and date box will appear. The default value is pretty
good for most circumstances.
6.3.5 The Background Audio Form
If you are going to use the background audio feature of Carousel then you will want
to configure the audio settings. From the Channel Configuration menu select the
Main Menu: Configure: Background Audio menu item.
Channel Configuration:
To play out whatever is coming from the player’s line input, leave it at the default
settings. To loop through items in the system’s background audio list (next step),
Background Audio Set-
then select the Background Audio List radio button.
tings
6.3.6 Adding Background Audio to Carousel
Main Menu: Configure: If you selected the Background Audio List option from the previous section, then
Channel Configuration:
Background Audio List
you will want to add audio to that list. Click the Background Audio Playlist item
from the Channel Configuration menu. To add music to the list, follow these
steps:
Step 1: Click the add button to add a new file. You’ll be taken to a screen where you can
upload audio files.
Step 2: Click the Choose File button, and the browse menu will appear. Select a single
audio file to upload, and click the Upload button.
Acceptable file formats are listed in section 17.2 on page 156, File Formats.
Have a bunch of files to upload? Add them all to a .zip file, and upload the zip
file!
Step 3: Once you have added a few tracks, you can alter the playback order by dragging the
song’s title up and down the list.
Prefer to have the songs randomized? Select the Randomize Order radio
button.
Step 4: To remove a song from the list, click the Delete button.
Step 5: When you have finished, click Save.
6.3.7 Adding a Seamless Background
A seamless background is a background uploaded into Carousel that covers the

entire channel. Once it is uploaded, Carousel cuts it up to fit in the zones that
are placed within that channel, saving the slices for use in templates within those
zones.
We cover this process in section 17.9 on page 176, Creating a Seamless Background
for a Multi-Zoned Channel.
6.4 Previewing Your Channel

After you have designed your channel, you can preview it directly in your web
browser. Head back to the Channel list in the configuration screens, and click
the preview icon next to the channel name, as shown in figure 6.13 on the next
page.
A new browser window will open, and you will see the entire channel, with each
zone in its correct place as depicted in figure 6.14 on the following page.
Certain bulletin types cannot be displayed in the web-based channel preview

due to network bandwidth concerns. Specifically, you will not be able to see
Video, Flash or Crawl bulletins. Also, the preview will stretch to fill the browser
window.
6.4 Previewing Your Channel 49

F IGURE 6.13: The channel list,
with preview buttons.
F IGURE 6.14: Example of the

web-based channel preview.

6.5 Initial Channel
When you connect a Carousel Player to your system for the first time, it will contact
the Server in order to retrieve its assigned channel. If you haven’t specified a
channel for this player, the Initial Channel will be used.
To change the Initial Channel:
Step 1: Navigate to Configuration : Channels.
Step 2: Tick the box next to the desired Initial Channel.
Step 3: Click Set as Initial Channel.
6.6 Where We Are At

If you have followed along through this chapter then, at this point, your system is
as set up as it needs to be in order to begin adding content to the system. However,
we are lacking backgrounds and we haven’t exactly set up the display output of our
players. So while we are done with the Configuration menu, for now, we are not
quite “ready for prime-time”.
The next chapter, Configuring Players, will guide us through the process of config-
uring the video display for your system.
6.5 Initial Channel 51

7 Configuring Players
Every Carousel system has at least three major parts: the web interface, the Carousel
Service1 and one or more Carousel Players. This chapter covers the configuration
of those players that are running on Windows. If you are making your own Carousel
Players from a Carousel Software Display Engine, setting the resolution and TV
output options of your display may be different.
Remember, Carousel Pro and Enterprise Servers do not include a display engine,
and other 3rd Party Players, such as BrightSign, are configured in other ways.
7.1 Closing the Display Engine

When the Carousel Player is turned on, it will automatically load the Display Engine.
If you are quick, you can click the Cancel button before it loads (figure 7.1). You
will want to close the Display Engine before it starts so that you can perform the
steps described in this chapter.
F IGURE 7.1: Closing the Display

Engine before it loads
If you missed your chance to close the Display Engine, you can close it while it is
running by clicking the mouse repeatedly until it closes. The other, more dignified
method, is to hold the Esc key down until it disappears.
7.2 Configuring the Display Engine

When you double click on the Carousel Display icon, you will see the Loading
Carousel splash screen appear. (figure 7.1) Before the Configuration button counts
down to 0, click it. This will load the Display Engine Configuration Form, illustrated
in figure 7.2 on the next page.
In the following sections, we’ll explore each of the four quadrants of this form:
Carousel Server, Display Settings, Time Settings and Live Video Input. By doing
so, you will learn all there is to know about configuring a display engine for use in
your system.
1 This turns pages on and off and controls Carousel Players
53
F IGURE 7.2: The Display Engine
Configuration Form
7.2.1 Carousel Server
The first field, Carousel Server, is where you can type the address of the Carousel
Server. If it is the local machine, such as with a Carousel Server or when a Carousel
Solo is acting in stand-alone mode, then “localhost” will be the appropriate
setting.
If your display engine is receiving data from a remote Carousel server, then you may
type the IP address or network name of that server. To check the connection, type
the server’s address and then click the button to the right of the field. The Display
Engine network diagnostics screen will appear and run through a series of tests to
determine if a connection to the server you entered will be successful.
The connection diagnostic tests will look something like figure 7.3 on the facing
page. You’ll find a list of each test that was performed, plus a green check for each
test that passes. At the bottom of the screen, you’ll find a short description of the
test results. In this case, all of our tests succeeded, so we should have no problems
with our Carousel system.
54 7 Configuring Players
F IGURE 7.3: Successful connec-
tion tests
If one or more of the tests fail, you’ll see a screen similar to figure 7.4 on the
next page. If you read the test results at the bottom, you’ll see several possible
reasons for why the test failed, and some possible solutions you can try to get it
passing.
In the case of figure 7.4 on the following page, the Carousel Service wasn’t running
on the server. After starting the Service, all the tests passed, and the Display Engine
ran as expected.
For help on networking and a listing of required ports for Carousel servers and
players, please review the FrontDoor Manual.
7.2.2 Time Settings
There are two settings in this section. The first is a checkbox labeled Synchronize
Time. This instructs the Display Engine to synchronize its clock with the Carousel
server. If the player is a part of a windows domain, or is otherwise receiving time
synchronization, leave this unchecked. Otherwise, you can check it and the display
engine will keep its time in synchronization with the Carousel server.
The second label is Offline Hours. You can tell Carousel to go off line, refusing all
updates during a period of time each day. If your network is congested during the
day and you do not want Carousel to update this Display Engine during those hours,
you can enter a from and to value by moving the radio button to the from option.
In this mode, the Display Engine will not update it while the time is outside this
range.
7.2 Configuring the Display Engine 55

F IGURE 7.4: Connection tests
with failures and possible solutions
7.2.3 Display Settings
This section covers advanced setup options that are used only in specific circum-
stances.
The first, Displays refers to the configuration of the Display Engine with more than
one monitor (this is rare).
There are couple of important notes on this feature:
1. Monitor Offset is not supported by Tightrope’s technical support depart-
ment. This is because the official policy is that computers that are running
the Carousel Display Engine should be dedicated to that task to optimize
processor performance.
2. The Display Engine is a real-time program that demands a lot from the
computer’s processor and graphics card. It’s not engineered to coexist with
other applications.
3. The Display Engine will do everything it can to hide your mouse and other-
wise annoy while you try to use it.
If you do not want the task bar or cursor hidden, you may uncheck the two
checkboxes to the left of the Monitor Offset field.
4. Some graphics cards will accelerate video in a way that makes your primary
monitor show the video correctly while your secondary monitor will show a
black hole where the video would be if it were shown on the primary display.
5. You must have the monitor that the Display engine uses on to the left of the
monitor that will display the desktop.
The second label is Graphics Manager. As of this writing, there are four:
Standard : This is the most common setting with all of the acceleration and transitions enabled.
It requires Microsoft’s DirectX 9.0 Pixel Shader 2.0 feature on the computer’s
graphics card.
Simple : This mode is for hardware that lacks Pixel Shader 2.0. It is mostly for older hardware
which is running newer software.
The Simple mode is not thread safe. This means that it is not compatible
with dual processor machines or with processors that have Intel’s Hyper
Threading technology.
Performance : This mode only supports cross-fade transitions and uses a less graphically intense
crawl that “rolls over” to give the best visual performance.
Diagnostic Mode : This runs the display engine in a window with a list of diagnostic information that
is helpful to our support department when resolving problems.
7.2.4 Live Video Input
If your computer has a video input option, such as Tightrope’s CAR-TVI, you may
select it from the Device pop-down list. Once you select the device, Carousel will
test for compatible input options, including Composite, S-Video and Tuner. You
will see them listed to the right of the pop-down list.
If a player has more than one audio device, you may select it as the audio input in
the Audio field.
7.3 Managing Your Players

The Player Configuration menu allows you to see current status of Players via
the dashboard, customize the channel and monitor control schedules of Players,
and update the notification settings for all Players in the system. From Carousel’s
Configure menu, click on Players. (figure 6.1) You’ll be presented with the Dash-
board along with schedule and notification options as in figure 7.5 on the next
page.
7.3.1 Player Dashboard
In figure 7.6 on the following page, you can see four players that are registered with
Carousel, including their Name, IP address, and the Carousel channel that each
player is configured to use. Additionally, you can see the version of the Display
Engine software, and the last time that the Display Engine checked in with the
server. (Under normal circumstances, the Display Engine will check in with the
server approximately once every minute.)
As you can see, this system is having some trouble. The “Main Lobby” player
hasn’t checked in for a long time, the “Conference Room” player is running an old
version of the software, and although the “Hallway” player has checked in recently,
it taking a little longer than usual for the next check in to occur. Thankfully the
“Back Office” player is running smoothly.
7.3 Managing Your Players 57

F IGURE 7.5: Player Dashboard
and Player Alerts
F IGURE 7.6: Player Dashboard

list with some troubled players
F IGURE 7.7: Player Status list

with healthy players
After plugging the network cable back into “Main Lobby” (perhaps an overnight
maintenance person accidentally unplugged it), and installing the latest software on
the “Conference Room” player, things are up and running once again according to
figure 7.7 on the preceding page. Looks like there was just a network glitch with the
“Hallway” player, because it has checked in again without any intervention.
Editing Player Configuration
Click Edit Settings... on one of the players in order to bring up the Edit Player
Settings screen.
F IGURE 7.8: The Edit Player

Settings screen
This screen includes the following settings:

Hostname : Displays the hostname of the player. This value is read-only.
Address : Displays the IP address of the player. This value is read-only.
Remote Access ID : This is the unique ID used to remotely access the Player via remote access software.
Name : Sets the name of the player that will be displayed within the Carousel interface.
Default Channel : Select the channel that you would like the player to show when a channel isn’t
explicitly scheduled using the Channel Schedule.
Channel Schedule : Select which Channel Schedule the player should use. See section 7.3.2 on the
following page for more information.
Control Schedule : Select which Monitor Control Schedule the player should use. See section 7.3.3 on
page 61 for more information.
Control Code : Select the type of monitor control to use with this player.
Test Buttons : These buttons allow you to manually turn the attached monitor on and off using the
selected Control Code.

7.3.2 Channel Schedule
The Channel Schedule defines automatic channel changes. Once you have defined
a schedule, you can assign one or more players to use it.
F IGURE 7.9: The Channel Sched-

ule list
Click Add to create a new channel schedule.

To delete a channel schedule:
1. Tick the box next to the channel schedule(s) you would like to delete.
2. Click Delete
Click the name of the channel schedule to edit it.
F IGURE 7.10: The edit channel

schedule screen
The screen includes the following settings:

Name : Enter a descriptive name of the schedule here. This name will be used throughout
the Carousel interface.
Start Time : Set the time at which the player should switch to the selected channel.
End Time : Set the time at which the player should switch back to its default channel.
Day Selection Boxes : Select the days of the week to which this schedule applies.
Channel : Select the channel that should be used during this schedule entry.
7.3.3 Monitor Control Schedule
The Monitor Control Schedule defines the times that the attached monitor should be
turned on and off.
Example: You might create a schedule that turns all of your monitors on at the start of the
business day and off at the end of the day.
F IGURE 7.11: The Monitor

Control Schedule screen
Click Add to create a new monitor control schedule.

To delete a monitor control schedule schedule:
1. Tick the box next to the monitor control schedule(s) you would like to delete.
2. Click Delete
Click the name of the monitor control schedule to edit it.
F IGURE 7.12: The Monitor
Control Schedule edit screen

Name : Enter a descriptive name of the schedule here. This name will be used throughout
the Carousel interface.
On Time : Enter the time at which the monitor should turn on.
Off Time : Enter the time at which the monitor should turn off.
Day selection boxes : Select the days of the week to which this schedule applies.
7.3.4 Monitor Control Codes
Control Codes define the commands that are sent to a monitor to turn it on and off.
Carousel includes several codes for commonly used monitors, but you’re free to
add your own codes.
F IGURE 7.13: The Control Codes

list
Click Add to create a new code.

To delete a monitor control code:
1. Tick the box next to the control code(s) you would like to delete.
2. Click Delete
Click the name of the control code to edit it.
Name : Enter a descriptive name for the control code. This name will be displayed through-
out the Carousel interface.
Baud Rate : Sets the number of bytes per second for the serial port. Consult your display’s
documentation to find the correct value.
Data Bits : Sets the number of bits that comprise a byte for the serial port. Consult your
display’s documentation to find the correct value.
Parity : Sets the parity mode for the serial port. Consult your display’s documentation to
find the correct value.
F IGURE 7.14: The Control Code
edit screen
Stop Bits : Sets the number of stop bits for the serial port. Consult your display’s documentation
to find the correct value.
Power On : Enter the power on command for your display. Consult your display’s documen-
tation to find the correct value. Enter the command as two-character long
hexadecimal values. You can enter “p” to insert a short pause between
characters.
Power Off : Enter the power off command for your display. Consult your display’s documen-
tation to find the correct value. Enter the command as two-character long
hexadecimal values. You can enter “p” to insert a short pause between
characters.
List of players using this code : If one or more players are using the code, a list of players along with On and Off
buttons is provided for easy testing.
7.3.5 Notification Settings
What if you’re not at your desk to view the player status list and a player loses
power? You can tell Carousel to send you an email (or even a text message to you
cell phone) whenever a player goes AWOL. Head over to the Alert Settings section,
seen in figure 7.15 on the following page.

F IGURE 7.15: Adjusting the
Player Alerts settings distribution
list.
Here you can adjust the amount of downtime before Carousel decides there’s a
problem with a player. This is the same setting used to determine if there should be
a “red X” in the Player Status screen (see figure 7.6 on page 58). Once this period
of time elapses without a check in from a player, Carousel will send an alert email
to the list of email addresses you’ve specified on this screen.
7.4 Cached Mode

When Carousel cannot contact the Carousel Service, it will continue to operate from
its cached pages. This is called Red Bar Mode, due to the red bar that the system
puts as a warning at the top of the screen, shown in figure 7.16.
F IGURE 7.16: The red bar at

the top of the display notes that
Carousel cannot connect with the
Carousel Service. It will run cached
pages until it reconnects.
Carousel will automatically try to reconnect with the Carousel Service, so there
is no need to manually restart the display engine once the network comes back
online.
7.5 Loading Zones

When Carousel loads zones for display, it does one by one, as you can see in
figure 7.17 on the next page.
If you forget to populate your channel with zones, or you leave a hole in the
channel’s palette, you can easily detect that by watching Carousel move through
the process.
F IGURE 7.17: The Carousel
Display Engine loading zones
7.6 Not Licensed Status

Occasionally, you may see that when the display engine starts it may complain that
it is NOT LICENSED. Typically this happens because on the Carousel server, the
service started but the database has not yet caught up with it. If you wait a few
moments, this condition may resolve itself.
If after a few minutes you still see the message, the system is unable to retrieve a
license from the server. This might happen if you change a player’s IP address and
try to reconnect it before Carousel drops its registration. To fix this:
Step 1: Log into Carousel as the administrator.
Step 2: From the main menu, click Configure from the right of the status bar.
Step 3: Click Players and then click Player Status.
Step 4: Click the checkbox next to the Display Engine that you would like to unregister.
Step 5: Click the Delete button.
This simply “undoes” the registration with the server, making a empty registra-
tion spot available for the next player that connects to the server.
Adding any additional hardware/accessories to your machine will often invalidate

the license code therefore causing a the system to become NOT LICENSED.
7.7 TV Video Output

The Carousel hardware does not have a natively built in TV output. Instead, an
external ConvertDVI hardware unit to provides both a composite and SDI video
output. The configuration needed is quite simple!
7.7.1 Physical Configuration
Step 1: Plug in the Diplay Port to DVI adapter.
7.6 Not Licensed Status 65

Step 2: Plug the white Matrox cable into that DVI as well as into a USB port.
Step 3: If you plan to use embedded audio (SDI) through the ConvertDVI , Plug the mini in
on the white Martox cable into the green line out jack on the back of the Carousel
unit.
We tell you to use the Display Port as it can only output DVI and can not be
converted to VGA whereas the DVI on the video card can be converted to VGA
(for KVM/dual display use).
7.7.2 Software Configuration
You will first need to set the output resolution to the unit.
You will want to set the output running to the ConvertDVI to 800x600 and make
sure it is set as the primary monitor.
At that point all that is left to do is make sure that the Convert DVI control panel
has the correct settings. This menu is launched from the task bar near the system
clock. Look for the purplish circle icon.
F IGURE 7.18: The ConvertDVI

Control Panel
The output type should be set to whatever output you running out of the Convert
DVI unit.
7.8 Adjusting the Video Resolution

This section covers two major topics: adjusting the video resolution for plug and
play monitors and adjusting the resolution for monitors that do not provide accurate
settings for the graphic card driver.
If you are operating your system with a standard television monitor in 4x3 mode,
then the default setting (800x600 pixels) is the best for this configuration.
If you plan to operate your system in 16x9 mode, then you will have to consult with
your monitor’s guide for the display’s optimum resolution. If you plug your monitor
into Carousel and it does not allow you to select the correct resolution using the
Windows Display Properties resolution slider, you will have to hand enter your
monitor’s resolution and sync rates.
7.8.1 Standard Resolution Adjustments
Generally, if you are running Carousel in 4x3 mode there is no need to adjust the
display’s resolution. It runs in 800x600 and this is optimal for all applications.
Before you proceed, be sure that your display is directly plugged into the Carousel
system. Do not plug it in through an active balun, routing switcher or other video
distribution system.
F IGURE 7.19: Select Display

Properties from the player’s
desktop
If you need to adjust Carousel’s screen resolution, you may do so by right-clicking

on Carousel’s desktop2 and clicking on Properties.
This opens the Display Properties dialog box. Click and drag the Screen Res-
olution slider until the native resolution of your display appears, as shown in
2 If the display engine is running, double-click until it closes.
7.8 Adjusting the Video Resolution 67

section 7.20.
F IGURE 7.20: Loading the Dis-
play Properties Dialog
7.8.2 Setting up a 9x16 Display
Carousel may be configured for 9x16 display, where the LCD or plasma monitor is
put on its side for a portrait display.
To accomplish this, simply navigate to the NVRotate menu from the Advanced
settings in Display Properties (figure 7.21 on the next page).
Use the arrows to rotate the display until the illustration matches the way your
monitors will be mounted. After you click OK the video output will be adjusted so
that everything will appear right-side up when the monitor is rotated.
F IGURE 7.21: Rotating the
display
7.8 Adjusting the Video Resolution 69

8 The Zone Settings Menu
There is a separate set of zone settings, apart from those found in the Configuration
menu. It is available from the main menu and it is called the Zone Settings menu.
This menu addresses the day-to-day settings of a zone and some of its visual
properties.
Once you click on this menu option, you will see three tabs at the top of the form.
They help to categorize some of the options within this menu.
8.1 The Network Tab

The items in this tab relate to emailing administrators for notification and alternate
zone outputs.
8.1.1 Email Settings
If some of your contributors will need to have their bulletins held for approval
before being published, you may want to have Carousel send an email to the person
that is in charge of approving bulletins.
F IGURE 8.1: Email approval can

be for one or more person. Just
separate their names with a comma.
To access this menu:

Step 1: Select Zone Settings from the main menu.
Step 2: Be sure the Network tab is selected.
Step 3: Select Email Setup.
Step 4: Add one or more email addresses to the Email addresses text box. (figure 8.1)
Step 5: Click the Save button.
71
We cover adding that access right in FrontDoor: The Manual. We cover approving
messages in section 16.3 on page 149.
8.1.2 Other Outputs
In addition to the Display Engine, Carousel can display messages on a public web
site. To enable this feature for this zone, click on the Enabled checkbox. From this
screen you also have the ability to disable the public output of any RSS bulletins for
any specific zone.
To see the URL for this zone, go to the main menu and click Extras. You’ll see
the address for the current zone at the bottom of the list.
Pro/Enterprise Editions: Carousel Pro and Enterprise are also able to display messages on a screensaver
client, which can be downloaded from the Extras menu.
8.2 Lists
The Lists tab includes lists of fonts, transitions and excluded words that you don’t
want your RSS reader display.
The first two are lists with checkboxes next to them. Simply uncheck the fonts or
transitions that you do not want available for this zone.
For RSS words, type all of the words that you want the RSS reader to filter when it
filters items. Any item with that word will not be displayed.
You may consider some words objectionable and others embarrassing and there-
fore not appropriate. For example, you do not want your audience learning that
Ford just came out with an awesome new car if your system is installed in a
Chevrolet dealership.
8.3 Display Engine

The items within this tab relate to adjusting the Display Engine’s behavior.
8.3.1 Bulletin Pacing
Carousel will automatically count the number of words on a page and hold the
bulletin for an appropriate length of time. You can also set the minimum number of
seconds a bulletin will hold on the screen.
8.3.2 Default Transition
Carousel will use an effect to transition from one bulletin to the next. If you would
like to pick a specific transition, choose it from the Default Transition pop-down
list. The “Random” choice results in a random transition being displayed.
When a several bulletins use the same background, as often is the case with
schedules, and zones dedicated to an RSS feed, it’s best to pick a wipe or a fade
transition to make it appear as though the text is changing while the background
is static.
72 8 The Zone Settings Menu

F IGURE 8.2: Bulletin Pacing
Form
8.3.3 Bumper Graphic
F IGURE 8.3: The Bumper Graphic

Form
The bumper graphic is a graphic that appears once a loop. It is a welcome message
that lets people know who the zone belongs to; usually a logo. Think of it like a
station identification on television or radio.
By default, this feature is turned on. You can turn it off by clicking the Show
bumper page checkbox.
To have the bulletin appear for the minimum amount of time, a setting we adjusted
in section 8.3.1 on the facing page, set it to Automatic timing. Otherwise, Manual
timing, show for. . . will allow you to enter a specific amount of time.
To change the display engine graphic1 , click the Upload button at the bottom of the
form. You will be asked to upload a picture file. Make sure it is either a JPEG or
PNG file and it is always best to match the zone’s aspect ratio and resolution.
When you are done adjusting these settings, click the Save button.
1 Especially if your system has the default Tightrope Scary Eye or yellow swoosh.
8.3 Display Engine 73

74 8 The Zone Settings Menu
9 The Configuration Menu: The Missing Pieces
We have yet to cover every nook and cranny in Carousel’s Configuration menu,
most of which was covered in chapter 6 on page 41, here are the rest of the
pieces.
To start, navigate to the main menu and click the Configure button on the far right,
located in the status bar.
9.1 Synchronizing Zones

Imagine that you have multiple players displaying content in close proximity to
one another, such as in a triptych1 display. For effect you would like to build each
channel with one large zone and synchronize each display so that every message is
the same across all three monitors.
This effect is accomplished by setting the zone’s configuration form, located within
the Zones area. This feature will hold each zone’s bulletins until they are all ready
to advance. Additionally, Carousel will hold each zone on the last message of its
cycle until all of the zones cycles have completed.
Example: If there are 30 bulletins in two zones and 31 in another and they are all synchronized
together, Carousel will hold the first two zones on the last page of their cycle while
the third zone shows its extra message. That way, when the zones loop back to the
beginning, they will all be showing their first slide in the sequence.
In order for this feature to work, the zones must be on separate channels. That
is, you cannot have two zones on the same channel that transition at the same
time. Sorry about that! It’s just how Carousel was made. :)
Select your zone, then click the Show Zone Synchronization Settings link. This
will display the form shown in figure 9.1.
F IGURE 9.1: The Zone Synchro-

nization Menu
The first checkbox, Synchronize with other zones. This enables the feature and
Carousel will wait for all other zones that also have this feature enabled before it
will advance slides.
1 Art consisting of a painting or carving (especially an altarpiece) on three panels (usually hinged
together). In this case, three LCD panels with graphics are considered art.
75
The Bulletin length timeout field sets the maximum duration for a single slide.
If a slide goes past this length, Carousel will automatically advance all of the
zones.
The Cycle length timeout field is the amount of time that should pass before
Carousel gives up on a zone’s cycle. That is, if all of the pages take longer than
the value in this field to display, Carousel will reset all of the zones back to the
beginning.
The Page and Cycle values work to eliminate possible problems related to misbe-
having slides in a presentation. It stops the zones from being permanently locked
up on a particular slide.
Carousel can only support one of these configurations per system. That is, you
cannot have one set of four zones that are synchronized together and another set
of three synchronized independently.
9.2 System Configuration Menu

First, let’s navigate to the Configuration: System menu. This will be the home
for this section. In here we will configure some of Carousel’s more esoteric set-
tings.
9.2.1 Zone Selection Style
F IGURE 9.2: The zone picker.
The instructions for the single field in this form are pretty clear. If your system has
more than the number of zones in the Switch to Zone field, you’ll see the zone
picker appear. If not, the standard pop-down list of zones appears.
9.2.2 Administrator Email Setup
In section 8.1.1 on page 71 you can define who is emailed when a bulletin is waiting
for approval on a specific zone. This is handy if you have multiple administrators,
each in charge of specific sets of zones. If you’re the only one approving bulletins
for a multi-zone system, however, it can be a pain to enter your email address on
each an every zone.
76 9 The Configuration Menu: The Missing Pieces

This area of the system setup allows you to enter a set of email address that are
notified anytime a bulletin is waiting for approval on any zone in the system.
9.2.3 Zone Tags
Tagging zones is extremely important in large systems where you want to be able to
easily select a zone by filtering out ones that do not meet a certain criteria. They
are also handy when you want to copy a bulletin to many zones of a specific type
or you want to give a user access to a set of zones and you don’t want to list them
individually.
We covered how and why to tag zones in section 2.4.10 on page 22. To add a zone
here, click the add button. To delete one, click the delete button after selecting the
tag’s checkbox.
If a zone tag has zones that use it, you will see them listed beneath the tag’s
name.
9.2.4 External Data Source Authentication
This menu is where you manage authentication for external data sources, such as
Twitter and domain-wide RSS feeds.
F IGURE 9.3: The external data

source authentication menu
To add a new data source, select the type of data source you’ll be connecting to
from the drop-down box and click add. The next steps depend on which data source
you’ve chosen.
RSS : Enter a name for the RSS Feed, along with a domain, username, and password.
Click “Save” when done. Credentials entered here will always be the default
for new RSS bulletins, unless they are set otherwise in an individual bulletin.
Twitter : Follow the link provided to complete authentication with an existing Twitter account.
9.2.5 Proxy Configuration
This Carousel server (both the Web UI and Carousel Service) needs to access
the internet to download content for certain dynamic bulletins, such as weather
bulletins (which access http://api.wxbug.net/webservice-v1.asmx), Facebook bul-
letins (which access https://www.facebook.com/ and https://carousel-facebook-
proxy.herokuapp.com/index.html), Twitter bulletins (which access https://api.twitter.com/),
web pictures, web snapshots and RSS bulletins. Additionally, players may need a
proxy to download their media from the Carousel server over HTTP. (Interactive
bulletins will always use the Internet Explorer proxy settings for the user the player
software is running under.)
9.2 System Configuration Menu 77

F IGURE 9.4: The proxy configura-
tion menu
Some sites require the server and, possibly, players to use a proxy to access the
internet. This menu is where you tell Carousel about the specifics of your site’s
proxy, if one is needed to access the internet.
It is a good idea to discuss these settings with your IT staff to make sure you get the
right options configured or maybe they can configure the firewall to have exceptions
for the necessary sites so the server has direct access.
9.2.6 System Information
The system information form provides a wealth of interesting information, including

the amount of disk space consumed by all of the media in your system. It also
displays version information for all software, memory usage and processes currently
running on the machine. It is extremely helpful information when troubleshooting
your system.
78 9 The Configuration Menu: The Missing Pieces

10 Users and Carousel
You do not need to create and configure user accounts within Carousel to begin
using it, as the built-in administrator account can serve that purpose. User accounts
are something that you should concern yourself with if you will want additional
contributors to the system—not everyone should have full access to every part of
Carousel.
We cover creating user accounts, adjusting permissions and roles within FrontDoor:
The Manual. We’re just going to cover some topics that relate to Carousel within
this chapter.
10.1 Permissions
The built-in administrator account, admin, always has full access to every part of
the Carousel system. Other accounts may be created with any level of access that is
needed. Additionally, an account can have varied roles for different zones within
Carousel.
Example: A person can have the ability to create a message on a general bulletin zone without
having it approved by anyone. At the same time, and because of a different role
applied to a second zone, they may also have their messages held for approval when
sent to a zone that appears on all of the displays throughout the organization.
These roles are assigned to users and applied to either zones or zone tags. When
a role is applied to a zone tag, the user is given a specific level of access to any
zone which shares that tag. If you have a tag called ‘Public Spaces’ and you
add a Carousel player that has a new zone with that tag, then the user would be
automatically given the assigned permission to that zone, if they had a role applied
to the ‘Public Spaces’ zone tag.
10.2 Multiple People, Same Account

It is common to have people share the same account, especially within a department.
When this happens, it is not possible to decern the exact person that made the
message.
In environments with a lot of turn over, assigning a single password to a group

of people is a convenient way grant access. When someone leaves, or every 6
months or so, you can change the password on that account, leaving the new
group of people access with little fuss.
When two people share the same account, they may both log in at the same time
without issues. Carousel is able to separate each login’s session without confu-
sion.
79
10.3 Setting Up The Approver
When you think about users, you may want to allow some of them to make bulletins,
but hold them for approval before they appear. We cover setting this permission in
FrontDoor: The Manual.
Carousel has a feature that sends an email whenever bulletins that must be approved
are created. To tell Carousel the email addresses that should receive those emails,
follow the steps in section 8.1.1 on page 71.
80 10 Users and Carousel

III. Making Bulletins
“Good communication is as stimulating as black

coffee, and just as hard to sleep after.”
—Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift From The Sea
81
82
11 Making Bulletins
→ section 2.4.5 on page 20, Bulletins There are several ways to make bulletins in Carousel. You can upload pre-made
bulletins and videos or create them from external data.
By far, the most common way to create a bulletin in Carousel is to create one
through a template. Templates are a bulletin starting point with a background and
areas for a combination of text, pictures, rectangles and video.
The template editor is covered section 17.7 on page 161.
In this chapter, we focus on making a bulletin from a template. However, apart

from selecting and using the template, the process for creating a bulletin is nearly
identical, no matter what type you are making. Therefore, we reference this chapter
heavily when making other types of bulletins.
11.1 Selecting a Template

The first order of business is to select the zone from which you would like to create
a bulletin. Do that by selecting one of the main tabs at the top and, for now, avoiding
any crawl zones1 .
Not only will choosing a zone determine where the message will appear, it also
changes the templates and media that you will be able to use, as these are specific
to zones.
From the desired zone tab select New Bulletin from the Main Menu. Provided that
the Standard tab is selected, a list of templates will appear (figure 11.1).
F IGURE 11.1: Picking a Template
Choose a template based on the type of message that you intend to write. Tem-
plates, generally, are designed with a purpose and include a graphic layout designed
to assist in creating a specific message, such as an important date or the lunch
1 The second tab over, if you forgot what you read in chapter 2 on page 17.
83
menu. Templates can also be used as a starting point. You can change the back-
ground, picture elements and text blocks, remaking the template into whatever you
want.
In figure figure 11.1, we chose Column and Image with Title from the default set of
templates.
11.2 Editing and Creating Bulletins
F IGURE 11.2: The Edit Bulletins

Form
The next screen to appear is the bulletin editing form. It includes all of the elements
that are a part of the chosen template. In figure 11.2 we can see a good example of
what to expect with a template.
First, notice that on the left is a form with text and pop-down fields that define the
message. On the right is a preview and properties section. Looking carefully at
the preview picture, you can see that the fields on the right are represented in the
preview, although the text is a bit small.
To create your message, fill out the form on the left. You will notice that the pop-
down lists correspond to either a video or a picture, depending on the field. You
can make a new selection by using the pop-down selector or by clicking the select
button, which brings up Carousel’s media picker. We covered the media picker in
depth in section 5.6 on page 38.
If you’re putting text in a multi-line text box, you can resize the box by clicking
on the little icon in the lower right corner ( ) and dragging it.
Notice the preview palette on the right hand side, illustrated in figure 11.5. The
biggest feature of this palette is the preview of your message. As you are editing
your bulletin, you can update this thumbnail representation by clicking the Update
Preview icon just above the preview.
If you would like a closer look at your bulletin, click the Full Screen Preview icon
to open a larger view.
84 11 Making Bulletins
F IGURE 11.3: Adding HTML tags
to some bulletin text
11.2.1 Adding Style using HTML Tags
Some tags are supported in Carousel’s bulletin text boxes:

. . . : Bold text.
. . . : Italicized text.
. . . : Underlined text.
<s>. . . </s> : Strike out text.
. . . : Change the color of a font.
An example of this in action is shown in figure 11.3, which made the bulletin in
figure 11.4.
F IGURE 11.4: Example of HTML

tags in action
If you mess up by not closing out a tag () or use a tag that is not supported,
none of the text in that block will be shown.
11.2.2 Checking your spelling
In case you might have made an unintentional spelling error, you can check it by
clicking the Spell Check icon .
11.2.3 Editing the Template of the Bulletin
To edit the template for this bulletin and this bulletin only, click the Edit Template
icon . When editing the template from a message, you are only modifying that
template for this bulletin. If you need to permanently modify the template, then edit
it from the Media menu before you make the bulletin.
Quick edit makes quick changes By default, the area below the preview is taken up by a listing of some of the general
to bulletins. properties for this bulletin. If you click on an element within the preview, such as
a picture or a block of text, a limited set of tools to edit the layout or attributes of
the selected element will appear. For example, you can change the font color, size
11.2 Editing and Creating Bulletins 85

F IGURE 11.5: The Quick Edit
Palette
and position of a text box by clicking on it in the preview. The Quick Edit palette,
shown in figure 11.5, provides these tools.
You can limit a user’s ability to edit bulletins in two ways. You can stop them
from being able to add or edit templates and you can stop them from using the
Quick Edit tools. This is important if you are trying to control the look of your
communications, otherwise known as your brand.
When you are finished, click the Continue button.
11.3 Scheduling a Bulletin

Every bulletin in Carousel can be scheduled using the form illustrated in figure 11.6
on the facing page. Simply click the start day (on the from calendar) and then
choose the end day (from the to calendar). If you need to specify the exact time
of day that these bulletins will appear/dissappear, you can enter that into the fields
labeled at directly below the calendars.
F IGURE 11.6: Scheduling
Bulletins
If you want a bulletin to be on “forever”, then click the Until Manually turned off
checkbox. This will result in Carousel ignoring your calendar input.
Remember, unless you are scheduling an alert bulletin, the schedule does not
mean that your bulletin will appear at exactly the start time and date period that
you have activated. It merely means that this bulletin is active during this time.
If you have 30 bulletins in your active bulletins list, and this is an active bulletin,
then it is simply number 31.
With or without the Until Manually turned off checkbox, you can still choose to
filter active times by periods of the day and/or days of the week. Simply uncheck
the days of the week that you do not want your bulletin to be active. To filter times
of the day, pick the span of time that you want the bulletin active for in the fields
below the And only between label.
At this point, you can click the Finish button to complete your bulletin. Clicking
the More. . . button allows us to add more bulletins in a group, edit some of the
advance properties or play with the frequency of display within Carousel’s bulletin
loop. For most bulletins, the default settings are appropriate. If you are following
along in this chapter, you will click the More. . . button.
11.4 Bulletin Properties 87

F IGURE 11.7: The Bulletin Properties Form
11.4 Bulletin Properties
If you want to edit some of the details of a bulletin (figure 11.7 on the preceding
page), you can do so in the Bulletin Properties Form, which you can access by
clicking the More. . . button on the Bulletin Schedule form.
11.4.1 Bulletin Dwell Time, aka Timing
At the top, Carousel asks us For how long would you like to display this bulletin?.
The default, Let the system decide, instructs Carousel to hold the bulletin for an
amount of time determined by the value set in section 8.3.1 on page 72.2 . Switch
the radio button to the second option to override this setting.
11.4.2 Tracking Bulletin Impressions
If you would like to keep track of how many times this bulletin has been displayed
(across your entire Carousel digital signange network), be sure to enable the “Track
impression count” checkbox. With this setting enabled, the Carousel Display
Engines will contact the server each time they display this bulletin, and a counter
will be incremented. A simple calculation based on the number of impressions
and the dwell time (specified in section 11.4.1) will also be made to give you a
reasonable estimate on the total amount of on-screen time.
F IGURE 11.8: Viewing Bulletin

Impression statistics
To view the statistics for a bulletin, navigate to the active bulletins list (see chap-
ter 16) for the zone the bulletin is scheduled on. Bulletins that have impression
tracking enabled will have an extra attribute which reports the total number of
impressions plus the approximate on-screen time, as seen in figure 11.8.3
11.4.3 Bulletin Transitions
Carousel will use the zone’s default transition unless you change it under the How
would you like to transition into this bulletin? label. A helpful preview adorns
the right side of this pop-down list.
11.4.4 Sound File
Below the transition list, you can choose a sound file for this bulletin. If the right
file is not yet loaded, click the upload button.
2 Carousel will slightly adjust this value based on the number of words on a page. If a video clip is
present, then the time will be the length of the clip.
3 For more information about bulletin impression tracking, see
http://blog.trms.com/john/2008/03/carousel-52-bul.html.

F IGURE 11.9: Choosing a sound
If you specify a sound file and you have background audio playing on Carousel,
the system will automatically fade the background audio while your bulletin’s
audio plays. If Carousel is playing the background audio, as opposed to pass-
ing an external audio source through, it will even pause the audio while your
bulletin’s clip plays.
11.4.5 Bulletin Description
Next, Carousel asks What is the description of this bulletin? This description is
used within the web interface to label the bulletin and, more importantly, to describe
the bulletin in RSS feeds and HTML output. It defaults to all of the text fields, in
order, separated by semicolons.
If you do change the description and you are using Carousel’s RSS output,
covered in section 18.2 on page 182, then you’ll want to make the description
more verbose and appropriate for readers that will not see the graphic image.
Both the RSS and HTML output provide the image, but not all readers will
bother to load it.
To exempt this bulletin from being displayed on any alternate output, such as HTML
or RSS, choose the Do not display on web site option.
If you are finished, click the Finish button. If not, click More. . .
11.4.6 Bulletin Tags
You can filter bulletins by tags, covered in section 16.1.2 on page 145, Filtering By
Tags, and use tags with Carousel’s RDA feature, which is covered in chapter H on
page 211, Remote Data Adaptor.
To add a tag to the bulletins, just type the tag into the Bulletin Tags field. Click
the Add button when you’re done. To add multiple tags at once, separate them by
commas. (figure 11.11 on page 92)
Example: “this, adds, four, tags”
F IGURE 11.10: Existing tags will

appear as you type
As you type a tag that is already in use, you’ll see Carousel helpfully display the
existing tag, as we show in figure 11.10 on the preceding page. Just arrow down to
the desired tag to use it.
This feature helps eliminate duplicate tags that happen from misspelling and the
use of plurals. Use this feature to guard against these problems and your tags
will be much cleaner.

To delete a tag, hover over the doomed tag and click, as we show in figure 11.12.
You’ll see a minus appear as you hover over the tag to indicated that clicking
will delete it.
F IGURE 11.11: Adding four
bulletin tags at once
F IGURE 11.12: Deleteing a

bulletin tag
11.5 Adding a Bulletin to a Group

You can add another bulletin to the one you just created. This creates another bulletin
using the same template as the one you just created. There is no practical limit to
the number of bulletins that you can add by clicking the Yes button, illustrated in
figure 11.13.
If you want to group bulletins that use different templates, you can create them
separately and group them together in the list that is home to your bulletin
(Active Bulletins, Active Repeating. . . ). We cover this in section 16.1.3 on
page 146.
F IGURE 11.13: Adding Another

Bulletin
You can set a unique schedule and edit the properties for this bulletin, separate from
any previous.
When you are finished adding bulletins to your group, click the No button.
11.6 Setting the Bulletin Type: Active or Repeating

Standard bulletins show once a loop. To repeat them more often, choose the second
option, Active Repeating Bulletin. After clicking Continue, you will be asked to
enter the frequency of the bulletin.
Active repeating bulletins will interrupt grouped bulletins.
F IGURE 11.14: Selecting the
bulletin type.
To create this bulletin as a saved bulletin, click the Create as a ‘saved’ bulletin
checkbox. Regardless of the schedule, this bulletin will not be activated. This is
handy when you have not finished with the content of the bulletin and need to revisit
it.
When finished, click Continue.
11.7 Duplicating a Bulletin on Multiple Zones

This section highlights an extremely powerful feature of Carousel, which is the
ability to send bulletins to multiple zones.
Figures 11.15 and 11.16 show the two styles of zone selection that are possible
within Carousel. The zone list is used when a smaller number (usually less than
15 or so) of zones are available to choose from. When more are present, Carousel
automatically switches to the Zone Selector in figure 11.16 on the following page.
Since the zone list is straightforward, we will focus on the Zone Selector.
F IGURE 11.15: Sending bulletins

to multiple zones using the zone
list.
11.7 Duplicating a Bulletin on Multiple Zones 93

F IGURE 11.16: Sending bulletins
to multiple zones using the zone
picker.
11.7.1 Selecting Zones with the Zone Selector
The Zone Selector features a list of available zone tags4 on the left. As you select
tags from the left, zones are filtered out on the right. To clear the selection, click
the Clear link above the tag list.
When you get the selection you are looking for, you can select individual zones by
selecting their checkbox, or you can select all of the zones selected by your filter by
clicking the Select All arrow above the Zones Matching list.
As you select zones from the list on the right, you will notice them being added
to the list labeled Currently Selected Zones. You remove individual zones from
this list by clicking their checkbox, or you can clear them all by clicking the Clear
link.
Notice that the zone you are currently on is automatically selected and cannot
be deselected. If for some reason you wanted to create a bulletin from a zone
and copy it to others without displaying it on the zone you created it from, you
could just delete it from your zone and the bulletin would remain on the others.
Click Continue when you are finished.
4 . . . explained in section 2.4.10 on page 22 and established in section 6.2 on page 41. . .
11.8 Confirmation
When you are finished, Carousel gives you a quick summary of your accomplish-
ments. Click Ok to create your bulletin.
F IGURE 11.17: Bulletin

Confirmation
11.8 Confirmation 95
12 Making Crawls
Carousel’s approach to crawls is different than previous versions where the

Crawl was associated with the channel. In Carousel, a crawl zone is just like
a bulletin zone in that one can be placed on any combination of channels. We
cover this in section 2.4.8 on page 21.
F IGURE 12.1: Example Crawl

(Free ‘kudos’ if you name the band
that wrote these lyrics.)
Making a crawl in Carousel is just like making a standard bulletin, but with fewer
choices. Whereas a standard bulletin can be made from a template, a crawl is just
text that is placed in a line that ‘crawls’ across the bottom or top of the screen
(figure 12.1). The attributes that determine the speed and look of the crawl is estab-
lished in the Configuration: Channel Configuration: Editing Channel Name :
Crawl Settings menu, which we covered in section 6.3.3 on page 46.
12.1 Multiple Crawls at the Same Time

If you schedule two crawls to appear at the same time on the same zone, Carousel
will append the text of the two bulletins, separating them with a dash (—). You can
change the order in which they appear by re-ordering them in the active bulletins
list, which we talk about in section 16.1.4 on page 146.
12.2 Choosing a Crawl Zone
F IGURE 12.2: Choosing a Crawl

Zone
The first step is to choose the crawl zone you would like to use, keeping in mind that
this is how you determine where the crawl will be seen. You pick the zone from the
second tab at the top of the menu, shown in figure 12.2. If you have only one crawl
zone, the second tab will show the zone’s name instead of the word Crawls.
97
F IGURE 12.3: Making a Crawl
Bulletin
12.3 Creating a Crawl

First, click New Bulletin from the main menu and select Create a Crawl, the first
menu option.
The form, shown in figure 12.3 will appear. Type your message in the text area
and check your spelling with the Spell Check icon . When finished, click the
Continue button.
12.4 Scheduling and Properties

Scheduling a crawl is just like scheduling a regular bulletin, an activity we learned
in section 11.3 on page 86. In fact, the rest of the properties for creating a crawl are
the same as for a regular bulletin, with some exceptions:
• The following items from the Bulletin Properties form have no effect:
– Bulletin timing
– Bulletin Transitions
– There can be no sounds
• You cannot create a group of crawls.
• You cannot create an active repeating or alert crawl.
Once you are finished, you will see the confirmation screen. You can always go
back and re-edit your bulletin by clicking on the Edit this bulletin link.
98 12 Making Crawls
13 Alert and Full Alert Bulletins
Alert bulletins remove the currently playing bulletins until they expire. You can
have any number of Alert bulletins active at any time. We discussed how they are
used in section 2.4.6 on page 21 and section 2.4.7.
Full Screen alert bulletins are just like alert bulletins, except that they are created
on a special zone. When they are active, any channel that uses them will remove
all of the normal zones from the display, showing only the full screen alert until all
of its pages are expired. Channels can subscribe to any number of full screen alert
zones. Priority is given to the highest zone in the channel’s subscribed zones, so the
highest priority full screen alert zone for that channel will override any other zone’s
bulletins.
That way you can use full screen alert zones to announce important things that
are not emergencies, but also have a full screen alert zone that overrides these
special bulletins, as well as any other bulletins in your channel’s layout.
13.1 Zone Based Alerts

Any bulletin zone may have an alert bulletin created by clicking on New Alert
Bulletin from the main menu. From there, creating the page is exactly the same
process as a standard bulletin, a topic covered in chapter 11 on page 83.
When an alert page is active, no other bulletin from that zone will be displayed until
all of the alert bulletins have expired.
13.2 Full Screen Alerts

Thethird tab from the top will show either the name of the full screen alert zone
on your system, or Full Screen Alerts, if you have more than one of these
zones.
Once you select a full screen alert zone, the system will switch to that zone and you
may create and manage the zone like any other. The one exception is that you may
only create an alert bulletin from this zone, by activating a bulletin from this zone
removes all other bulletins from the channels that use it.
Remember, full screen alert zones appear on one or more channels. A channel
can have any number of these zones.
99
100 13 Alert and Full Alert Bulletins
14 Uploading Bulletins
In chapter 11 on page 83 we covered the process of creating a bulletin in Carousel

by using a template. In this chapter, we cover uploading pre-made bulletins. There
are four options for accomplishing this task, all in the New Bulletin menu under
the Uploaded tab.
Picture : Use this to upload a bulletin that was created in a program outside of Carousel, such
as Adobe Photoshop. See section 14.1.
Flash : You can upload Adobe Flash animations directly into Carousel. See section 14.2 on
the following page.
Video : Carousel can play back Apple QuickTime, Windows Media, and MPEG-1,2, and 4
files. When uploaded here, they take up the entire zone. See section 14.1.
Bulletin Package : You can import bulletins from a previous version of Carousel or from another
system. See section 14.3 on page 105.
14.1 Uploading Video and Pictures

Uploading a picture or a video as a bulletin in Carousel is simply a matter of finding
it on your hard drive and clicking the Upload button.
It is important to consider the size of the video or picture, in order to achieve the
maximum quality that is possible. Carousel will automatically shrink, expand or
stretch your content, but if you can create it at the same dimensions as your zone,
Carousel will have less processing to do on the image.
14.1.1 Picture Formats
For pictures, Carousel supports BMP, GIF (non-animated), JPG/JPEG, PNG, PSD,
TIF/TIFF.
For the purposes of uploaded bulletins, Carousel will ignore any alpha channel
settings in these pictures.
14.1.2 Video Formats
For video, all Carousel editions support MPEG-1, 2, and 4, QuickTime, Windows
Media, and AVI files. This includes DV, AVI, and QuickTime DV files, although
you must set the QuickTime file to play back in high quality mode in order for it to
play back correctly. See QuickTime documentation for details.
Start and end videos with black. For best effect, all videos should fade up and fade down to black, as Carousel will
transition to black before showing and before leaving the video bulletin. Starting
and ending with black hides this limitation.
The maximum allowed file size for an uploaded video is 1 gigabyte.
101
F IGURE 14.1: Uploading a picture
or video
Carousel works very hard to play video without glitches or stutters. However,
it does not use dedicated video hardware to decode video streams. It is best
to experiment with different codecs and bit rates, especially if your Carousel
players were not purchased from Tightrope. Typically, MPEG-4 at 2-3 megabits
plays very well, as does MPEG-2 at 4-6 megabits. Very high bitrate WMV or
QuickTime files will tend to stutter, although we have tested high definition
WMV files with great success. Because the players are processing other aspects
of bulletin management and probably displaying other zones at the same time,
your video performance milage will vary.
14.1.3 Notes on Uploaded Pictures and Video
After you have uploaded your video or picture file, Carousel’s message creation
process becomes identical to that of creating a message from a template, with a few
exceptions.
First, with an uploaded picture, the Description field, covered in section 11.4 on
page 89, Bulletin Properties, will be set to the picture’s name. You will want to
change this if you are using the RSS or HTML output of Carousel.
Second, when uploading videos, the length settings have no effect, as Carousel will
play each video from start to end.
Also, remember that Carousel will start the bulletin in black and end it in black, so
any transition that you choose will be from black to and from the video.
An audio file cannot be attached to an uploaded video bulletin.
Finally, Carousel does not show video on the screensaver output. It shows that there
is a video on the HTML and RSS output, but it does not provide a link to or show
the video in any way.
Carousel automatically fades down any background audio during the playback
of video clips.
14.2 Uploading Flash

The ability to play flash animations is a powerful feature of Carousel. With it, you
can incorporate all of the power of Adobe Flash, including existing material that
you may already be using on your web site.
102 14 Uploading Bulletins

14.2.1 The Flash Properties Form
Uploading Flash is as simple as browsing to the SWF file on your computer and
clicking the Upload button.
Once the Flash animation is uploaded, Carousel asks a number of questions of you,
in order to optimize playback.
The first field allows you to name the animation. It defaults to the file name.
14.2.2 Flash Animation Timing
The second option controls how Carousel treats the length of the animation. If
your animation is controlling the playback length through Flash’s Action Script,
Carousel will not be able to decipher the end of the animation. In that case, chose
the Play for. . . option and enter the number of seconds that the Flash animation
should play.
If the animation’s main timeline has a real length and ends after a number of frames,
then Carousel can accurately detect the end of the animation and you can pick
the first timing option, which is to base it off the time line and is much more
accurate.
14.2.3 Audio and Flash
If the animation has audio that you would like to include in Carousel’s output, select
Yes in answer to the audio question on the bottom of the form. Carousel will then
fade the background audio and include the animation’s.
14.2.4 Notes on Flash in Carousel
BrightSign Players connected to a Carousel Server are unable to playback any Flash
content.
It is best fade the animation up from and down to black because this will hide the fact
that Carousel will show black in the beginning or end of Flash animations.
When building Flash for Carousel, it is best to place a background layer that covers
the entire canvas and spans the duration of your video. This will eliminate any
unintended see-through problems with your zone.
Carousel will resize and stretch your animation to fill the entire zone. With Flash, it
is critical that you build the animation to the exact size of the zone, as dynamically
resizing the animation will always result in a pixel or two of overlap.
Carousel will provide playback for HTML output, but will not show Flash content
on any screensaver client or in an RSS feed.
!→ Interactivity within will cause issues with Flash playback. In short, you want to
build or modify your flash animation for unattended playback and you want to avoid
Action Script commands that will affect timing.
14.2 Uploading Flash 103

F IGURE 14.2: Flash Bulletin
Properties
F IGURE 14.3: Insert a back-

ground in Flash to avoid a black
background.

14.3 Uploading Bulletin Packages
A bulletin package is a zip file that includes all of the information that Carousel needs
to play the bulletin or bulletins. These packages are handy when you are importing
a series of pictures into Carousel (such as from PowerPoint) or transferring bulletins
from an older system.
14.3.1 Anatomy of a Bulletin Package File
If you’re importing a bulletin package, which we show how to create in sec-

tion 16.1.5 on page 148, Creating a Bulletin Package, Carousel will insert all
manner of cryptic files which are not necessary to understand.
You can make a bulletin package by putting a bunch of JPEG or PNG files into a
zip file. Carousel will import them, in alphabetical order, except that Carousel
automatically interprets numbers correctly. . .
Example: “...08, 09, 10, 11” is the same as “8, 9, 10, 11” and either one would show
in the expected order.
14.3.2 Uploading a Bulletin Package File
Once you locate the zip file and upload it to Carousel, it confirms the upload with
the number of slides that it found, as you can see in figure 14.4.
F IGURE 14.4: Bulletin Upload

Confirmation
If you click Save, the bulletins will be added to your active pages list, one after
another. If you click Save To Group, all of the bulletins will be added as a single
group, which can be deleted and managed en masse.
You can then re-edit and reschedule them as needed. If the bulletins were scheduled
in the past, be sure you go to the stale pages list and re-activate your pages.
14.3 Uploading Bulletin Packages 105

15 Dynamic Bulletins
Carousel features special types of bulletins called Dynamic. In short, these are bul-
letins that are driven by data and require special forms in order to be created.
If the current zone is a crawl zone, then you will see the choices for dynamic
bulletins limited to those that use the crawl and listed below the Create a Crawl
menu item.
Here is a brief description of each type:
Clock Bulletin : Display the current time in a variety of formats, including analog, digital, and a
countdown timer. See section 15.1.
Cable Display Bulletin : This option appears if you have Cablecast active on your system. It renders bulletins
before and after shows, displays the schedule and holds a static slide during
programming. See section 15.4 on page 115.
Weather Bulletin : This will retrieve and display weather data based on your zip code. See section 15.2
on page 111.
Weather Crawl : This bulletin is the same as the Weather Bulletin, except in crawl form. You will
see this option when a crawl zone is active. See section 15.3 on page 114.
RSS Bulletin : RSS bulletins display items that are published by RSS feeds. See section 15.5 on
page 120 for how to make them and a definition of RSS.
RSS Crawl : This is the crawl version of RSS Bulletins, seen when a crawl zone is active. See
section 15.6 on page 124.
Twitter Bulletin : This bulletin will show information from a public Twitter search, or from a specific
Twitter account with the correct authorization.
Facebook Bulletin : This will pull information from a public Facebook page.
Event Schedule Bulletin : These bulletins are a part of the Event Display System (EDS). This plug-in is
great at reading event information and displaying it in intelligent ways. See
section 15.9 on page 128 for information on creating EDS bulletins. See
section 15.11 on page 136 to learn how to schedule events for use with EDS
from within Carousel.
Live Video Feed : This bulletin opens a link to a Windows Media stream or will pull video from the
optional TV Input card. See section 15.12 on page 137.
Interactive Bulletin : This bulletin lets you define or upload a web site that can be used for an interactive
display1 . See section 15.13 on page 138.
15.1 The Clock Bulletins

Carousel supports three ways of displaying time; Analog clocks, digital clocks, and
a countdown timer. To pick between clock styles, select your preferred style in the
Style dropdown menu.
1 A touchscreen display device is required and is sold separately.
107
15.1.1 Analog Clock
Carousel’s analog clock simulates a wall clock complete with hands for the hour,
minute, and second. You can select a variety of “hand styles,” and you can upload
your own backgrounds for a variety of clock faces. The analog clock setup screen
is shown in figure 15.1.
F IGURE 15.1: Analog Clock

Properties
Analog Clock Options
Here are the options for the analog clock.

Clock Hand/Text Color : Sets the color for the clock’s hands.
Opacity : Allows you to make the clock’s hands semi-transparent.
Clock Background : Sets the background for the clock.
Duration : Determines how long this clock should be displayed on the zone before transitioning
to the next bulletin in the cycle. If the clock is the only bulletin in the zone, it
will be displayed continuously.
Show Second Hand : Allows you to turn the second hand on or off.
Hand Style : Sets how the clock’s hands should be drawn. Select from “Square”, “Round”, or
“Pointed”. A small preview of the hands is shown.
15.1.2 Digital Clock
Carousel’s digital clock displays the current time (and optionally date) within a zone.
The digital clock setup screen is shown in figure 15.2 on the next page.
108 15 Dynamic Bulletins

F IGURE 15.2: Digital Clock
Properties
Digital Clock Options
Here are the options for the digital clock.

Clock Hand/Text Color : Sets the color for the clock text.
Opacity : Allows you to make the clock text semi-transparent.
Clock Background : Sets the background for the clock.
Duration : Determines how long this clock should be displayed on the zone before transitioning
to the next bulletin in the cycle. If the clock is the only bulletin in the zone, it
will be displayed continuously.
Caption : Allows you to pre-pend some text to the clock. (Example: “The time is now:”)
Format : Lets you adjust exactly what is shown. A number of preset time formats are
available in the drop-down menu. If you’d prefer to customize the display
even further, you can select “Custom” from the dropdown list, and enter a
custom format string into the “Custom” text box. For a list of formatting
options, click the “Show Legend” link that appears when you have “Custom”
selected. To create a line break, use the | (pipe) character.
Font : Allows you to select the font that the digital clock will use.
15.1.3 Countdown Timer
The countdown timer will display the time remaining (or since) a specific point in
time. This is perhaps best described by example or two.
Example: Your office is throwing a party to celebrate a new product release scheduled
for the first of next month. You can create a countdown timer to display the
days/hours/minutes remaining until the official release. Now everyone will know
exactly when they can pop the champagne.
15.1 The Clock Bulletins 109

Example: You’re a principal at a high school that has 6 class periods every day. You can
create and schedule six countdown timers that each count down to the start of a new
period. Students won’t have any excuse as to why they were late to class. You can
even let the timer go negative, or, “into the red,” so students know exactly how late
they are.
The countdown timer setup screen is shown in figure 15.3.
F IGURE 15.3: Coutdown Timer

Properties
Countdown Options
Here are the options for the countdown timer.

Clock Color : Sets the color for the countdown text.
Opacity : Allows you to make the countdown text semi-transparent.
Clock Background : Sets the background for the countdown.
Duration : Determines how long this countdown should be displayed on the zone before
transitioning to the next bulletin in the cycle. If the clock is the only bulletin
in the zone, it will be displayed continuously.
Caption : Allows you to pre-pend some text to the countdown. (Example: “Time until class
begins:”)
Font : Allows you to select the font that the countdown will use.

Seconds : Lets you turn the seconds display on or off.
Countdown Until : You can either countdown to (and subsequently back up from) a specific date
and time, or, you can count down to a certain time every day (resetting the
countdown at midnight every day).
Date : This is the date and/or time that this timer will countdown to.
Alternate Color : This option lets you change the color of the timer text after the specified date/time
has elapsed. (Example: Once class has started, you may want to turn the
timer text red so students know they’re late.)
15.2 The Weather Bulletins

The weather bulletin is a very popular feature. It uses WeatherBug2 for forecast and
current conditions based on your zip code.
15.2.1 Select Location and Caption
F IGURE 15.4: Choosing the

location for weather information
The first order of business is to enter your desired location in the Location field.
This can be either a Zip Code in the US or your latitude and longitude. The
weather plugin will find the nearest WeatherBug station and use it to gather weather
data.
If you’re using a web browser that supports finding your location, a Find link
will appear next to the Location field. Clicking this will allow your browser to
determine your location for you.
The Caption field sets the words that precede the text of the bulletin. You will
definitely want to change this from the defaults. For example, if you are creating a
weather bulletin for a school, you might choose to set the caption as “Conditions
at Springfield Elementary”.
Finally, the Outlook Length field lets you set how much forecast data to display
in your weather bulletin. Enter the number of days of forecast you’d like to see.
For example, entering “3” will display the forecast for today, tomorrow, and the
following day.
Click Continue when you are finished.
15.2 The Weather Bulletins 111

F IGURE 15.5: The Weather
Templates
15.2.2 Changing the Backgrounds
The next form, shown in figure 15.5, displays all of the different bulletins that
might appear as a part of running this plug-in. You can see that all of them, except
Unknown, relate to a possible condition that might happen. Carousel automatically
adjusts the background to the current conditions. If it catches an unknown condition,
it then uses the Unknown background.
If the default background is fine, then just click the Continue button at the bottom
of the page. If not, click the upload link underneath the pictures and upload your
new backgrounds.
15.2.3 Editing the Weather’s Template
The next page will let you adjust the look of your weather bulletin slightly. Click
on any text inside the bulletin to change some properties, such as text color, size,
position, etc.
For more advanced control, you can edit the weather bulletin using the full-featured
template editor. Just click on the Edit Template button above the preview.
Once you are in the template editor, whose operation we cover in section 17.7 on
page 161, you can add or remove blocks, change the text, etc.
!→ You will notice that some fields have the “#” symbol before and after a word. These
strings are called data fields, and when Carousel comes across one of these, it will
replace the field with the corresponding weather data.
To see a list of all the available data fields and their current values, click the
show/hide link next to Available Data Fields. You will see options to display
various temperature data in both Celsius and Fahrenheit along with numerous other
options. You can use any of these data fields in your weather bulletin.
2 Thanks to http://www.weatherbug.com for providing this data.

F IGURE 15.6: The Default
Weather Template
Make sure the “outlook” field has plenty of space because, unlike the other
fields, there are typically multiple lines of text that fills this field. You can
control the amount of data using the Outlook Length property described in
section 15.2.1 on page 111.
You can split the outlook and current conditions into two slides by making two
weather bulletins, one with the outlook and the other with everything else. For
the outlook bulletin, make all of the backgrounds in section 15.2.2 on the facing
page the same because the current condition will determine what is used, which
may look odd if there is a dramatic change in the weather.
You may want to check the Until Manually turned off checkbox on the schedule
form for all of your weather bulletins. This will leave these bulletins on until
you manually remove them. Carousel will automatically update the weather data
as it changes.
15.2 The Weather Bulletins 113

15.3 The Weather Crawls
Weather Crawls are made using the same method used to create a weather bulletin.
The crawl options screen is shown in figure 15.7.
F IGURE 15.7: Weather crawl

options
Enter your desired zip code in the Zip Code field. The weather plugin will find the
nearest WeatherBug station and use it to gather weather data.
The Weather Format field lets you alter how your weather crawl is displayed. It
uses the same data field concept from the standard weather bulletins. Whenever
Carousel comes across one of the magic data fields, it will replace that field with
the corresponding data from the weather station. To see a list of the available data
fields for your weather crawl, click the show/hide link next to Available Data
Fields.
To preview what your crawl will look like after Carousel parses the Weather
Format string, click the Preview button, as seen in figure 15.8.
F IGURE 15.8: Previewing the

weather crawl
When you are happy with your weather crawl, click Continue and schedule the
bulletin as usual. The bulletin will appear as a crawl on your channel, using the

settings for the crawl properties for that zone. You can adjust these settings by
following the steps in section 6.3.3 on page 46.
Typically, the weather crawl is pretty long. Therefore, if you would like to use
your crawl for important information, you may want to refrain from using the
weather crawl. It will make it unlikely that people will notice your crawl.
15.4 Cable Display Bulletins

This section is about Cable Display for Carousel, a plug-in that reads television
schedules from Cablecast and displays the information as a bulletin in Carousel. If
you do not have Cableacst, feel free to skip it.
Let’s explore the splendor of the Cable Display for Carousel plug-in, which we
get to from New Bulletin on the Main Menu, Dynamic tab for Schedule bulletins
or from New Alert Bulletin, Dynamic tab and then selecting Cable Display for
Coming up next. Interrupt and See it again bulletins as well as the schedule
bulletin.
F IGURE 15.9: Selecting a new
Alert Cable Display Bulletin Type.
15.4 Cable Display Bulletins 115

The first form that you see, shown in figure 15.9 on the preceding page, will ask you What type of Cable Display
bulletin would you like to create? There are five types:
Displays before a show, typically to

advertise the show’s title and any
Coming up next
other information the viewer may
find relevant.
This is a slide that shows during

the program. It works well with
confidence monitoring equipment
Interrupt
in that this is the graphic that will
air on your channel in the event of
a technical difficulty.
These slides display after a show

is done, typically to advertise the
times the show will repeat or any
See it again
other information the viewer might
find interesting, like where to get a
dub of the program.
This is for showing lots of schedul-

Schedule ing information across one or mul-
tiple bulletins.

Interrupt, Coming up next, and See it again bulletins are all automated alert bulletins.
That is, they are inactive alert pages until the Cable Display plug-in activates them
at the appropriate time. So they can only be created when creating an Alert Cable
Display Bulletin.
Example: Forty five seconds before a show airs, three Coming up next bulletins are activated.
The first advertises the show’s title. The second gives it’s V-Chip rating and the third
advertises producer contact and dub request information. The first two bulletins are
set for a dwell time of 15 seconds while the last has a dwell time of 30 seconds.
Since Carousel will automatically disable these alert pages after 15 seconds, the
last page only appears for 15 seconds, just like the other two bulletins.
Carousel is always multitasking. It tries to display bulletins exactly as you

program it too, but sometimes it’s too busy doing other important things, like
playing a video and what not. This is why we give it extra time on the last
bulletin, so that it doesn’t try to loop back around to the first Coming up next
slide.
Cable Display updates bulletins Remember, each bulletin that you create in the Cable Display plug-in will auto-
automatically. matically update itself. Once you create a schedule bulletin, Cable Display will
walk through the schedule without your intervention. If you make a change to your
schedule, all bulletins affected will automatically update themselves. This is the
magic of the Cable Display Plug-in.
15.4.1 Setting Cable Display Bulletin Properties
After you select the type of Cable Display bulletin that you would like to create, you
will be presented with a properties form that is specific to your choice. Some of the
details will be unique to your bulletin. Look at the form and read the descriptions
below, ignoring those that are not applicable for your bulletin. Pay close attention
to the timing of Coming up next and See it again graphics, found in the second
item:
F IGURE 15.10: Cable Display

Bulletin Properties for Multiple
Bulletin Schedule
Which Cablecast Channel. . . : This pop-down list selects the Cablecast channel that Carousel should retrieve data
from for its scheduling information.

How long would you like to display. . . : You are choosing the time frame that Cable Display will allocate for all
!→ bulletins of this type. That is, if you have one bulletin that is a Coming up
next graphic, then that bulletin will be displayed for the amount of time that
you depict here. If you have five bulletins of the Coming up next variety,
then Cable Display will allocate the amount of time you enter in this field for
all five bulletins. You can adjust each bulletin’s dwell time in that bulletin’s
standard properties form, after you schedule it.
Pay close attention to Cable- The sum of this value for Coming up next and See it again should be a few
cast’s interstitial length setting. seconds longer than Cablecast’s interstitial length. The interstitial length is
an amount of time, in seconds, that Cablecast forces between two shows. If
two shows are back-to-back, then there should be just enough time to get
through both (sets of) bulletins before the next show airs.
This field only applies to Coming up next and See it again bulletins.
If you have multiple bulletins of the same type, you can enter unique
values for each bulletin, but the implications are too mindboggling to
even fathom, especially if earlier version have a lower number than later
bulletins. Instead, when it comes to this field, bulletins of the same type
should have the same value.
What schedule information. . . : For Multiple bulletin schedule, you need to specify the total quantity of shows
that you would like to display. You can limit this number by either days or
bulletins. Cable Display will only show one day per bulletin.
Because Cable Display only shows one day per bulletin in a Multiple
Bulletin schedule, you only need to show the date once, displaying only
the time next to the show’s run.
How many schedule records. . . : In Single bulletin and Multiple bulletin schedules, Cable Display needs to know
how many shows will appear on each bulletin. For Single bulletin schedule,
this will be the total number of shows to display. For Multiple bulletin sched-
ules, each bulletin will have this maximum number of shows per bulletin.
How would you like the date. . . : We are choosing the date and time format for our bulletin. We can get fancy by
choosing the custom option. A table and examples of custom formatting are
provided in appendix D on page 197.
15.4.2 Editing the Cable Display Bulletin
Accepting a few added features, editing a Cable Display bulletin is the same as a
standard bulletin, which we cover in chapter 11 on page 83.
The key differences in Cable Display bulletins are the special text fields that we
can add. A list of the available fields is provided below the standard forms. Simply
include the “#” symbols before and after the desired filed to tell Cable Display to
insert the text at that spot.
Example: To insert the time and date that a program will repeat, enter “#RunRepeat#” into
one of the fields.
Conditional Text
Sometimes you would like to include text in a bulletin, but only if a particular field
has data. After all, what sense does, “This producer can be reached at for

F IGURE 15.11: Editing Cable
Display Bulletins
more information.” make? To accommodate conditional text, enclose it in curly

braces {}.
Example: “{This producer can be reached at #ProducerPhone#.}”
In the above example, only when there is a phone number will this information be
displayed.
Repeating Fields and Headers
For most Cable Display bulletins, fields will need to repeat. You do this by setting
the Block Options for the template’s block that holds the CableDisplay information.
We discuss the settings in section 17.7.3 on page 174, Repeating Blocks in Dynamic
Bulletins.
If you are using an older web browser, enter the word “Header” after the template’s
fields name.
Example: a “#RunDate#” entered into a template field called “Date” would appear for each
listed show. If it were entered into a template field called “DateHeader”, it would
only appear once.
Repeating fields will repeat all by themselves. Simply enter the repeating field
into the template at the spot where you want the list to start. Cable Display will
automatically insert the next item below the previous.
Editing The Look of your Cable Display Bulletin
It is extremely important that you edit the look of your Cable Display bulletin,
at least changing the background, which includes Tightrope’s logo and a channel
designation of 34.
The example bulletins are a great starting point. Use them as a guide to see
how basic information is entered into the type of Cable Display bulletin that
you are creating. Pay special attention to how certain fields are entered, such as
“DateHeader” fields, which do not repeat.

You may add or delete fields to your Cable Display bulletin, which is especially
useful when creating non-standard bulletins, such as Coming up next bulletins with
V-Chip or producer information.
Edit your bulletin using the template editor. We cover this process in section 17.7
on page 161.
15.4.3 Scheduling and Standard Properties
Scheduling a Cable Display bulletin is accomplished using the same method outlined
in section 11.3 on page 86. Cable Display bulletins have a unique purpose and
therefore you’ll want to keep some things in mind.
First, it is probably best to check the Until Manually turned off option, as you
will always want these bulletins active and Cable Display will automatically update
them with current Cablecast information.
If you want to change the look of your bulletins, such as for a season or special
event, you can make a copy of the them and change the old ones to a status
of saved. When the event or season is over, just delete the special versions
and re-activate the saved bulletins. We cover saved bulletins in section 16.2 on
page 148. We cover copying bulletins in section 16.1.5 on page 147.
Second, when working with Coming up next and See it again bulletins, you do
not need to adjust the dwell time, found in the standard properties form after the
scheduling form, unless there are multiple bulletins. In that case, each bulletin will
need only its share of the value that you entered back in section 15.4.1 on page 117,
How long would you like to display. . . . Set the dwell time for the last bulletins
that it goes a little past this value.
Example: If you have three See it again bulletins and the total amount of time given to these
graphics is 45 seconds, then set the first two’s dwell time to “15” seconds and the last
bulletin’s to “20” seconds, for a total of 50 seconds. That way if there is any delay
in Carousel’s timing, it won’t loop back to the first See it again bulletin.
15.5 The RSS Bulletins

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication3 . It’s an XML specification that publishers
and data providers use to syndicate summary information. This information could
be a news story, word of the day, the latest production data or anything else that you
could dream up. What is more, RSS data can come from a web site, database or
any other application. In fact, Carousel publishes its bulletins in RSS, making it
→ section 18.2 on page 182, RSS Output possible to see a summary of bulletins using any RSS reader.
There are different flavors of RSS in the wild. Carousel supports RSS and Atom
feeds that are well formed. If Carousel doesn’t display a feed, it is most likely
non-standard, in which case, Carousel will not display it.
An RSS feed has a channel with many items, while an Atom feed contains a feed
with many items. If you’re not familiar with the specifics of RSS and Atom feed
creatation, information on both is widely available online. When you create an
EDS page, fields from RSS and Atom feeds are mapped to EDS placeholders.
3 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS

Carousel will detect the available fields from your chosen feed and list the available
placeholders to you. There can be other data within an RSS feed, but Carousel can
display data from the list of placeholders it gives you.
Carousel will make one or more bulletins using the RSS data. You can format the
information in a variety of ways, specifying the information you want to show, the
number of items per page and number of pages that you want to display.
Verify that you have licensing permission to show the information that you are
displaying. Different web sites have different policies regarding the use of their
RSS information. Some limit viewing to personal use, which is not compatible
with most digital signage applications.
15.5.1 Creating an RSS Bulletin
To create an RSS bulletin, choose Make a New Bulletin from the main menu, click
the Dynamic tab and choose RSS Bulletin.
F IGURE 15.12: Editing the RSS

properties
Before we can edit the presentation of the RSS information, we must tell Carousel
how we would like it processed. The first form that we see is the one shown in
figure 15.12. We’ll explore each field from top to bottom.
RSS Feed URL : This is where you type the address of the RSS feed that you would like to reference.
Example: “http://blog.trms.com/trms/rss.xml”
15.5 The RSS Bulletins 121

Is it RSS or XML? XML is a generalized way to present any kind of data.
By specifying what is in your data and how it should be presented, you
can create a common way to handle certain kinds of information with
multiple programs. RSS is an XML specification and the information in
an RSS feed is represented in XML. In this section, we’ll talk about an
XML file with RSS data in it, which is the most accurate way to represent
what is happening.
Username and Password : Some RSS feeds require a login to view them. If you are using a RSS feed that
requires this, simply enter your username and password into these fields.
Carousel will use Basic, Digest, or NTLM authentication.
This is a useful feature for people trying to access Microsoft SharePoint

RSS feeds.
If your RSS feed is not authenticated, then leave these fields blank.
OR Upload RSS File : If instead you would like to upload an RSS file into Carousel, you can do so by
clicking the browse button and selecting the file. Again, this must be a valid
XML file with RSS data.
Limit to : Some feeds have hundreds of items. You may want to limit the number that you
display and you can do so, either by bulletin or by total number of items.
Max Items Per Bulletin : Carousel needs to know ahead of time the number of items that will appear. Enter
that number here.
The number of items will depend on the size of your zone, the font that
you select and the maximum number of characters that you allow for a
specific item.
Item Sort Order : You can sort the items in a feed by any of the fields in this pop-down list. The Feed
Default option instructs Carousel to maintain the item order found in the
XML file.
Character Limit : This is the maximum number of characters for the item’s description. Carousel will
attempt to truncate the item at the end of a sentence. If this is not possible,
then it will pick the last word and add an ellipsis (. . . ). A value of “0” will
impose no limit on the number of characters.
Shorten long URLs : When checked, bulletins will shorten URLs whenever possible and appropriate to
display just a domain name, such as trms.com. This will prevent a long URL
from taking up a lot of space on a bulletin.
Item Spacing : This will insert “padding” between the items in the RSS feed. This value is in pixels,
so to insert 10 pixels of space between the RSS items, enter the number “10”.
Time Per Bulletin : This adjust the dwell time for each bulletin.
Excluded Words : You can exclude items that contain certain words by adding them to this list.
Separate each word with a comma.
If the item includes any of the words in this list, the entire item is omitted!
That is, not just the word is excluded, but the entire item.

In addition to offensive words, you may also want to consider excluding
words that are not appropriate to your environment, such as competitor’s
names or words associated with violence.
F IGURE 15.13: Editing an RSS

Bulletin
When you are finished editing this form, click Continue. You will see the standard
form used to edit a bulletin (figure 15.13). You will also notice that every field in
the default RSS bulletin starts and ends with a ‘#’ sign. As in editing a weather
bulletin, editing an RSS bulletin involves placing special words between ‘#’ signs,
telling Carousel where to place the text. For a list of the various words that are
available, look to the list labeled “Available fields”. All of the fields that are
available for use from the RSS feed will be listed.
Each field is self explanatory. You can delete, move or otherwise edit each of the
→ section 11.2 on page 84, Editing and fields as you see necessary by either using the Quick Edit palette or the template
Creating Bulletins editor, covered in section 17.7 on page 161.
Display images in your RSS
bulletins! Some RSS feeds contain links to images4 . In Carousel 5.2, you can display these
images in your RSS feed. Look for a keyword called “#ItemImageURL#”. This
keyword should contain a URL to the image. To display these images, edit the RSS
bulletin’s template and add a Web Picture block. (See section 17.7.2 for more infor-
mation on Web Picture blocks.) You can then add the #ItemImageURL# keyword to
the URL field of the Web Picture block, and the images will be displayed5 .
Item titles and descriptions The “#ItemTitle#” and and “#ItemDescription#” fields will automatically re-
automatically repeat. peat until the maximum number of items is reached, set in section 15.5.1. Simply
enter the first item and its description and Carousel will create the rest immediately
below. You can see an example of this in figure 15.14 on the following page.
15.5.2 Scheduling RSS
The rest of the RSS bulletin creation process is identical to that of a standard bulletin.
You simply schedule it and modify the bulletin as you would one that you created
with a template. Check out section 11.3 on page 86 for further information.
4 For example, Flickr (http://flickr.com) publishes photosets as an RSS feed that contains links to each
photo.
5 For more information, see http://blog.trms.com/john/2008/06/carousel-52-ima.html
15.5 The RSS Bulletins 123

F IGURE 15.14: The second item
was automatically added after the
first.
form. This will leave this bulletin on until you manually remove it. Carousel
will automatically update the RSS data as it changes.
15.6 The RSS Crawls
F IGURE 15.15: RSS crawl

creation
The process of creating an RSS crawl is similar to creating an RSS bulletin. You
select Create an RSS Crawl from the New Bulletin menu option of your favorite
crawl zone. Once you do, you will be able to edit the properties of your RSS feed
using the form in figure 15.16 on the facing page.
From the top:
RSS Feed URL : This is the address of the feed.
Username and Password : Some RSS feeds require a login to view them. If you are using a RSS feed that
requires this, simply enter your username and password into these fields.
Carousel will use Basic, Digest, or NTLM authentication.
This is a useful feature for people trying to access Microsoft SharePoint

RSS feeds.

F IGURE 15.16: The RSS Crawl
Properties Form
Header Format : Enter the text that you would like to appear at the beginning of this crawl. Surround
RSS fields with the “#” character. A list of available RSS fields is below the
text entry field.
Item Format : Each item will include the text in this field. Again, a list of available RSS fields is
below the text entry field.
Item Limit : You can limit the number of items that will be included in this crawl. A limit of “0”
will remove the limit and display all available items.
Excluded Word List : Items that contain these words will be excluded from the display.
Footer Format : The text within this field will be displayed at the end of the feed.
Preview : You can test the feed by clicking preview icon .
This is a good way to see if your RSS link is working. It is also a good
way to see if you are displaying a feed with too much information. If
there are too many items, then you can set the Item Limit field to a lower
number and refresh the preview to see if it worked.
The process of scheduling and editing the properties of an RSS crawl is identical to
that of a standard crawl. We cover that in section 12.4 on page 98.
form. This will leave this bulletin on until you manually remove it. Carousel
will automatically update the RSS data as it changes.
15.7 Twitter Bulletins

These bulletins pull information from Twitter based on a series of critera you
enter.
Search Twitter for : Enter your search phrase for Twitter in this box. You can use a variety of search
techniques to narrow your results, but note that Twitter only indexes tweets
up to about one week in the past. Search examples are shown below the text
entry box.
15.7 Twitter Bulletins 125

F IGURE 15.17: Editing Twitter
properties
Twitter Authentication : Select the form of Authentication to use with Twitter from this box. Twitter bulletins
can not pull data until authentication has been set up. Authentication is
configured under “External Data Source Authentication” located in
the System Configuration menu, and is covered in section 9.2.4 on page 77.
Items to fetch : This controls the number of items to fetch from Twitter whena a request is made.
The larger this number, the longer it will take to communicate with Twitter.
Limit to : Here you can limit the number of bulletins that are created and displayed from the
data feed.
that number here.
Item Spacing : This will insert “padding” between the items in the Twitter feed. This value is in
pixels, so to insert 10 pixels of space between the Twitter items, enter the
number “10”.
form used to edit a bulletin. You will also notice that many fields in the default
Twitter bulletin starts and ends with a ‘#’ sign. As in editing a RSS bulletin, editing
a Twitter bulletin involves placing special words between ‘#’ signs, telling Carousel
where to place the text. For a list of the various words that are available, look to the
list labeled “Available fields”. All of the fields that are available for use from
the Twitter feed will be listed.
Creating Bulletins

editor, covered in section 17.7 on page 161.
15.8 Facebook Bulletins

These bulletins pull information from Facebook based on a series of critera you
enter.
F IGURE 15.18: Editing Facebook

properties
Facebook Page : This will allow you to search and display posts from a page selected from your
search criteria. Enter the page name you are looking for and click the
“Search” button. You can select the specific page you want to display from
the drop-down list, or you can click “Back to search” to try another search
term.
Select the radio button to select which posts to display from the selected page.
Show posts by page : When this is selected, only posts made by the page itself are displayed.
Show all posts to page : This option shows all posts to a page, including those made by other users.
Items to fetch : This controls the number of items to fetch from Facebook when a request is made.
The larger this number, the longer it will take to communicate with Facebook.
Limit to : Here you can limit the number of bulletins that are created and displayed from the
data feed.
that number here.
Item Spacing : This will insert “padding” between the items in the Facebook feed. This value is in
pixels, so to insert 10 pixels of space between the Facebook items, enter the
number “10”.
15.8 Facebook Bulletins 127

form used to edit a bulletin. You will also notice that many fields in the default
Facebook bulletin starts and ends with a ‘#’ sign. As in editing a RSS bulletin,
editing a Facebook bulletin involves placing special words between ‘#’ signs, telling
Carousel where to place the text. For a list of the various words that are available,
look to the list labeled “Available fields”. All of the fields that are available
for use from the Facebook feed will be listed.
Creating Bulletins editor, covered in section 17.7 on page 161.
Facebook Bulletins receive their information from an external data source

setup by Tightrope Media Systems. The Carousel server will need to have
access to the following address to function correctly: https://carousel-facebook-
proxy.herokuapp.com
15.9 The Event Schedule Bulletins

The Event Display System (EDS) is a component of Carousel that is adept at
showing meeting information for one or more meeting rooms. EDS can read
scheduling information from Ad Astra, Dean Evans’ Event Management System
(EMS), Resource25, iCal6 feeds, Exchange Server 2007 SP1 or 2010, and Carousel’s
own built-in schedule.
15.9.1 Creating an EDS Bulletin
F IGURE 15.19: EDS bulletin

creation
To create an EDS bulletin, click New Bulletin from the Main Menu, click the
Dynamic tab and select Event Schedule Bulletin.
You’ll be asked about the location of the scheduling data. If you select Carousel
from the first pop-down list, then you will choose the zone that contains the schedul-
ing data.
Each zone in Carousel may contain a schedule for EDS. You do not have to
select the current zone’s schedule. This lets you create a single schedule, and
have bulletins on multiple zones all display the same schedule.
If you select iCal, you’ll be asked to enter the URL to the iCal feed.
6 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICalendar

F IGURE 15.20: Selecting a
Database for EDS
15.9.2 Setting Up Dean Evans EMS or Ad Astra for EDS
If you select DEA EMS/proxy or Ad Astra, then you will see the database proper-
ties form in figure 15.20.
SQL Server : This is the name of the SQL server, which is hosting the database that the event
management software is using. This might be a server name or an IP address.
Authentication : Some servers use NT Authentication and others use the SQL server’s authentication.
Either way, choose the authentication method and then enter the username
and password into the correct fields.
Database : Once the authentication information is entered, you might see the list of databases
in the Database list. If you do not, click the Reload link, then select the
event management database from the list.
Regardless of the source of your data, you may choose from three methods of
grouping scheduled events:
Ungrouped : Each item will be listed by the time the event will happen.
By Room : All events will be listed by the room in alphanumeric order and then by time. The
room will be listed and then each event will be listed below.
By Time : A time will be listed and each event that matches that time will be listed beneath.
This is useful when events happen at exactly the same time, like in a classroom
situation.
15.9.3 Dean Evans EMS Database Entries
The following are a list of the entries found in Dean Evans EMS and where that
information populates into Carousel:
tblBooking.EventName : #Event#
tblBooking.TimeEventStart : #Date# and #Time#
tblBooking.TimeEventEnd : #EndTime#
tblRoom.Description : #Room#
tblBuilding.Description : #Building#
tblStatus.Description : #Status#
tblEventType.Description : #Type#
15.9 The Event Schedule Bulletins 129

tblGroup.GroupName : #Group#
15.9.4 Editing EMS and Ad Astra Properties
F IGURE 15.21: The EMS and Ad

Astra Bulletin Properties Form
If you are creating an EDS bulletin from an Ad Astra or EMS database, then you
have some additional options that are not applicable to those creating a bulletin
using Carousel’s scheduler. These properties are displayed in figure 15.21.
The top section of the form asks What events would you like to display? Each
multi-select box represents a filter. Within each box, you may select as many of the
!→ items that you wish. Only those items that match an item in all three boxes will be
displayed.
Example: Looking at figure 15.21, you can see that an event in room “101” with a sta-
tus of “Tentative” that is of a type “Athletic” will not be displayed, because
“Tentative” is not selected as an event that will appear.
You may display canceled events so that people know when they arrive that the event
is not taking place. If you would like to display canceled events, then select the
relevant statuses from the multi-select that is labeled, What statuses do you want
to display as canceled? We can select one or more statuses from this list. Next,
pick a color for these events and add some text to precede the event’s title.
When you are finished, click the Continue button.
15.9.5 Setting Up Resource25 for EDS
Carousel uses the Resource25 XML API to pull data through a HTTP connection.
We have tested the integration with version 10 of R25.
Carousel pulls the r25:space_reservations namespace. In most cases this is found
at an address that looks something like:
Example: “http://myserver.edu/ws10/wrd/run/rm_reservations.xml?space_query_id=1694999”
Here is an example of the XML data Carousel is looking for:

Code
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<r25:space_reservations xmlns:r25="http://www.collegenet.com/r25"
xmlns:xl="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" pubdate="2010-06-17T12:16:46-05:00" >
<r25:space_reservation xl:href="reservation.xml?rsrv_id=12713412" >
<r25:reservation_id>12713412</r25:reservation_id>
<r25:reservation_type>1</r25:reservation_type>
<r25:reservation_start_dt>2010-06-17T00:00:00-05:00</r25:reservation_start_dt>
<r25:reservation_end_dt>2010-06-17T23:59:00-05:00</r25:reservation_end_dt>
<r25:act_head_count>0</r25:act_head_count>
<r25:shared>F</r25:shared>
<r25:reservation_state>1</r25:reservation_state>
<r25:spaces xl:href="space.xml?space_id=58" >
<r25:space_id>58</r25:space_id>
<r25:space_name>Conference Room</r25:space_name>
<r25:related_space_id/>
<r25:related_space_name/>
</r25:spaces>
<r25:layout_id>3</r25:layout_id>
<r25:layout_name>Meeting</r25:layout_name>
<r25:reservation_comment_id/>
<r25:reservation_comments/>
<r25:space_instruction_id/>
<r25:space_instructions/>
<r25:registration_url/>
<r25:event xl:href="event.xml?event_id=522375" >
<r25:event_id>522375</r25:event_id>
<r25:event_locator>2010-TRMS</r25:event_locator>
<r25:event_name>Code Review</r25:event_name>
<r25:event_title/>
<r25:event_type_name>Development</r25:event_type_name>
<r25:organization_id xl:href="organization.xml?organization_id=889" >889</r25:organization_id>
<r25:organization_name>Dev Team</r25:organization_name>
<r25:pre_event_dt>2010-06-17T00:00:00-05:00</r25:pre_event_dt>
<r25:event_start_dt>2010-06-17T00:00:00-05:00</r25:event_start_dt>
<r25:event_end_dt>2010-06-17T23:59:00-05:00</r25:event_end_dt>
<r25:post_event_dt>2010-06-17T23:59:00-05:00</r25:post_event_dt>
<r25:profile_id>1229356</r25:profile_id>
<r25:profile_name>Rsrv_1229356</r25:profile_name>
<r25:expected_count>0</r25:expected_count>
<r25:registered_count>0</r25:registered_count>
</r25:event>
<r25:last_mod_user>R25DMUser</r25:last_mod_user>
<r25:last_mod_dt>2010-03-11T13:48:06-06:00</r25:last_mod_dt>
</r25:space_reservation>
</r25:space_reservations>
Enter the URL to rm_reservations xml data, and the username/password you
would like Carousel to connect with. Carousel will use Basic, Digest, or NTLM
authentication.

F IGURE 15.22: An example
configuration for Resource25
You can add any additional query string parameters you need to filter this dataset
down to what you want. For example, you would want to restrict this URL to
only pull reservations for a particular room or building. Refer to your Resource25
administrator on creating the correct query arguments. An example restriction is
illustrated in figure 15.23.
F IGURE 15.23: Here we are re-

stricting the space to a specific ID
number.
In section 15.9.7 on the facing page, when you create an EDS page, you’ll be map-
ping information in the Resource25 database to the Carousel page. The following
fields from the XML in Resource25 are mapped to the EDS placeholders:
#Time# = r25:event/r25:event_start_dt
#EndTime# = r25:event/r25:event_end_dt
#Event# = r25:event/r25:event_name
#Description# = r25:event/r25:event_title
#Organization# = r25:event/r25:organization_name
#Room# = r25:spaces/r25:space_name
Because the queries on R25 requests can be taxing on the R25 server, we have
added a special configuration to the Carousel service to limit the frequency that the
service updates the R25 data. Carousel will still expire and remove old events from
the bulletins, this only adjusts how often we fetch the data from R25.
To turn this feature on, you will need to modify a file on your Carousel server, which
is located in the following directory:
D:\TRMS\Services\Carousel\TRMS.Services.Carousel.exe.config
You’ll want to change the value in the following key, where the entry in value is in
minutes:
<add key="EDS_R25_UpdateInterval" value="15" />

15.9.6 Setting Up Exchange Server 2007 SP1 and 2010 for EDS
Carousel can connect to Microsoft Exchange servers to get calendar information.

This feature is compatible with Exchange 2007 SP1 and 2010. Carousel uses the
Exchange Web Services (EWS) to communicate the Exchange server.
Make sure your server is configured to support EWS!
Carousel pulls the list of private and public calendars associated with your account,
as shown in figure 15.24.
F IGURE 15.24: In this screen shot,

there are no calendars, but you can
see that this is what setting up an
Exchange server within carousel
looks like.
Carousel maps the following fields from the Exchange appointment to the EDS
placeholders:
#Time# = appointment.Start
#EndTime# = appointment.End
#Event# = appointment.Subject
#Description# = appointment.Body
#Room# = appointment.Location
Use these symbols when creating an EDS page in section 15.9.7.
15.9.7 Editing EDS Properties
Carousel can treat EDS data in a number of different ways. You decide these
parameters with the EDS properties form, figure 15.25 on the next page.
From the top:
How much schedule. . . : You can limit the type, number of days, hours or bulletins to display.
Display active or current events only : Active or current events will only display events currently happening.
Events scheduled for later in the day won’t be shown until their start
time has been reached.
Display X hour(s) : This will show all events that start within the next X hour(s).
Display X calendar day(s) : Calendar days are defined as the time between 12:00AM and 11:59PM. If
you select one calendar day, it will only show events through 11:59
tonight.

F IGURE 15.25: EDS Properties
Display X bulletin(s) : This will show as many events as will fit on X bulletin(s). The total number of
events displayed depends on the template design and text sizes assigned.
How many events per bulletin. . . : Carousel needs to know the number events to display per bulletin. This will
depend on the dimensions of the zone, the font used and the length of each
event’s title and room information.
How much space between. . . : You can set a gap between each event. This number is given in pixels.
How would you like the date. . . : You can set the format of the date and time with these pop-down lists.
What would you like displayed if. . . : If no events are listed you can choose to have a message appear or to simply
not show the bulletin. If this bulletin is on a zone dedicated to it, you’ll want
to show a message. If it is on a zone with other bulletins, then removing the
bulletin is an acceptable option.
When you are finished with this form, click Continue.
Want EDS to “take over” a zone when there are events scheduled? Create it as
an Alert bulletin (chapter 13 on page 99) and check the “No Page” option so
that the bulletin isn’t shown when there are no events scheduled. Now, EDS will
be the only bulletin shown while there is schedule data, and when the schedule
runs out, your regular bulletin cycle will resume.

You can use EDS to function as a digital room sign. Create an EDS bulletin as an
alert bulletin (chapter 13 on page 99), select “Display Active or Current
events only”, and select “No Page” so the bulletin isn’t shown when there
are no active events. Now, whenever an event occurs, Carousel will create an
alert bulletin for that event that interrupts your regular cycle for the duration of
the event. When the event is finished, your regular cycle will resume. No more
taping handwritten pieces of paper the wall!
15.9.8 Editing an EDS Bulletin
F IGURE 15.26: Editing an EDS

Bulletin
Editing an EDS bulletin is just like editing a standard bulletin, except that EDS
information is enclosed in “#” symbols.
Example: Whenever you want to show the time of an event, simply place “#Time#” somewhere
in one of the fields.
Field names that start with If you want to show a field one time, and not repeat it with every event, then make
“Header” show once. the template’s name start with “Header”.
Example: You can see in figure 15.26 that the template’s first field is labeled “HeaderDate”.
If we removed the word “Header” then the date would repeat down the page with
each event. In our example, it is obvious that one bulletins that showed a single
day of scheduling would work for this configuration. We see an example of this in
figure 15.27.
F IGURE 15.27: You can see that

the date in this EDS bulletin shows
only once, whereas The Simpson’s
inspired events repeat down the
bulletin.
If you enclose text within curly braces {}, you make it conditional on any fields that
are within that text.
Example: If you type “{This event ends at #EndTime#.}”, and the event does not in-
clude an end time, the entire sentence will be omitted.

15.10 EDS Bulletin Scheduling
EDS bulletins are scheduled like any other bulletin. In fact, all of the properties of
an EDS bulletin behave the same as for a regular bulletin created from a template.
We cover these properties in section 11.3 on page 86.
However, you’ll want to remember that Carousel is dynamically updating the data
in EDS bulletins, expiring the old events as they pass. If you check the Until
Manually turned off box in the scheduling form, then this bulletin will run forever,
automatically updating the scheduling information without intervention from you
or your staff.
15.11 Scheduling EDS Within Carousel
F IGURE 15.28: The Event Sched-

ule Form
Each zone has an event schedule. Select Event Schedule from the Main Menu.
At the top of the form, you will find tools to help you with the events that you
create.
Update : This refreshes the form, interpreting the start and end time and sorting accordingly.
Any time that you hit the Enter key on your keyboard, you will be effectively
clicking this link.
New : Click this link to create a new event.
Delete : To delete one or more items, select the according box and then click the delete link.
To delete all items on the form, click the select all arrow and then click the
Delete link.
Copy : To copy links in to the copy buffer, click this link.
Paste : To paste items from the copy buffer, click this link.
The Date : This is the day that you are looking. You may enter a new day directly into this
field.
Ellipsis (. . . ) : Clicking this link reveals a handy calendar, show in figure 15.29 on the next page.
With it, you can select a new date to schedule.
Minus (–) : Use this to decrement the day.
t : Use this link to go directly to today’s date.
Plus (+) : Use this to increment the day.
Below these tools is the schedule, awaiting your entries. Each column is a link,
which you can click on to sort the list by that item. Clicking the column again will
toggle ascending/decending sorts.
Enter the start and end time of the event into the Start Time and End Time
fields.

F IGURE 15.29: The EDS Calen-
dar Tool
You can type “1:00pm”, “1.00p”, “1.00+” or “1+”. To Carousel, these are all
the same. “1-” means “1:00 AM”.
!→ Enter a room and event description into the next two fields. Be sure that the room
information is entered accurately and consistently so that Carousel can group the
rooms together, if that option was selected.
Do not close the web browser or navigate away from this page using the browser’s
navigation buttons without clicking the Update link. You will lose any changes
that were made.
15.12 The Live Video Input Bulletins

Carousel works with optional hardware to overlay an external video feed. These
feeds might be terrestrial or cable television, DVD players, a camera or some other
source video source. They may also be a Windows Media stream on the network. To
create one of these bulletins, click New Bulletin from the Main Menu and select
the Dynamic tab. Choose Live Video Feed.
Your first choice is to pick the source of your video. If you are using video input
hardware that has been installed on all of the Carousel players that show this zone,
you can use the Video Input Card option. Select the input type from the Input
15.12 The Live Video Input Bulletins 137

F IGURE 15.30: The Live Video
Form
F IGURE 15.31: Live video bul-

letin creation
pop-down list. If the signal is coming from a cable or terrestrial channel, enter the
channel number in the Channel field.
If you are using a streaming source, choose the URL radio button and enter the link
for the source. Carousel is compatible with Windows Media streaming, MPEG-4
and H.264.
Next, select the Audio option if there is audio accompanied with the video. If there
is, Carousel will automatically fade the background audio while this bulletin is
active. Otherwise, choose the No audio option.
Finally, you may upload a graphic that will be used to fill the zone while there is
no video source to replay. This is primarily useful when working with streaming
media, as it is difficult to sense video loss with an external source.
From here, scheduling a live video feed is just like scheduling a regular bulletin
created from a template, which we covered in section 11.3 on page 86. One thing
to keep in mind, however, is that often you will want to specify the start and end
time for these bulletins, as you may want a zone to go to a television channel during
lunch and back to bulletins at all other times of the day.
15.13 Interactive Bulletins

Interactive bulletins allow Carousel users to upload or link to interactive content.
This interactive content is displayed on a Carousel player and allows the viewer
to interact with the digital signage. There are several different applications for
interactivity including way finding, digital directories, and many more.

You will need a touch panel display for interactivity to work properly.
The Carousel Display Engine composites Internet Explorer together with the rest of
the digital signage channel. This allows you to place interactive bulletins into any
zone, alert bulletin, or full screen alert. You can also schedule different interactive
content just like you would schedule any bulletin in Carousel. This is powerful and
simple. Because Carousel is using Internet Explorer, the interactive content can be
anything a standard web browser can display; web pages, dynamic web pages, flash
animations, etc. Carousel is not locked into any proprietary technologies.
Carousel does not allow you to create interactive content, it just displays it. We
decided using web standards for interactive content was a more powerful and
flexible option for content creators.
Interactive bulletins are designed to be the only bulletin in a zone. They will not
work like you expect if there are multiple bulletins in the zone.
To specify the interactive content you can either enter the Interactive URL which is
a link to a the interactive content or Upload a file. This interactive content can be
any web page, flash animation, or web element. The uploaded file is a .zip archive
of content. This archive is extracted then hosted on the Carousel server and served
the players with Internet Information Server (IIS).
F IGURE 15.32: Interactive bul-

letin options
The Inactivity timeout allows you to set a duration of inactivity before Carousel
will reset this bulletin. After there has been a specified time of inactivity Carousel
will either go to the next bulletin in the rotation or navigate back to the Interactive
URL. This will ‘reset’ the interactive content back to the main screen.
If the Inactivity timeout is set to “0” (zero) the Interactive Bulletin will never
time out. This is used if your interactive content has it’s own timeout routine, or
it is not desired to reset the display.
The Carousel Display Engine will normally exit if you double-click the mouse
or hold the Escape key. When there is interactive content double-clicking is
disabled so users can’t accidentally close the display. To exit the Display Engine
you will have to hold the Escape key.
15.13 Interactive Bulletins 139

Carousel sets the web browser to the size of the zone that is displaying the content.
As you create content make sure you target the resolution of that zone. Carousel
may crop the web site if it is not designed to fit in the zone. Carousel disables the
built in scroll bars and navigation buttons, so that functionality will need to be built
into the content if it extends past the zone resolution. For more tips on creating
interactive content, check out our blog7 and forum8 .
7 http://blog.trms.com
8 http://forum.trms.com

IV. Managing and Extras
“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world;

the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt
the world to himself. Therefore all progress de-
pends on the unreasonable man.”
—George Bernard Shaw
141
142
16 Managing Bulletins
Managing bulletins is a part of the everyday process of administrating a Carousel

system. In this chapter, you will learn about the different bulletin lists, how to move
bulletins between and within those lists, how to approve pages, run reports, and
how to “clean house”.
Carousel simplifies this process by keeping to a few common interfaces that will
guide you through any management process.
All of the activity in this chapter takes place in the Manage Bulletins menu.
16.1 Bulletin Lists

There are several lists of bulletins within Carousel, all of them presented within the
Carousel interface in a similar fashion. There are lists for Active, Active Repeating,
and Alert bulletins. On top of that, there are sub-lists for every user of Carousel
for each of those categories, plus a list for everyone’s Saved and Stale bulletins.
Finally, there is a list of bulletins that are waiting for approval. All of them present
bulletins in the order that they will appear on the display, with special rules for alert
and Active Repeating bulletins.
Let’s review the meaning and purpose of each type of list:
Active : An Active bulletin is queued in the Carousel loop at the current time. It is either
scheduled to be displayed right now or will be at some point in the future.
Specifically, we say that a bulletin is active when it is a part of the pages that
will display (once Carousel gets around to it). We might be more specific
and specify a particular bulletin as waiting for its on date and time when
the bulletin will be skipped over by the display engine because the current
time and date do not line up with the bulletin’s schedule, even though it will
display at some point in the future.
Example: One bulletin is scheduled for all day, from today until next Wednesday.
Another has no end date and is on from 3:00 PM to 5:00PM on weekdays.
It’s currently 2:00 PM on a Saturday. Even though the first bulletin is active
now and the second will be active in 49 hours, they are both in the Active
Bulletins list.
Active Repeating : Active Repeating bulletins bulletins follow the same scheduling rules as active
bulletins, except that they are inserted between active bulletins. The frequency
is determined by a value set when the bulletin was created. We covered this
in section 11.6 on page 92.
Alert : When an alert bulletin is active (and not waiting for its on date and time), it
temporarily removes any other bulletin that is scheduled on that zone, until
its disabled.
Saved : Users may save bulletins that are already active, or add them to the saved list during
the creation process.
143
Stale : When a bulletin’s schedule expires, it is automatically moved to this list. Bulletins
in this list may be reactivated or deleted by using the Housekeeping menu,
covered in section 16.4 on page 150.
Waiting : A user may be able to make a bulletin for a zone, but they are held for approval
by Carousel. These bulletins will sit in this list until they are approved or
deleted.
In versions prior to Carousel Release 5, crawls would be in the same list as

bulletins. Now, they are separated because they are in separate zones.
Whenever you see a list of bulletins, you’ll see something like that in figure 16.1.
F IGURE 16.1: A List of Bulletins
16.1.1 Bulletins
You can see three bulletins in figure 16.1. They each have control icons in a column
along their left side, which we described in section 5.7 on page 39. Across the top
of each bulletin you’ll notice the title, which defaults to the text of the bulletin or
the video/picture’s name. In the right corner there is a status dot, which changes
color depending on the status of the bulletin.
Active Bulletin : The green dot signifies that these bulletins are active because they are queued in
the Carousel loop at the current time. They may not be displayed right this
second, but will be once Carousel loops around to their position in the list.
Waiting Bulletin : The yellow dot signifies bulletins that are scheduled for some point in the future,
but are not yet activated because their schedule doesn’t fall within the current
time and date.
Pending or No Content : When a bulletin icon is gray, it has been submitted by a user that does not have
automatically approved bulletins, then their bulletins are held in this status,
even though they appear in the list that they were created for (Active, Active
Repeating, etcetera). Or for some Dynamic Bulletins, there is no content
available for display.
Corrupt : Hopefully, you’ll never see this red icon. If there is trouble with a bulletin, Carousel
will keep it in the list with this status icon.
144 16 Managing Bulletins

If you don’t want to clutter up your list with pages that aren’t currently active,
then click the Hide queued/waiting bulletins icon from the top of the list.
Examine one of the bulletins in figure 16.1 on the facing page. Within its frame,
you will see a preview picture of the bulletin. For bulletins made within Carousel
using a template or uploaded pictures, you’ll see a preview of the actual bulletin.
For other types, you’ll see a stand-in icon. You can drag this preview into other
positions within the list to move the bulletin, a topic covered in section 16.1.4 on
the next page.
To the right of the preview, there is a summary of the bulletins properties, including
the author, its schedule, the method used for making it and the transition setting.
Active Repeating bulletins will have their frequency listed next to their type.
Example: Type: Standard bulletin, repeating every 4 bulletins.
16.1.2 Filtering By Tags
If you click on the Filter view by tags link at the top, shown in figure 16.2, the
available tags for this zone will appear.
F IGURE 16.2: Filtering by tags
Click on any of the tags and you’ll see bulletins that contain that tag. Click the
Clear link to deselect all tags and see the full list again. To select more than one
tag, like we do in figure 16.3, hold down the shift key when you select additional
tags.
F IGURE 16.3: Select two tags by

shift-clicking
16.1 Bulletin Lists 145

16.1.3 Groups
Bulletins that are grouped are contained in a group frame, shown in figure 16.4.
A group has control icons on the upper right of its frame, which we covered in
section 5.7 on page 39.
F IGURE 16.4: Bulletin Groups
To save screen realestate, you can collapse a group by clicking on the small plus
sign next to the group’s folder icon .
To really save realestate, click the Contract all groups icon at the very top of
the list.
You can use the Ungroup This Group icon to break the group apart. If you
want to edit the group, you can click on the Edit this Group icon , which opens
Edit a group to change all of its a form to change the groups name or to reset each bulletin’s start and end date
bulletins’ schedule. to a single setting. To move a group to another zone or to another list, click the
Copy/Transfer/Send icon in the. Click the Delete this group icon to be
forever rid of all of the bulletins within the group.
To delete bulletins enmasse, group them together (explained in section 16.1.4)

and click the Delete this Group icon on the far right.
Carousel has no undo function for delete bulletins or groups. Be careful that you
are not unintentionally throwing valuable bulletins away! Remember, you can
always opt to transfer a bulletin to your stale or saved bulletins list, which allows
you to recall them at a later date.
16.1.4 Moving Bulletins or Groups Within a List
You can move bulletins and groups to another location in the list by clicking on
their preview picture or folder icon and then clicking between the gaps of two
bulletins, illustrated in figure 16.5 on the next page.

F IGURE 16.5: Moving a bulletin
between two bulletins. You can
also move a bulletin into another
bulletin to create a group.
In Carousel, you can view a list of bulletins that belong only to you, which
are located in the My Bulletins tab. In this view, you cannot move bulletins
or groups between two bulletins. You can, however, group bulletins together
from within this list. This limitation is due to the fact that you cannot see all of
the bulletins that are within the list. This prevents bulletin placement ambiguity
when reordering from this list.
To group one bulletin to another bulletin, or to another group, click in the bottom
portion of a bulletin. Be sure to wait for the blue bar to appear, figure 16.5, as this
tells you that you’ve hit your target.
When you group bulletins together from within a list, they retain their schedule.
If you want them to have the same schedule, edit the new group by clicking the
Edit this Group icon and following the directions.
If you want to be fancy, you can drag the the bulletin’s preview to the spot that
you want it to appear, as shown in figure 16.6. In some browsers, moving past the
visible window in your browser is not a precise endeavor, requiring some finesse
with the mouse to get it to scroll the page as you hit the edge of what is visible.
Usually, it’s easy to just click the preview and mouse over the desired target and
then click, even though it’s not as cool.
F IGURE 16.6: You can alternately

drag your preview into its target
location.
16.1.5 Copying and Moving Bulletins
You can make copies of bulletins and groups of bulletins by clicking on the Copy
Or Move This Bulletin icon .
There are two groups of radio buttons: Move this bulletin to and Copy this
bulletin to.
16.1 Bulletin Lists 147

F IGURE 16.7: Move/Copy Bul-
letins Form
Three selections require further explanation:
Moving a Bulletin to Another User’s Account
The last selection under the Move this bulletin to label has a pop-down list with
all of the user accounts provides a way to move a bulletin to another user’s account.
This is handy when you want to create a bulletin for a user and then give them
control over it as though they made it within their account. They can then edit the
bulletin, save it or delete it. Also, when the bulletin goes stale it goes into their stale
pages list.
Creating a Bulletin Package
Selecting the A Bulletin Package option under the Copy this bulletin to label will
instruct Carousel to create a bulletin package that you may download.
A bulletin package is a zip file with the bulletins that you’ve selected in side. To cre-
ate a bulletin package with more than one bulletin, you must first group the bulletins
within the bulletin list, an process covered in section 16.1.3 on page 146.
You can import bulletins within the Media: Channel: Bulletin Package menu,
covered in section 17.10 on page 178.
Zone Template
Copying a bulletin to a zone template will create a new template with the character-
istics of the current bulletin. If the selected bulletin is dynamic, this option will be
named “Zone Defalt Template”. This will cause all future dynamic bulletins of
that type to display like the original bulletin.
16.2 My Bulletins
All users can see the My Bulletins tab in the Manage Bulletins menu. Any user
can edit their bulletins and see the bulletins that Carousel has expired and placed
in the Stale Bulletins list. Over time, a user might stash bulletins for reuse in the
Saved Bulletins list. Saved or stale bulletins can be edited and rescheduled.

!→ When you reschedule a stale or saved bulletin, Carousel will automatically activate
it if the new schedule is set to display. If you move a stale or saved bulletin to the
Active bulletins list, Carousel will automatically ask you to reschedule it.
16.2.1 My Bulletins as the Administrator
As the administrator, you may access all bulletins regardless of the list they are in or
the user that created them. You can view their stale and saved bulletins, edit them,
or re-activate them.
Remember, you can use the Copy/Send/Transfer to move a bulletin to another
user’s list. If you want to move a stale bulletin into a user’s saved list, then you must
first move it to the current user’s saved list and then transfer it. We cover copying
and moving bulletins in section 16.1.5 on page 147.
16.3 Approving Bulletins

F IGURE 16.8: A Bulletin is
Waiting for Approval
When a user without permission to auto-authorize, makes a bulletin, it will be held

for approval before it is added to Carousel’s Active Bulletins list. Whether or not a
bulletin has to be approved is determined for each user and is configurable for each
zone for which they have bulletin creation permission. See FrontDoor: The Manual
to learn about how to set these permissions.
To find the list of waiting bulletins, go to the Waiting Bulletins tab within the
Manage Bulletins menu.
F IGURE 16.9: A bulletin is

waiting for approval.
When a new bulletin arrives from one of these users, Carousel is able to send an
email to designated people, a process we demonstrated in section 8.1.1 on page 71.
Typically, these addresses would include people charged with the duty approving
bulletins, but they could be any valid email address. An example email is shown in
figure 16.9.
The Waiting Bulletins list has some unique buttons that aid in the process of
approving bulletins. The Approve all waiting bulletins icon does just what it
says. The Approve all waiting bulletins to a single group icon does the same
thing, except that all of the new bulletins will be grouped together, making it easier
for you to find them later.
16.3 Approving Bulletins 149

F IGURE 16.10: The Waiting
Bulletins List
Each bulletin may be individually approved by clicking on the Approve link to the
right of the bulletin’s title.
16.4 Housekeeping
F IGURE 16.11: The Housekeep-

ing Menu
The Housekeeping tab, figure 16.11, allows you to delete bulletins en mass based
on a specific set of criteria. Bulletins may be deleted by type (Active, Stale, Saved,
or Waiting), by User or All Users, and for All Zones or the Zone that you are
operating from. Once the criteria has been selected and you click on the Delete
button, a summary page will display allowing you a preview of the bulletins marked
for deletion. If the list is correct click on the Delete button on the summary page for
permanent deletion.
16.5 Reporting
The Reporting tab, figure 16.12 on the facing page, allows you to select a list of all
bulletins on a zone based on the bulletin type, status, and tags. You can then export

F IGURE 16.12: Bulletin
Reporting
a CSV report of the bulletins, which includes all of the metadata about the bulletins,
including impression tracking information.
Initially, all Active and Current bulletins on the zone are shown in the list. To
select which bulletins are included in the report, you can adjust the bulletin filters
as needed.
16.5.1 Filter by bulletin type
The bulletin type filter allows you to select between Active, Alert, or Repeating
bulletins, or any combination of the three. Click on a type to select it, and shift-click
to select multiple types.
For example, selecting Alert will limit the report to just Alert bulletins, and selecting
Active and Repeating will include both Active and Repeating bulletins in the
report.
16.5.2 Filter by bulletin status
The bulletin status filter allows you to select between Current, Queued, Waiting,
Saved, or Stale bulletins, or any combination thereof. Click on a status to select it,
and shift-click to select multiple statuses.
For example, selecting Queued will limit the report to just Queued bulletins, and
selecting Current and Stale will include both Current and Stale bulletins in the
report.
16.5.3 Filter by bulletin tags
If you have tags defined on any bulletin in the zone (see section 11.4.6 on page 90,
Bulletin Tags), you’ll see a filter for bulletin tags. The filter will not appear if there
16.5 Reporting 151

are no tagged bulletins in the zone.
Selecting a tag will limit the report to only include bulletins with that tag. You can
shift-click multiple tags to add additional tags to the filter. In contrast to the type
and status filters, selecting multiple tags will limit the report to bulletins tagged
with all of the selected tags.
For example, in figure 16.12 on the preceding page, if you were to select both the
sponsor and sports tag, the report would only include the third bulletin, as it is the
only one with both sponsor and sports tags.
16.5.4 Export CSV Report
Once you have filtered the bulletin report, you can click the Generate CSV Re-
port link to download a CSV file containing metadata about each bulletin in the
report.
The CSV report contains the following fields for each bulletin:
PageID : The ID (guid) of this bulletin.
Type : Bulletin type (Active, Alert, Repeating).
Status : Bulletin status (Current, Queued, Waiting, Saved, Stale).
Description : The bulletin’s description.
ObjectType : The object type of this bulletin.
DateTimeOn : When the bulletin becomes active.
DateTimeOff : When the bulletin becomes inactive (stale).
CycleTimeOn : What time of day should the bulletin start while it is active.
CycleTimeOff : What time of day should the bulletin stop while it is active.
ManualDuration : If true, the bulletin is always active, ignoring DateTime/CycleTime settings.
DwellTime : How many seconds the bulletin should be on screen. If set to -1, the system will
choose the dwell time based on number of words in the bulletin. If set to 0,
dwell time cannot be calculated for this bulletin type.
Days : Description of which days of the week the bulletin is scheduled for.
Owner : User account that owns the bulletin.
ImpressionCount : Number of times the bulletin has been shown on any Display Engine.
ImpressionSeconds : Estimate of number of seconds the bulletin has been on screen. Calculated by
multiplying ImpressionCount by DwellTime.
RepeatInterval : For Repeating bulletins, the number of bulletins to wait before repeating this
bulletin.
SoundEnabled : True if sound is enabled for this bulletin, false otherwise.
WebEnabled : True if this bulletin can be shown on the public web interface, false otherwise.
WordCount : Number of words found in the bulletin.
PreviewURL : URL to a preview image of this bulletin.
Tags : A comma delimited list of tags set on this bulletin.

16.6 Slide Show
F IGURE 16.13: The Slide Show
Carousel includes a little slide show utility under the Slide Show tab. The slide
show gives you a small preview of what this zone’s output will look like.
This slide show utility can only display certain bulletin types, due to bandwidth con-
cerns. You will not be able to preview Video, Flash, or Powerpoint bulletins.
16.6 Slide Show 153

17 Managing Media
In this chapter, we will explore the menu items and features found within the Media
menu, which you access from Carousel’s Main Menu.
In Carousel, media, or media assets, means anything that gets added to a template,
a process that we cover in section 17.7 on page 161, The Template Editor. Media
assets include:
Backgrounds : Every bulletin has a background. You can add backgrounds to zones and use them
in bulletins. You may also upload a background that is automatically split into
several backgrounds for all of the zones on a channel, which creates a single
seamless background on that channel. We show how to upload seamless
backgrounds in section 17.9 on page 176, Creating a Seamless Background
for a Multi-Zoned Channel.
Pictures : Pictures are graphic files that are placed on top of the background.
Video Clips : Like pictures, these videos are placed on top of a background within a template.
Sounds : Sound files within this menu are exclusively for bulletins made from a template.
They are not included in the Background Audio list, a topic covered in
section 6.2 on page 41, Create Your Zones.
Templates : Templates are where everything else comes together to create a bulletin. The above
media elements are gathered and arranged into blocks next to text that is
entered by the bulletin’s author.
Media Tags : Tagging media helps people sort and organize. As the number of files that you
manage grows, you will appreciate the time spent adding these keywords to
your files. We cover the application of these tags in section 17.8 on page 175.
Add media package : Exclusive to the zone view (section 17.1 on the next page), this option allows you
to import media from a zip file.
In addition, you can even import bulletins from another Carousel system.
This is handy for sharing between two Carousel Solos or when upgrading
from an older system.
When you sum the items in this list, you get the bulk of the resources for creating
bulletins within Carousel. Everything within your Media menu, with the exception
of importing bulletins from other Carousel systems, is the exclusive domain of
bulletins created using templates.
All media, regardless of its type, is managed the same way within Carousel. We
will cover the deleting, copying, tagging and editing of all media assets in this
chapter.
155
17.1 My and Zone Tabs
Carousel makes a distinction between media files available to everyone that creates
a bulletin within the zone and those assets that belong only to your account. You
will find two tabs that separate these categories: My and Zone.
F IGURE 17.1: The My and Zone

Tabs: Put media assets in the My
tab when you want to hide it from
other users.
If you upload a media asset during the process of creating a bulletin, it is added to
the My tab. You may copy these bulletins to other zones while creating the message,
but only within the My tab, thus making the addition unavailable to other users of
Carousel.
Within the Media menu, however, you are free to copy a media asset anywhere you
wish. You can make another copy on the current zone, add it to other zones under
either the Zone or My tabs. We cover this in section 17.5.3 on page 160, Copying
Media Assets.
It is important to note that the list of bulletins available within your private list
is unique for each zone. If you have a background tucked away in your My
Backgrounds stash, it will not be available to you when you go to another zone.
Again, this is where copying media comes into play and we cover that in sec-
tion 17.5.3.
17.2 File Formats

For backgrounds and pictures, Carousel supports:
• Portable Network Graphics (PNG)
• JPEG
• BMP
For sound files:
• WAV
• MP3
• Unprotected WMV
Finally, Carousel supports the following video formats:
• MPEG-1/2/4
• AVI (any properly configured codec, including Microsoft DV)
• QuickTime (any properly configured codec, including QuickTime DV and
H.264)
• Windows Media 9
156 17 Managing Media

17.2.1 File Compatibility
Carousel does a nice job of detecting invalid picture and background files. However,
there is no verification for video and audio files. Be sure that you are using standard
formats with codecs that are installed an all of your players.
We cover more details on specific hardware capabilities, including high definition

playback, in section 4.2 on page 31, Video File Playback Performance and
Resolutions.
17.3 Logos and Irregularly Shaped Pictures

The PNG format is especially useful for logos or any irregularly shaped picture, as
Carousel can “cut a hole” for the image using its alpha channel.
An alpha channel is a gray scale image with the same dimensions as the visible
picture. Where the alpha image is white, the picture will show. Where it is black,
the background will show through. Grey areas will blend the picture, as you can
see in figure 17.2.
F IGURE 17.2: Alpha Channel

Example: The first version is the
picture without an alpha channel.
The second is the alpha channel
while the third is the result of
applying it to the picture.
17.4 Aspect Ratios

Note that when you upload videos and backgrounds into Carousel, the system will
stretch them to fill the block or zone that you are using. That is, a background will
be stretched to fill a zone and the video will stretch to fill the hole carved out for it
in the template. It is best to design the background or video with its Carousel target
in mind.
Pictures are not affected by aspect ratios. They are shown pixel-for-pixel and evenly
resized if needed, retaining the original look of the picture.
When you upload a picture into Carousel, it does not resize it, like it does for
a background. Therefore, take care not to upload a huge image file when a
medium or small one would do. Carousel will resize just about any image, but
you could be needlessly taxing the system.
17.5 Media Asset Lists

Media Whenever you click on any of the Media menu’s items, except Media Tags and Add
Media Package, you will be greeted with a list of items that are in that zone.
17.3 Logos and Irregularly Shaped Pictures 157

F IGURE 17.3: A List of
Backgrounds
Figure 17.3 is a view of the top of a background list populated with some of
the default backgrounds included with Carousel. Let’s examine some if the fea-
tures.
First, notice that in our example, we have filtered the backgrounds by the “Natural”
tag, which means that only backgrounds with that tag can be seen. We can erase
this by clicking on the blue remove icon .
Next, notice that “Buds” and “Flower” have been selected. We can select any
Clicking an items link edits the combination of items by clicking on them. Take note, if you click on the item’s
properties. hyperlink, the item’s properties form will appear. We cover editing a media asset’s
properties in section 17.6 on page 160, Media Asset Properties.
If you would like to un-select items you’ve clicked on, click the Unselect All link
at the top of the list. If nothing is selected, you’ll notice the link says Select All
instead.
17.5.1 Items
Examine the item in figure 17.4 on the next page. Notice that the name of the item
is a link. As we mentioned in section 17.5 on the preceding page, clicking on it
brings up the items properties (section 17.6 on page 160). If we click on the item, it
selects it.
Below the item’s name is a list of the tags that are attached to this item.
17.5.2 Form Buttons
At the bottom of the media asset list will be a collection of buttons. Let’s examine
each:
Add Tag : After selecting one or more items, you can add tags to them with this button. If
you already have media tags in your system, matching tags will appear in a
box below the Add Tag field (figure 17.5 on the facing page). If your entry
doesn’t match any existing tag, a new one will be created.

F IGURE 17.4: Items and the But-
tons at the Bottom of a Media Asset
List
F IGURE 17.5: Adding a Tag
Clear All Tags : This button clears the tags off of any selected items. This button is not available for
templates as they do not have tags.
Auto Tag : Carousel will look at the name of each selected item and tag create a tag for each
word. This works well when you name the files for this purpose. Obviously,
using this feature on a file named “A Pretty Flower In The Woods” will
have poor results. This button is not available for templates.
Add : Brings up a form that allows you to upload a new item.
Delete : Deletes the selected items. If you delete an asset that has been copied to other zones,
you will be asked if you would like to delete it from there as well. Carousel
keeps track of assets that are copied so that you can later delete them in one
step.
Copy : Brings up the Copy form, where you select the targets for copying the selected
items. We detail this in section 17.5.3 on the next page, Copying Media
Assets.
Export : This appears only for templates. Clicking it will turn the selected templates into a
media package, which you can download and import into another Carousel
system.
17.5 Media Asset Lists 159

17.5.3 Copying Media Assets
To copy one or more assets, click on them and then click the Copy button at the
bottom of the list. You will see the form pictured in figure 17.6.
F IGURE 17.6: Copying a Media

Asset
By default, Carousel selects the current zone in the current mode (My or Zone).
This will create a duplicate of the asset.
If you check a box for another zone, Carousel creates a duplicate that is linked to
the original. That way, when if you delete one of the copies, Carousel knows to ask
you if you want to delete all of them, or just the version in the current zone.
17.6 Media Asset Properties

When you click on a media asset’s hyperlinked name, shown in figure 17.4 on the
previous page, the properties form will appear for that item.
Backgrounds and pictures will have all of the controls that you see in figure 17.7 on
the facing page. Video clips and sounds will be missing the image control features
listed at the bottom. If you are editing a template, then you are in the wrong section.
Skip ahead to section 17.7 on the next page, The Template Editor.
The Name and Preview sections have obvious purposes. The Tags multi-select list
provides another method to select tags for this asset. If you’d like to add a new tag,
type the new tag into the field below the list and click the Add button.
Use the Effect options to alter the appearance of an image when editing pictures or
backgrounds.
Just choose the effect from any of the pop-down lists and click the Update button
to the right.
The Effect pop-down list has a secondary pop-down that includes options like +A
Little and -A Lot. This refers to the strength of the effect. For Brightness and
Contrast, the negative values will apply each effect in negative directions. They
have no effect on other choices.
The Update button labeled Revert to Original resets the picture or background
to the original version that was first uploaded. The image will return to its orig-

F IGURE 17.7: The Properties
Form of A Media Asset
inal state regardless of the amount of time that has passed since you made the
alterations.
If you copied this asset to another zone and edit this version, it will not change
on the other zone. The two will still be linked, however, and deleting one will
prompt Carousel to ask you if you want to delete the other.
17.7 The Template Editor

When you create a bulletin, you can upload it in its entirety and display it on
Carousel’s Display Engine as a picture or video that has the message already
baked in. It’s more common to type some text and add some pictures directly
within Carousel. The placement of the pictures and text and the style of each are
predefined by something called a template. Templates are a starting point for a
bulletin that combines media into one message. To create and edit these templates,
we use Carousel’s Template Editor.
The Template Editor provides an interface to select a background and place message
Media: Templates elements on the screen. Once the template is created from Carousel’s Media:
Templates menu, you may access it when you create a standard bulletin. The
Template Editor is also used when creating certain dynamic bulletins and when
17.7 The Template Editor 161

F IGURE 17.8: In this bulletin, the
red arrows point to elements placed
with the template editor.
changing the look of a bulletin that is being created.
17.7.1 Editing a Bulletin’s Template vs. Permanently Editing a Template
When you create a bulletin, you can edit the template using the Quick Edit palette,
covered in section 11.2 on page 84, Editing and Creating Bulletins. You can also
edit the message using the Template Editor by clicking on the Edit Template icon
.
!→ When you edit templates during the process of creating a message, you are only
editing the template for that bulletin. When you edit the template from the Media:
Template menu, you are permanently changing the template. Those changes will be
applied to all future bulletins that use that template. Existing bulletins will remain
unchanged.
17.7.2 Basics of the Template Editor
Like most things Carousel, a template originates from a zone. Therefore, a template
shares the dimensions of the zone it was created from and all of the pretty things
that make that template up are placed within these dimensions.
If you copy a template to another zone, Carousel will stretch it to fit that zone, if
it doesn’t have the same dimensions of the original.
Blocks: Elements of a Template
Let’s go over all of the things that are in a template.

First, every template has a background, which is in back of everything that you see
in your bulletin. You can change that background when you are making a message,
but the background that is associated with the template is the first choice that the
user will see.
In addition to a background, templates contain blocks, which are elements of the
message that may be placed on the template. Templates may have any combination
of the following blocks:

Text : Each text box has font, color, size and placement properties. Carousel will auto-
matically wrap text as needed, provided that the area given to the text box is
large enough to support additional lines of text.
Picture : A picture contains a single graphic element, usually a PNG or JPEG file. Carousel
will automatically resize the image so that it fills the provided area either
horizontally or vertically. Carousel can maintain the picture’s aspect ratio,
which means that it may not fill the entire area, if that area does not share the
picture’s aspect ratio. This is an option that you can set.
Web Picture : A web picture is just like a picture, except that instead of loading an image into
Carousel, you give it the web address of a picture. This is often used to
display dynamic weather maps or traffic cameras.
Video : Carousel can place a video clip into a block. Unlike a picture block, Carousel will
stretch the video to fill the rectangle, regardless of the video’s original aspect
ratio.
Simple Rectangle : Every element can have a backdrop and outline defined for its area. You may
find the need to define a rectangle that is outside of any given element’s
dimensions. In those cases, you can use a rectangle block.
F IGURE 17.9: The yellow outline

is around a simple rectangle block.
In this case, the box is surrounding
multiple text fields.
Simple Ellipse : You can add circles and ellipses to your template with this block type.

17.7.3 Walking Through the Template Editor Form
Let’s make a brand new template together! We’ll walk through creating a text block
on your template. By doing this, we’ll be able to see the vast majority of the features
of the template editor. What we don’t cover, we will pick up at the end.
Making a Text Block in a Template
Step 1: In a Carousel system that has a channel and zones already created within it, navigate
Media: Zone (Tab): to Media: Zone (Tab): Templates.
Templates
Step 2: At the bottom of the list of templates available for the current zone, you’ll see an
Add button. Click it. This will bring up the Edit form for a new template, which is
illustrated in figure 17.10.
F IGURE 17.10: Making a New Template
Step 3: In the Template Properties section, name your new template, as “New Template”
is a terrible name for your creation!

Step 4: Next, you select the default background for this template in the Background pop-
down list. A user may change this at creation time, but they will see this selection
first. If you want a background in your template that you don’t already have
available in your zone, you’ll need to upload it first. To do that, you’ll have to skip
Media: Back- over to Media: Backgrounds: Zone (tab) and we cover adding it in section 17.5 on
grounds: Zone page 157, Media Asset Lists.
(tab)
If you want to leave it blank for now, you can choose the “Template Specific”
option.
We’ll skip over the Select Block and Block Name fields for now. Before we can
use these fields, we need to add a block.
Step 5: Once you change your background, you’ll see it update in the preview window on
the left. If you want, you can instruct Carousel to make the preview window match
the size of your zone by clicking the Full Size Preview checkbox. As you edit this
template, you can check/uncheck this option as needed.
Step 6: Next, click the Blocks option, which will expand the options for creating a block.
Step 7: Click the New button to create a brand new block.
Step 8: You’ll notice that a whole bunch of menu options just appeared! That’s because a
block has a bunch of options and you’re currently editing the new block you just
created. Also, Carousel has helpfully suggested that you name your block and give
it one of the types we enumerated back in section 17.7.2 on page 162.

Pick a name that is helpful to the person using your template:
Example: “Title” or “Address” or “Body of Message”.
For this walkthrough, make sure that you set the Type pop-down list to “Text”.
Step 9: Next, let’s move and resize our creation. There are three ways to do this. First, by
dragging and dropping the block in the preview window:
Substep A: In the preview window, click on your block and drag it. Make sure that
you click and drag somewhere within the block, but not near the edges,
as shown in figure 17.11.
This is a good time to click the Full Size Preview checkbox in the
Template Properties section.
F IGURE 17.11: Dragging a block
Substep B: To resize a block, just drag one of the yellow dotted corners on the
right or the bottom-right corner, as in figure 17.12.
F IGURE 17.12: Resizing a block

in the preview window.
If you need to get pixel accurate, you can do this two ways. One way is to click on
the Size and Position section.

Step 10: Another way to get pixel perfect adjustments with blocks is to use some keyboard
shortcuts. Select any block then use the following keys:
up/down/left/right arrow keys : These keys move the selected block by 1 pixel.
shift + arrow keys : Move the selected block by 10 pixels.
page up/page down : Use these keys to snap the block to the top or bottom of the template.
home : Snaps the block to the top left of the template.
end : Snaps the the block to the bottom right.
Step 11: With text blocks, you can set how the block appears in the preview window and in
the form where the user will edit the text for the bulletin.

The Default Value field sets the text that appears first on the bulletin. You might
provide the user with an example of what was intended for this block.
The Default Value field is limited to 511 characters in length.
If you’re allowing the user to enter a great deal of text, such as multiple sentences,
you might select the Multi-line Field Size radio button. For short bits of text such
as titles, the One-Line option might be more appropriate.
Similarly, the size of the field that they type in is controlled by the small/medium/large
pop-down list.
To limit the amount of text that can be entered in a text block, select the Limit
Length check box and enter the maximum number of characters allowed in the
available box.
The Text Color and Text Opacity control the color and transparency of the text.
You can see the value’s effect in the preview after your adjustments. See sec-
tion 17.7.3 on page 172 for notes about picking colors.
Step 12: The font controls (figure 17.13 on the next page) affect the entire block of text. You
can use these controls to adjust the appearance of all of the text in this block.
To have the text automatically size to fill the block, chose the Size Text to Fit. If
this checkbox is used, the font size pop-down list has no effect.
To change the style, use the the style buttons.

F IGURE 17.13: Font controls
When you create a bulletin in Carousel, you have the ability to override some
font settings, such as color, bold, and italics. You can even make lists! We cover
these capabilities in section 11.2.1 on page 85, Adding Style using HTML Tags.
Step 13: The Text Alignment controls align the text and control text wrapping for the block.
F IGURE 17.14: Text Alignment

controls
Step 14: To apply a gradient to your text, use the controls in the Text Gradient (figure 17.15
on the next page) controls. The Gradient Color field controls color for the end of
the gradient. The beginning of the gradient is controlled by the Color field in the
Text properties.
You may also adjust the gradient’s opacity. Like the color, you’re only affecting the
end of the gradient. The Text properties is where to change the beginning.
Step 15: Text Outline, Text Shadow and Text Glow all operate in the ways that you would
expect. If you have doubts, try the different controls out to see there effects.
Step 16: While the controls that begin with Text modify the look of the text within the block,
the controls that start with Block control the rectangular area that surrounds the
block. You can put a gradient, shadow and outline around your text block, in
addition to adding these propertied to the text itself.

F IGURE 17.15: Text Gradient
controls
When you’ve changed the data in a field and would like to update it quickly, you
can use the “TAB” key.
A Note About Reflections
Perhaps the only control requiring explanation is the Block Reflection control,
shown in figure 17.16. It adds a fading reflection of the block and its contents below
the borders of the block.
F IGURE 17.16: The Block Reflec-

tion controls

These controls are available for any block, but require special attention in text
blocks because the reflection looks best when it touches the bottom of the text,
which usually requires playing with the Offset slider. When it’s set correctly, you’ll
see something like what is shown in figure 17.17.
F IGURE 17.17: A reflection

example.
When it is not, the reflection text will either overlap or be too far away. Sometimes,
the reflection will be so far away that you won’t see it at all. This is because the
Hight slider is set to something less than “100%”. If the reflection is far down
enough, it will be beyond the visible part of the reflection. For this reason, slide
Hight to “100%” while you’re adjusting the offset and then set it to what looks good
when you’re done.
!→ Keep in mind that if your text is auto sizing, the offset value will be different for
different text, requiring the user to go into the template and edit the value when they
create their bulletin.
F IGURE 17.18: The reflection

collides with the picture
Also, when rotating blocks, text or otherwise, the same adjustment requirements
will apply. Take a look at figure 17.18. Notice how the reflection collides ugily1
into the rotated picture. In figure 17.19 on the next page, the problem was solved
with an Offset of “72” pixels.
1 New Word: Ugily: In a way that is ugly.

F IGURE 17.19: In Block Reflec-
tion, an offset of “72” pixels was
added to take away the collision.
A Note About Picking Colors
You’ll notice that when changing colors, you may not see any difference in the
preview. This is probably because you have black selected. Changing the hue won’t
have any effect until you add sum luminance to your selection. Notice the red arrow
in figure 17.20. It points to the luminance selector. The higher the value the more
luminance.
F IGURE 17.20: Add luminance to

the color in order to see a change
when you select a new hue.
If the luminance selector is all the way down, you’ll get a completely black color,
no matter the hue.
Picture Blocks
When you create a picture block, you’ll have access to the picture block properties,
shown in figure 17.21 on the next page.
You can adjust the opacity of the picture with the Opacity slider. You can also
instruct Carousel to maintain the pictures aspect ratio. Notice the example in
figure 17.22 on the facing page. The Carousel logo on the left is in a picture
box with the Maintain aspect ratio checkbox off. The logo on the right has the
checkbox on, which means that it looks correct, even though the dimensions of the
block are much wider than the actual logo. Leave Maintain aspect ratio on when
you want your picture to remain as tall as it is wide, relative to the original picture.
When you want it to completely fill the block, turn it off.
Web Picture Addresses
If you make a web picture block, the Picture properties will give you the option to
enter an address of a picture (figure 17.23 on the next page), which defaults to a pic-
ture located on Carousel and may be changed to any address of any picture.

F IGURE 17.21: Picture block
properties
F IGURE 17.22: The logo on the

left has Maintain aspect ratio
deselected.
This is just the default value. The user of the template will most likely change the
picture address when they create their bulletin.
Changing the Blocks Depth or Z-Order
Each block is layered in a particular order on top of the background. As you create
a new block, it “goes on top” of any other block you may already have within the
template. Notice how in figure 17.24 on the following page the Carousel logo is in
front because its z-order is higher. In figure 17.25 on the next page, the Carousel
logo is in back because the z-order is lower, or another way to put it, the Carousel
logo was drawn first.
You can change the order that blocks are drawn by dragging Blocks properties,
which we demonstrate in figure 17.26 on the following page.
F IGURE 17.23: Web picture

address

F IGURE 17.24: Carousel logo has
a higher z-order
F IGURE 17.25: Carousel logo has

a lower z-order
If you want to move a block all the way forward or back, you can use the Bring to
Front or Bring to Back buttons in Block Options, shown in figure 17.27 on the
next page.
Repeating Blocks in Dynamic Bulletins
With dynamic bulletins, Carousel can repeat blocks for multiple items of data, such
as room numbers, RSS items and shows for Cablecast’s schedule.
With a block that is repeated, you may use one of four different settings that you’ll
find in the Repeat blocks pop-down list in Block Options:
None : The block is drawn where you set it. This is the default setting and is what is used
for non-dynamic bulletins. There is no special behavior here.
F IGURE 17.26: Changing the

z-order of blocks

F IGURE 17.27: Bring to Front
and Bring to Back in Block
Options properties
F IGURE 17.28: Repeat blocks

pop-down list in Block Options
properties
Header : This actually gets treated the same as the None option
Footer : A footer is drawn where it is placed, but Carousel uses the upper bounds of this
block as a “don’t go past here” marker for blocks that repeat.
Repeat : This setting is used for the items that get repeated in the bulletin.
Dynamic bulletins have templates that cannot be saved. When you create one of
these bulletins, you modify the template for that bulletin only. Therefore, the
settings in the Repeat blocks pop-down list are not applicable to any templates
that you make in the Media: Templates menu.
17.8 Media Tags

Media tags are used for all of the media for the entire Carousel system. That is, they
are not specific to any given zone.
Simply click the Add button to add a new tag or delete tags that no longer make
sense. Multiple tags may be added by separating them with a comma, rather than
adding them one at a time.
17.8 Media Tags 175

F IGURE 17.29: The Media Tags
List
17.9 Creating a Seamless Background for a Multi-Zoned Channel
When you have a channel in Carousel that uses multiple zones, sometimes it looks
nice when the backgrounds used for those zones have edges that blend into each
other, making a seamless background. You can do this manually in your favorite
paint program, but Carousel has a way to do it for you automatically.
Carousel takes a background and stretches it to fill a channel. Then it cuts the
image apart, using the edges and position of each zone that is used in that channel.
Finally, it saves that image as a background in that zone, prepending the word
‘(Seamless)’.

configuration: Chan-
nels: <channel name>:
Add Seamless Channel
Background To access this feature, go to the configuration: Channels: <channel name>: Add
Seamless Channel Background form, shown in figure 17.30.
F IGURE 17.30: The Add Seamless

Background form.
Step 1: Click the Choose File button to select the background file that you want to upload.
Remember, this file is going to be stretched to fill the current channel that you
have selected. It’s best if the file matches the channels total resolution.
Step 2: Click the Upload button and your background will be processed.
F IGURE 17.31: Splitting a

background
Step 3: You’ll see a form like the one in figure 17.31.

Step 4: A background of the name listed in the What would you like to name this back-
ground? field will be created for each of the zones that are checked below the To
which zones would you save this background? label.
Step 5: You can see a preview of the backgrounds that will be created to the right.
Step 6: You may change the name of the background to anything that you like.
17.9 Creating a Seamless Background for a Multi-Zoned Channel 177

Step 7: If you uncheck any of the zones in the list, the background will not be created for
that zone.
When creating a channel that uses seamless backgrounds, very often you’ll only
use backgrounds that are seamless. You won’t want users putting their own
backgrounds in any of their messages and you won’t want any of the generic
backgrounds that come with Carousel in any of the zones that are in use for
those channels.
17.10 Adding Media Packages

Media packages are zip files created by Carousel that contain any combination of
templates, backgrounds, pictures, sounds, videos and Carousel bulletins.
For information on creating media packages, see section 17.11, Creating Media
Packages.
When you upload Carousel bulletins, the original schedule is retained.
F IGURE 17.32: Uploading Media

Packages
After a successful upload, Carousel gives you a confirmation, noting the items that
it found. Check the zones that you would like the items copied to and Click Save to
import them.
17.11 Creating Media Packages

The zip files that are uploaded into Carousel follow a special file structure to inform
Carousel what type of media they are (backgrounds, templates, pictures, etc.).
Complete the following steps to create a media package.
Step 1: Create a folder called “Media Package”.
Step 2: Within the Media Package folder create a folder entitled “Media”
Step 3: Within the Media folder create a folder entitled with the type of media that it
contains (i.e. “Backgrounds”). The following “keywords” may be used:
• Backgrounds
• Pictures
• Sounds
• Templates
• Videos

For information on acceptable file formats see section 17.2 on page 156.
You can create multiple folders inside the “Media” folder to upload several
different types of media at once.
Step 4: Zip the Media Package folder.

Media: Zone Step 5: From the Carousel web interface, head into the Media: Zone tab: Add Media
tab: Add Media Package.
Package
Step 6: Browse. . . to the Media Package zip file and Upload.
Step 7: Choose if you’d like these files copied to any other zones and choose Save.
Your uploaded media is now in the system and able to be used for future bulletin
creation.
17.11 Creating Media Packages 179

18 Extras
Carousel includes alternate output capabilities that are available from the Main
Menu by clicking on Extras.
F IGURE 18.1: The Extras Form
18.1 Screensaver
Carousel Pro and Carousel Enterprise include a screensaver option. This feature
will run a specified channel’s bulletins as a bouncing display when installed on
your desktop computer. Video, Flash, Crawls, and audio are not included in the
screensaver presentation.
The Windows and Macintosh hyperlinks provide the installers for Apple’s Mac
OS X and Microsoft’s Windows operating systems.
Download these installers and run them on the computers that you desire. Go to
the operating system’s screen saver and select Carousel Screensaver. From within
the settings menu enter the URL of the server as well as the Channel you’d like to
display.
If you’re planning on deploying the screensaver to a large number of systems, a

generalized config file may be created to install on each system. Create a file named
CarouselScreenSaver.cfg and save it in the same directory as the CarouselScreen-
Saver.scr file. This is usually the System32 or SYSWOW64 folder, depending on
your version of Windows. The config file only needs the following two lines within
it:
Channel = <ChannelID>
URL = <Server IP or Name>
181
18.2 RSS Output
All Carousel systems include the ability to export their bulletins as an RSS feed.
Clicking on the link will open the feed in your web browser. Copy the link into any
software that can consume RSS.
This is a great way to integrate Carousel into other software, including other
web applications.
18.3 Public Web Interface

Carousel can display a zone on a publicly available web link, which is displayed
here. Simply click on this link to see this web interface. You may also link to it
from another website.
A bit of web master speak here: IFrames come in in handy here. Just plunk this
link into an IFrame inside your website and you’re done! Your web visitors can
see the Carousel bulletins and still navigate your site.
F IGURE 18.2: The Public Website
Be sure to visit section 8.1.2 on page 72 to learn how to enable the public website
output for the desired zones.
182 18 Extras
V. Appendix
“I have spent my life learning incredible amounts

of disparate, disconnected, obscure, useless
pieces of knowledge, and they have turned out
to be, almost all of them, extremely useful.”
—Chandler Burr
183
184
Appendix A Installer’s Checklist
If you are installing Carousel for your self or as a paid systems integrator, it will
be helpful to use this chapter as a starting point for a checklist. When you turn
the system over to the users and administrators of Carousel, you will want to be
sure everything is working as expected and that they feel like they are ready to
go!
A.1 Carousel Checklist

A.1.1 Preperation
Do you have everything that was ordered?
Do you have all of the Carousel equipment from Tightrope?
Do you have all of the required license keys? (Usually only needed for
software only installations, such as Enterprise installs.)
Do you have all of the required mounting hardware for Carousel, includ-
ing equipment rack accessories, behind-the-monitor mounting brackets,
etc?
Do you know where all of the monitors are going?
Do you know which monitors are going where and how they will be oriented?
Do you know how your are getting video/audio to each display and do you
have all of the required equipment for that?
Do you have everything that you need from IT?
A static IP address for your Solo/Server
Any required open ports to or from the internet. See FrontDoor Manual.
Any domain permissions, policies or virus software that needs to be

installed on the players or server.
Do you know the channel names for each of their channels and where each
channel is being loaded?
Did they purchase andy Tightrope Creative Channels (store.trms.com)?
Have they decided which ones they are?
Have you downloaded them?
185
A.1.2 Setup
All Carousel equipment is properly mounted, provided with power and KVM
access where required.
All monitors are safely mounted.
All video distribution hardware is properly connected to the players and their
monitors.
Any television control hardware that may be required has been installed.
(serial cables, IR blocks, etc)
Servers have been configured to operate on the network.
They have been joined to the domain, if required
The Carousel server has a static IP address.
Any Carousel Players have access to the Carousel Server. See port
information in FrontDoor Manual.
Carousel has access to the outside internet, if required. See port infor-
mation in FrontDoor Manual.
Carousel’s Server software is configured correctly.
It has the latest version.
It is configured with the correct licensing, including any plug-ins and

all required channel licensing.
All purchased Tightrope Creative Channels have been added and in-
stalled. See the documentation that came with the Creative Channel.
All purchased channels have been added to Carousel and named cor-
rectly.
All Carousel Players have been configured correctly.
All Players are on the latest version.
All Players are pointing to the correct channel on the Carousel Server.
(chapter 7 on page 53, Configuring Players)
Any TV Input devices are installed and configured correctly in the

Carousel Display Engine. (section 7.2.4 on page 57, Live Video Input)
All Players have their resolution and screen aspect ratio set correctly
and optimized for the display that is plugged into it. (section 7.2.3 on
page 56, Display Settings)
A.1.3 Verify Display Quality and Content
A basic zone setup has been created for each channel or Tightrope Creative
Channels have been loaded on to each channel.
186 Appendix A Installer’s Checklist

All channels are running content and you can see them on each monitor.
Each monitor is precisely showing the Carousel output, with no black borders
on any side of any monitor.
The picture settings are adjusted correctly and the monitors look attractive.
Each player is showing the correct bulletins.
A.1.4 Verify Carousel Communication
You are able to access Carousel from all areas of the facility where access is
expected.
Each player is showing the correct bulletins.
You are able to create a bulletin on a zone on each channel and verify that it
appears.
You are able to delete a bulletin on a zone on each channel and verify that it
disappears.
You are able to create full-screen alert bulletins for each channel that has a
full screen alert zone assigned to it.
Full screen alert zones appear in a timely fashion (under 10 seconds) on each
channel.
Full screen alert zones disappear, in a timely fashion, when you disable them,
for each channel.
A.1.5 Clean Up Testing
You delete any test bulletins that you made.

If they did not purchase Tightrope Creative channels or you otherwise created
fake zones and/or channels to test the system:
Only delete fake information. If there is customer supplied information

on these systems, skip the following steps, as required.
You removed all of the zones off of the system.
You removed any media that you uploaded into the system
You deleted any channels in Carousel. (Only within Carousel. Do not

remove any licenses from FrontDoor.)
The server and players do not have any USB keys, keyboards or mice that
were used for software updates and installation still attached to them.
The server and player do not have any left over icons, zip files or installers on
their desktops that were a part of the any software updates or configuration.
A.1 Carousel Checklist 187

A.1.6 Communicate With the Customer
The customer knows which channels are displaying on which monitors.
The customer knows the address of the server and of the players, if the players
do not have dynamic addresses.
The customer knows the user name and password of the system.
The customer is properly registered with Tightrope Media Systems for support
and warranty purposes.
The customer has a copy of the Carousel Manual and any other supplied
documentation
The customer knows when training is scheduled.
The customer is satisfied with the installation and has no further questions.
188 Appendix A Installer’s Checklist

Appendix B Web Page Snapshots
Carousel’s Web Page Snapshot feature allows you to capture a portion of a web
page and display it inside a Web Picture block within a bulletin. Here’s how it
works:
Step 1: Select a new bulletin that has a “Web Picture” block in it1 .
Step 2: Click “Select webpage” next to the Web Picture block (figure B.1).
F IGURE B.1: Selecting a template

with a Web Picture block
Step 3: Enter the URL of a web site you’d like to capture (figure B.2). If you need to delay
the snapshot by a few seconds to allow time for dynamic content to load, enter the
number of seconds in the available box.
F IGURE B.2: Enter the URL of
the page you’d like to include in the
bulletin, and enter a delay if needed
Step 4: Crop the page as needed (figure B.3 on the next page).
Step 5: Click the finish button at the bottom and you are done! See figure B.4 on the
following page for the final output.
The web snapshot will update in Carousel every 15 minutes, so the data on that
page will always be up to date.
Due to their complexity, Tightrope Media Systems cannot guarantee that Web
Page Snapshots will work behind a proxy server.
1 For more information on Web Pictures, see section 17.7.2 on page 162.
189
F IGURE B.3: Crop the page as
needed
F IGURE B.4: The final result
190 Appendix B Web Page Snapshots

Potential uses:
• Grab a snapshot of a stock chart from a financial web site.
• Display manufacturing output data from an intranet report page.
• Highlight sales forcasting information from your company sales site.
191
192 Appendix B Web Page Snapshots
Appendix C Limited Template Editor
If you are using an older web browser, such as Internet Explorer Version 6, Carousel
will automatically provide you with the older-style template editor. This template
editor is much more limiting and cumbersome to use, so we do recommend using a
more modern web browser, if that is possible.
What follows is a walkthrough of the classic template editor in Carousel.
F IGURE C.1: The Template Editor

Form
Step 1: The first order of business will be to name the template and give it a description.
The description helps the user determine the original purpose of the template.
Step 2: Next, you select the default background for this template in the Background pop-
down list. A user may change this at creation time, but they will see this selection
first.
193
F IGURE C.2: Naming a Template
We’ll skip over the Select Block and Block Name fields for now. Before we can
use these fields, we need to add a block.
Step 3: In the Add a Block pop-down, select the type of block that you would like to create
and click the Add button.
Step 4: Once you create a block, it will be the selected block, shown in the Select Block
field. Rename this field to something descriptive, like “Title” or “Message Body”
then click the Update button.
Step 5: If you’ve added a text item, you will notice a pair of Field Style pop-down lists.
The first list denotes the style of the entry form that the user will use to enter text.
An edit field is a single line of text while a text area is a multiple line text box.
Choose a size that matches the purpose of the block.
The second pop-down next to the Field Style label is used to set the size of the field.
This does not limit the user from entering more or less text into the field, it only
acts to suggest the amount of text by limiting expanding viewable area of text. You
can see an example of this in figure C.3.
When you are finished selecting the block’s text field size, click the Update button
to save your changes.
F IGURE C.3: In this example,

you can see that the Title field was
set to EditField and Small. The
Body field was set to TextArea and
Large.
Step 6: If you’ve added a video, picture or web picture block, then you’ll see a selection
section appear below the preview window. This is where you can select the default
file or location (in the case of web pictures) that will be selected when the user first
loads this template.
For picture blocks, you’ll also find the Opacity pop-down, which defaults to 100%.
194 Appendix C Limited Template Editor

Adjust this as desired.
Step 7: For all blocks, the Position and Size tools, figure C.4. You may use the arrow icons
to position and size the block.
F IGURE C.4: The Position and

Size Tools
The Block Top and Block Left fields show the current position of the block, as
seen from the upper left corner of the block. The Block Width and Block Height
fields are self explanatory. Changing them will change the dimensions of the block,
holding the upper left corner in its place while the lower right corner moves to
resize to the new settings.
When you use the Size arrow icons Carousel will resize from the lower right.
That means that to heighten a block, you actually need to select the down arrow. To
widen it, click the left arrow.
This is probably the most important tip of the Carousel manual: When you are
trying to resize or position a text or picture block, turn on the outline of the
block, even if you do not want an outline in the final template. This will show
you the outer bounds of the block and save you from endless hours of guessing.
Of course, when you’re finished, you may turn the outline off if it is not a part of
the design.
Step 8: For text blocks, an entire section devoted to the style of the text will appear. At the
top, you will see a Default Text box. This will initially be set to the name of the
block, but you may change it to a more suitable entry.
F IGURE C.5: Text Editing

Properties
Everything else in this area of the form is devoted to the style of the text and is orga-
nized in rows by Font, Syle/Alighment, Sizing, Shadow and Outline. Everything
should be pretty straight forward, with a couple of notable features.
First, Carousel can optionally size a text block based on the block’s size and the
amount of text. When Auto Size is selected, Carousel ignores the value in the
Sizing pop-down list and resizes the text to fill the block.
195
Second, if you do not check the Wrap Text checkbox, Carousel will allow text to
run off of the side of a block, unless you have Auto Size selected. In that case, your
text will get very small very quickly. Make sure that the field that you are defining
is going only have text that will fit.
Step 9: The last section of the Template Editor form is devoted to the backdrop and outline.
As we mentioned before, it is useful to turn either one of these on while you are
getting the block’s size and position nailed down. In that role, they can act as visual
placement guides.
F IGURE C.6: Editing the Back-

drop and Outline
C.1 The Preview Window

As you make changes to your template, the preview window will update automati-
cally. You can force an update by clicking on the refresh icon . If you click on a
block within the preview picture, Carousel will select that block and you can begin
editing its properties.
F IGURE C.7: Template Editor’s

Preview Window
If you would like see a larger example of your template, click on the Full Screen
Preview icon .
196 Appendix C Limited Template Editor

Appendix D Custom Time Format Chart
Format Pattern Description Example

d The day of the month. Single-digit days will not have a leading zero. 7
dd The day of the month. Single-digit days will have a leading zero. 07
ddd The abbreviated name of the day of the week: Sun, Mon, Tue, Wed, Thu, Fri, Thu
and Sat.
dddd The full name of the day of the week: Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday
Thursday, Friday and Saturday.
M The numeric month. Single-digit months will not have a leading zero. 8
MM The numeric month. Single-digit months will have a leading zero. 08
MMM The abbreviated name of the month: Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Aug
Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec.
MMMM The full name of the month: January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August
August, September, October, November, December.
y The year without the century. If the year without the century is less than 10, 0
the year is displayed with no leading zero.
yy The year without the century. If the year without the century is less than 10, 00
the year is displayed with a leading zero.
yyyy The year in four digits, including the century. 2000
h The hour in a 12-hour clock. Single-digit hours will not have a leading zero. 4
hh The hour in a 12-hour clock. Single-digit hours will have a leading zero. 04
H The hour in a 24-hour clock. Single-digit hours will not have a leading zero. 16
HH The hour in a 24-hour clock. Single-digit hours will have a leading zero. 16
m The minute. Single-digit minutes will not have a leading zero. 32
mm The minute. Single-digit minutes will have a leading zero. 32
s The second. Single-digit seconds will not have a leading zero. 32
ss The second. Single-digit seconds will have a leading zero. 32
t The first character in the AM/PM. P
tt The AM/PM designator. PM
z The time zone offset (+ or - followed by the hour only). Single-digit hours -8
will not have a leading zero. For example, Pacific Standard Time is -8.
zz The time zone offset (+ or - followed by the hour only). Single-digit hours -08
will have a leading zero. For example, Pacific Standard Time is -08.
zzz The full time zone offset (+ or - followed by the hour and minutes). Single- -08:00
digit hours and minutes will have leading zeros. For example, Pacific Stan-
dard Time is -08:00.
197
D.1 Examples
MMMM dd, yyyy : September 15, 2002
M/d/yy : 9/15/2002 (or for the 5th, 9/5/2002)
ddd MMMM dd, yyyy: h:mm:ss tt : Sun. September 15, 2005: 5:27:13 PM
198 Appendix D Custom Time Format Chart

Appendix E PowerPoint: How To Import Slides
As of version 6 of Carousel, directly importing Microsoft PowerPoint presentations

is no longer possible. This is because Microsoft has eliminated the features that
Carousel depended on for importing and playing slides.
New Bulletin: Upload: The good news is that we’ve added features to the New Bulletin: Upload: Upload
Upload a Bulletin Package a Bulletin Package menu that makes importing JPEG versions of your slides a
breeze.
PowerPoint transitions and videos will not work with the new method of import-
ing presentations.
E.1 Saving PowerPoint Presentations As JPEG or PNG files

The key to importing a PowerPoint presentation is to export all of the slides as
JPEG or PNG images. Accomplishing this is very simple:
Step 1: In PowerPoint, choose the Save As. . . option from the File menu or the Office
icon.
If you click on the arrow to open the sub-menu, you’ll have to pick the Other
Formats option. Otherwise, just click on the Save As option.
Step 2: Choose either “JPEG File Interchange Format” or “PNG Portable Network
Graphics Format”, as we do in figure E.1.
F IGURE E.1: Saving a presenta-

tion as a list of PNG files
Step 3: The dialog box in figure E.2 on the following page will appear. Choose the Every
Slide option to export every slide of your presentation.
If you want only a sub-set of slides, delete the excluded slides and save. You
can always undo this action when you’re done exporting the slides.
199
F IGURE E.2: Have it save every
slide
E.2 Making the Zip File

Step 4: Find the folder that was created, which has the name of the presentation and contains
all of the slides.
F IGURE E.3: Make the folder into
a ZIP file
Step 5: Right-click on the folder and choose Send To -> Compressed (zipped) Folder.
(figure E.3) This will be the file that Carousel will import.
E.3 Importing the Slides Into Carousel

New Bulletin: Step 6: In Carousel, go to New Bulletin: Uploaded: Upload a Bulletin Package
Uploaded: Up-
Step 7: Choose the zip file that you created in step 5.
load a Bulletin
Package Step 8: Click the upload button. (figure E.4)
F IGURE E.4: Importing a zip file

as a bulletin package
Step 9: Carousel will confirm that your bulletins were processed, as you can see in figure E.5
on the facing page. It’s a great idea to use the Save To Group feature, which clumps
all of your slides into one group, ordered by slide number.
200 Appendix E PowerPoint: How To Import Slides

F IGURE E.5: Upload Bulletin
Package Confirmation form. Save
To Group is a nice way to organize
your PowerPoint presentation
within Carousel
If you chose the Save option instead, your slides will be placed individually and in
order, but will be harder to delete and otherwise manage the presentation.
F IGURE E.6: The presentation

imported as a group
E.3 Importing the Slides Into Carousel 201

202 Appendix E PowerPoint: How To Import Slides
Appendix F Live TV Input (TVI) Devices
This appendix describes how to configure and add (if needed) supported TVI input
devices to a Carousel Player.
F.1 TVOne Hardware

Here we go over how to add and configure an external TVOne T1-C2-750 scaler
box (figure F.1) to a Carousel Player.
F IGURE F.1: The TVOne

hardware
The T1-C2-750 is an external scaler that composites (picture in picture or PIP)

the Carousel output with other HD video sources. These instructions assume you
are familiar setting up the T1-C2-750 unit, for more information go to the TVOne
website at http://www.TVOne.com. While Carousel will only turn on, turn off, and
position the PIP window it assumes that other settings have been pre-configured in
the TVOne.
Tightrope can not help you configure the TVOne unit, if you do not know how
to use TVOne products please contact TVOne tech support.
F.1.1 Steps to setup TVOne T1-C2-750
Step 1: Connect Carousel into DVI-I 1

Step 2: Connect your HD video source into DVI-I 2
Step 3: Connect the HD/PC SCALED OUT to your monitor or distibution equipment
Step 4: Connect the RS232 port to the serial port of the Carousel unit
Step 5: On the TVOne using the onscreen menus or the C2 Control Panel software, cofig-
ure the following...
Step 6: Configure the Output resolution in the Output tab is the same resolution as the
Carousel unit’s output resolution
Step 7: Configure Window A in the Windows tab to Input Source DVI-I 1 aka the
Carousel input
Step 8: Configure Window B in the Windows tab to Input Source DVI-I 2 aka the HD
video source
Step 9: Launch the Carousel Display Engine shortcut on the desktop and click the Con-
figure button.
203
Step 10: In the configuration window, look for the Live Video Input: Device section and
select the TVOne T1-C2-750 on the appropriate COM port
Remember: Carousel only sets to on/off state and position of the PIP window.
To make setup easier, you can turn on the PIP window and position it manually
to verify that both sources are working correctly then let Carousel fine tune the
positioning. Furthermore, any other settings/processing you manually configure
stay active during Carousel control.
F.2 AVerMedia Hardware

Here we go over how to configure the internal AVerMedia capture card which is an
option in the 300-series models of Carousel hardware. The AVerMedia capture card
is capable of taking in Composite, Component, S-Video, and HDMI signals.
F.2.1 Steps to setup AVerMedia in Carousel
Step 1: Connect your video source to the AVerMedia card in the Carousel machine using
the included breakout cable plugged into the port labeled AV IN or by plugging
HDMI directly into the port labeled HDMI.
Step 2: Next, launch the Carousel Display Engine shortcut on the desktop and click the
Configure button.
select the AVerMedia device.
F IGURE F.2: Configuring the

Display Engine
At this point, your hardware and software are now configured. See section 15.12 on
page 137 for information on creating Live Video bulletins using the TVI box.
F.3 Contemporary Research and AVerMedia Hardware

This appendix describes how to configure the Contemporary Research 232-ATSC+
along with the internal AVerMedia capture card which is an option in the 300-series
models of Carousel hardware. The 232-ATSC+ allows the tuning of channels via a
RS-232 connection, and must be connected to the AVerMedia card via component
cables.
You MUST connect the 232-ATSC+ to the internal AVerMedia card via compo-
nent a connection, all other connections will not work.
204 Appendix F Live TV Input (TVI) Devices

F.3.1 Steps to setup 232-ATSC+ with AVerMedia in Carousel
Step 1: Connect power and a signal wire (ATSC or Cable) to the Contemporary Research
232-ATSC+.
Step 2: Use a female to female null modem RS-232 cable to connect the Carousel hardware
to the 232-ATSC+.
Step 3: Connect your 232-ATSC+ to the AVerMedia breakout cable using a component
cable.
Step 4: Next, launch the Carousel Display Engine shortcut on the desktop and click the
Configure button.
select the Contemporary Research on Port 1 device as you see in figure F.2 on
the preceding page
At this point, your hardware and software are now configured. See section 15.12 on
page 137 for information on creating Live Video bulletins using the TVI box.
F.3 Contemporary Research and AVerMedia Hardware 205

ïż£
206 Appendix F Live TV Input (TVI) Devices

Appendix G Common Alert Protocol (CAP)
Carousel 6.3 and up support the Common Alert Protocol (CAP). It provides an
XML interface for creating bulletins. Using this feature, it is possible to integrate
external systems, such as alarm systems, using simple programs developed in the
field.
This chapter is not a primer on XML or programming. It is intended for those

that are already somewhat familiar with such technology and are seeking to
integrate Carousel into data systems.
CAP is implemented by sending a properly formed XML-based command to the

Carousel server, which will reply with a JSON hash with any errors and bulletins
affected.
G.1 Communications
Communication between CAP applications and Carousel is initiated with a HTTP
POST containing raw XML targeted to:
<server>/Carousel/Public/cap.aspx?token=<token>&tags=tag1,tag2
The Carousel server will listen for a CAPPOST command to be sent to this address.
Upon receiving a well-formed command, the server will process it and return a
JSON hash response containing any errors and bulletins affected. If you do a GET
on the URL above, you can see a form to paste XML into for testing.
The token variable in the above address is the security token for authentication.
This is stored in the TRMS\Web\Carousel\web.config file under the CAPToken
key, and is empty by default which disables CAP. Enter a string for CAPToken
in the web.config to enable CAP, and use this value as your token variable when
communicating with CAP in Carousel. The tags variable determines what Carousel
bulletin tags are affected by the incoming CAPPOST command.
G.2 Workflow of CAP

First, we find all bulletins on any zone that are tagged with any tag specified in the
query string. Next, we look for blocks in the bulletins that have names that match
tags in the CAP XML. Specifically, anything under the info tag inside alert will get
mapped to a block (i.e. category, severity, etc.). The eventCode tag contents get
interpreted as a separate name -> value mappings (i.e. alertCategory -> Emergency
Alert). Each value in the mapping gets inserted into a text block’s text or web
picture block’s URL and then the bulletin gets re-rendered. We then activate the
bulletin by setting all of the days in the schedule to be on.
If the /alert/info/event or /alert/info/description values are“CLEAR”, we will deacti-
vate the bulletin.
207
In Carousel 6.3 we did this by setting all the days of the week to off.
In Carousel 6.4 and up we set the status of the bulletin to be disabled (represented
by a grey status dot).
Care should be taken with bulletins that are intended to be used for CAP so that
they are tagged properly. This means when creating a new bulletin for use in CAP
all of the days of the week on the schedule screen should be unchecked. Unless you
have different CAP bulletins for different days of the week. In this case you would
want to immediately move your new CAP bulletin into the Stale Bulletins area after
creation.
See below for an example of CAPPOST command XML data.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<alert xmlns="urn:oasis:names:tc:emergency:cap:1.1">
<identifier>255</identifier>
<sender></sender>
<sent>2011-07-05T17:46:09+00:00</sent>
<status>Actual</status>
<msgType>Alert</msgType>
<scope>Public</scope>
<info>
<category>Safety</category>
<event>Important Alert from UTEP</event>
<urgency>Unknown</urgency>
<severity>Unknown</severity>
<certainty>Unknown</certainty>
<audience>127.0.0.1</audience>
<eventCode>
<valueName>alertCategory</valueName>
<value>Emergency Alert</value>
</eventCode>
<headline>Important Alert from RSAN</headline>
<description>Test Test Test Test</description>
</info>
</alert>
208 Appendix G Common Alert Protocol (CAP)

ïż£
G.2 Workflow of CAP 209

210 Appendix G Common Alert Protocol (CAP)
Appendix H Remote Data Adaptor
Carousel Pro and Carousel Enterprise include a special feature called the Remote
Data Adaptor (RDA). It provides an XML interface for creating bulletins. Using this
feature, it is possible to integrate external systems, such as databases and building
systems, using simple programs developed in the field.
This chapter is not a primer on XML, XSD, database integration, or program-

ming. It is intended for those that are already somewhat familiar with such
technology and are seeking to integrate Carousel into data systems.
RDA is implemented by sending a properly formed XML-based command to the

Carousel server, which will reply with an XML-based response. XML commands
are validated against the CarouselRemoteCommand schema, which is illustrated
later on in section H.5 on page 215.
H.1 Communications
Communication between other applications and Carousel is initiated on a TCP/IP
socket connection using port 56906. The Carousel server will listen on this port
for a CarouselCommand. Upon receiving a well-formed command, the server will
process it and return a CarouselResponse.
Using the CarouselCommand, your application will have the tools to dynamically
create bulletins and crawls. Using the information that Carousel returns in Carousel-
Response, you also have the ability to manage those bulletins.
211
F IGURE H.1: An application or script sits between your data and
Carousel. It communicates on TCP port 56906 and sends Carousel a
CarouselCommand XML data structure. Carousel returns a Carousel-
Response, which is a status or error.
H.2 Workflow of RDA

Generally, applications that interact with Carousel through RDA will follow a
standard workflow. Bulletins and crawls are created and controlled by the RDA
using a valid FrontDoor user account, just as if you were creating and controlling
bulletins through Carousel’s web interface. By establishing a user account and
templates specifically for RDA, you can construct remarkably powerful applications
with very little hassle.
A CarouselCommand consists of one of many unique commands. If your application
wishes to create a bulletin on Carousel, it would first construct a CreatePage
command, specifying the template it wants to use and the text it wants to place
within the template. The application would then send the command to Carousel,
and assuming success, Carousel responds in kind with a success message with a
unique identifier for the new bulletin.
This Global Unique Identifer (GUID) is used so your application can later send a
command that references that specific bulletin, either to delete it, deactivate it, or
otherwise change its status.
Example: Someone passes through a security gate. An application looks up the person in
the company’s database then sends a CarouselCommand to create a new bulletin,
using a special template that welcomes the person by name. Fifteen seconds later,
212 Appendix H Remote Data Adaptor

the application sends a delete command that includes the GUID, so that Carousel
knows to delete that bulletin.
Example: A fire alarm is tripped and a special application interacts with Carousel to inform
people of the appropriate exit plan. First, the application sends a deactivate com-
mand, which deactivates all current alert bulletins on the target zones. Then it
creates a series of alert bulletins on those same zones using the CreateAlertPage
command. Each zone, unique to specific parts of the building, then displays 4 or 5
bulletins that give relevant exit information, based on the alarm that was triggered
and the location of the display. When the alarm is canceled, the application sends
another deactivate command.
As you read through the rest of this chapter, you will get an idea of how Carousel’s
CarouselCommand structure and the information contained in the CarouselResponse
help create a powerful tool for integrating Carousel with external systems.
H.3 Elements of CarouselCommand

The following commands are available in the CarouselCommand data structure:
CreatePage : Creates a bulletin from a template.
CreateCrawl : Creates a crawl bulletin.
ChangePageStatus : Get the status of bulletins that you create with your application.
DeletePage : Changes a bulletin’s status.
ArchivePage : Moves a bulletin to the users “saved” folder.
SetPageStatus : Sets the status of a particular page. Current=1, Queued=2, Hold=4, Saved=8,
Stale=16.
DeleteAllUserPages : Deletes all of a user’s bulletins.
DeactivateAllAlertPages : Deactivates all alert bulletins on a specified zone.
UpdatePage : Updates a current bulletin.
GetPlayerStatus : Returns an array of status messages for all of the players on your Carousel system.
GetBulletinList : Returns an array of bulletins that are in a zone.
GetTemplateList : Returns an array of templates that are in a zone.
GetZoneList : Returns an array of zones that a user has access to.
GetVideoList : Returns a list of video elements that contain a name, value (GUID), and URLs for a
preview image.
GetPictureList : Returns a list of picture elements that contain a name, value (GUID), and URLs for
a preview image.
When creating an application that sends data to Carousel, you will include some or
all of the following information in your CarouselCommand:
Username : This is the username that was created in FrontDoor that the application will use to
authenticate. Bulletins created via RDA will be owned by this user. Generally,
this will be an account used exclusively by the RDA plug-in.
H.3 Elements of CarouselCommand 213

Password : This is the password associated with the above username that the application will
use to authenticate.
Think twice before using a “real-life” user account with RDA. By using a
new account specifically for RDA, you won’t run the risk of programmati-
cally deleting someone else’s bulletins!
GUID : This is a bulletin’s unique identifier. When you create a page using RDA, Carousel
will return a success code that includes this GUID. Your application should
save this information so that it can later manipulate it through RDA.
SelectBulletinTags : Instead of referring to bulletins via their GUIDs, you can select bulletins to update
using Bulletin Tags. An example of this is shown in section H.5.2 on page 217.
ZoneSet : A list of Carousel zones on which the bulletin you are creating is to be displayed.
Inside of a ZoneSet you can can refer to zones by their ZoneID, their Zo-
neName, or by specifying a ZoneTag (all zones with that ZoneTag will be
used).
Template Name : This is the name of the template Carousel will use to render the bulletin.
Blocks : This is a list of the blocks (referenced by name) within the above specified template.
Each block has a value that will be used to render the text for that block.
To determine the ZoneID, visit the Main Menu : Extras page for the Zone
of interest. In the links for the RSS feeds and Public site, you should see a
“ZoneID=X” parameter. The “X” is your Zone ID.
Additionally, the Blocks command noted above now also returns a “type” field,
along with the original “value”. You can specify the block type when updating a
bulletin, but this is not required. (It will keep the block type it is currently using.)
The Block types are:
TRMSTextBlock : The specified value will be the text of the block.
TRMSWebPictureBlock : The value specifies a URL for an image.
TRMSPictureBlock : The value specifies a GUID for an image (see GetPictureList).
TRMSVideoBlock : The specified value will be a GUID for a video media item (see GetVideoList).
TRMSVideoURL : The value specifies a URL for a live stream video bulletin.
TRMSRSSURL : The value specifies a URL for the feed in an RSS bulletin or crawl.
There are several other parameters to each of the CarouselCommands. For more
details, see section H.5.2 on the next page, Command Examples.
H.4 Elements of CarouselResponse

After sending a CarouselCommand, a response will be generated indicating the
result of the command. Common response data includes:
Result : Either “Success” or “Error” depending on whether the associated command has
successfully executed.
Description : A short message describing what happened as a result of the command. If the result
was an error, the message will state what went wrong.

GUID : If bulletins were created, there will be a GUID listed for each bulletin.
PlayerStatusList : If you set a GetPlayerStatus command, this will contain a list of player statuses for
all of the players in your Carousel system.
For examples, see section H.5.3 on page 219.
H.5 Schema and Examples

This section contains the full CarouselRemoteCommand XSD, plus an example of
each command.
H.5.1 CarouselRemoteCommand XSD
The XSD file for RDA can be found living in the same directory as the Carousel
Service. Typically, this will be:
“D:\TRMS\Services\Carousel\CarouselRemoteCommand.xsd”.
H.5.2 Command Examples
In this section, we’ll demonstrate RDA’s power through some examples.
CreatePage
Here’s a CreatePage command, filled with descriptive comments

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<CarouselCommand xmlns="http://www.trms.com/CarouselRemoteCommand">
<CreatePage>

<UserName>John</UserName>
<Password>trms</Password>


<ZoneSet>
<ZoneID>1</ZoneID>
</ZoneSet>


<AlwaysOn>false</AlwaysOn>


<DateTimeOn>2005-10-26T00:00:00</DateTimeOn>


<DateTimeOff>2005-10-29T23:59:59</DateTimeOff>


<CycleTimeOn>08:00:00</CycleTimeOn>


<CycleTimeOff>17:00:00</CycleTimeOff>
H.5 Schema and Examples 215


<DisplayDuration>30</DisplayDuration>


<Weekdays>127</Weekdays>


<WebEnabled>true</WebEnabled>


<Description>This is a sample page that we created
via the remote command system.</Description>


<PageType>Standard</PageType>


<PageTemplate>
<TemplateName>Title Body</TemplateName>

<Block Name="Title" Value="Hello" />

<Block Name="Body" Value="World!" />
</PageTemplate>
</CreatePage>
</CarouselCommand>
CreatePage: Same bulletin on multiple zones with ZoneTagging
Here’s a CreatePage command that will create the same bulletin on several zones
using the ZoneSet element:
<CreatePage>

<ZoneSet>
<ZoneTag>EastCampus</ZoneTag>
<ZoneID>4</ZoneID>
<ZoneID>5</ZoneID>
<ZoneTag>Libraries</ZoneTag>
<ZoneName>Classroom320</ZoneName>
<ZoneID>4</ZoneID>
<ZoneName>MiddlebrookHall</ZoneName>
</ZoneSet>
<AlwaysOn>true</AlwaysOn>
<PageType>Standard</PageType>

<PageTemplate>
<TemplateName>Title Body</TemplateName>
<Block Name="Title" Value="Hello" />
<Block Name="Body" Value="World!" />
</PageTemplate>
</CreatePage>
</CarouselCommand>
UpdatePage: Updating existing Bulletins with SelectBulletinTags

<UpdatePage>
<SelectBulletinTags>
<Tag>DailyAnnouncement</Tag>
</SelectBulletinTags>
<Block Name="Title" Value="TodayâĂŹs announcement" />
<ExclusiveAlertOn>true</ExclusiveAlertOn>
</UpdatePage>
</CarouselCommand>
CreateCrawl
Here’s a sample CreateCrawl command:

<CreateCrawl>
<CrawlText>This is the text I’d like to see
at the bottom of the screen.</CrawlText>
<ZoneSet>
<ZoneID>3</ZoneID>
</ZoneSet>
<AlwaysOn>false</AlwaysOn>
<DateTimeOn>2005-10-26T00:00:00</DateTimeOn>
<DateTimeOff>2005-10-29T23:59:59</DateTimeOff>
<Weekdays>127</Weekdays>
<WebEnabled>true</WebEnabled>
</CreateCrawl>
</CarouselCommand>
ChangePageStatus
Here’s how to change a bulletin’s status using the ChangePageStatus command:



<ChangePageStatus>
<GUID>77c0592c-e13e-46de-b2dc-5617e119452a</GUID>
<Status>on</Status>
</ChangePageStatus>
</CarouselCommand>
DeletePage
Deleting bulletins is easy, as long as you know the GUID of the bulletin you want
to remove:

<DeletePage>
</DeletePage>
</CarouselCommand>
DeleteAllUserPages
The DeleteAllUserPages command deletes all bulletins associated with a particular

user. If you use a specific account for creating all RDA bulletins, this command is a
quick way to clear them all out.

<DeleteAllUserPages>
</DeleteAllUserPages>
</CarouselCommand>
DeactivateAllAlertPages
If you have alert bulletins running the DeactivateAllAlertPages command will turn
them all off at once:

<DeactivateAllAlertPages>
<Zone>all</Zone>
</DeactivateAllAlertPages>
</CarouselCommand>
H.5.3 Response Examples
Here’s a typical response after sending a CreatePage command:

<CarouselResponse xmlns="http://www.trms.com/CarouselRemoteCommand">
<Result>Success</Result>
<Description>Pages were sucessfully created.</Description>
</CarouselResponse>
And here is a typical error response:

<Result>Error</Result>
<Description>The specified page GUID does not exist.</Description>
</CarouselResponse>
Here is a sample response to the GetPlayerStatus command:

<Result>Success</Result>
<PlayerStatusList>
<PlayerStatus>
<HostName>PLAYER1</HostName>
<HostAddress>192.168.0.1</HostAddress>
<HardwareID>XXXX</HardwareID>
<VersionStatus>OK</VersionStatus>
<PlayerVersion>6.0.0</PlayerVersion>
<CheckinStatus>OK</CheckinStatus>
<LastCheckinUTC>2009-06-17T00:00:00</LastCheckinUTC>
<SubscribedChannelName>Channel1</SubscribedChannelName>
</PlayerStatus>
<PlayerStatus>
<HostName>PLAYER2</HostName>
<HostAddress>192.168.0.2</HostAddress>
<HardwareID>XXXX</HardwareID>
<VersionStatus>OK</VersionStatus>
<PlayerVersion>6.0.0</PlayerVersion>
<CheckinStatus>OK</CheckinStatus>
<LastCheckinUTC>2009-06-17T00:00:00</LastCheckinUTC>

<SubscribedChannelName>Channel2</SubscribedChannelName>
</PlayerStatus>
</PlayerStatusList>
</CarouselResponse>
H.6 RDA Schema

This section contains the RDA Schema. If you are familiar with XML, this may be
helpful information for you.

[obeytabs=true, tabsize=4]
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<xs:schema id="CarouselRemoteCommand" targetNamespace="http://www.trms.com/CarouselRemoteCommand" elementFo
<xs:element name="CarouselCommand">
<xs:annotation>
<xs:documentation>
A Carousel Command consists of exactly one of the following commands:
- CreatePage
- CreateCrawl
- ChangePageStatus
- DeletePage
- DeleteAllUserPages
- DeactivateAllAlertPages
- GetPlayerStatus
- UpdatePage
- GetZoneList
- GetTemplateList
- GetBulletinList
- GetPictureList
- GetVideoList
- ArchivePage
- SetPageStatus
Definitions of the commands are described later.
</xs:documentation>
</xs:annotation>
<xs:complexType>
<xs:sequence>
<xs:choice>
<xs:element name="CreatePage" type="ctCreatePage" />
<xs:element name="CreateCrawl" type="ctCreateCrawl" />
<xs:element name="ChangePageStatus" type="ctChangePageStatus" />
<xs:element name="DeletePage" type="ctDeletePage" />
<xs:element name="DeleteAllUserPages" type="ctDeleteAllUserPages" />
<xs:element name="DeactivateAllAlertPages" type="ctDeactivateAllAlertPages" />
<xs:element name="GetPlayerStatus" type="ctGetPlayerStatus" />
<xs:element name="UpdatePage" type="ctUpdatePage" />
<xs:element name="GetZoneList" type="ctGetZoneList" />
<xs:element name="GetTemplateList" type="ctGetTemplateList" />
<xs:element name="GetBulletinList" type="ctGetBulletinList" />
<xs:element name="GetPictureList" type="ctGetPictureList">
</xs:element>
<xs:element name="GetVideoList" type="ctGetVideoList" />
<xs:element name="ArchivePage" type="ctArchivePage" />
<xs:element name="SetPageStatus" type="ctSetPageStatus" />
</xs:choice>
</xs:sequence>
</xs:complexType>
</xs:element>
<xs:element name="CarouselResponse">
<xs:annotation>
<xs:documentation>
After sending a CarouselCommand, expect a CarouselResponse.
H.6 RDA Schema 221

- The Result will be either "Success" or "Error".
- The optional Description field will contain any details.
- The optional GUID fields will contain the GUID of pages created via a CreatePage or CreateCrawl command.
- The optional PlayerStatusList field will contain a list of player statuses if this is a response to a Get
</xs:documentation>
</xs:annotation>
<xs:complexType>
<xs:sequence>
<xs:element name="Result" type="xs:string" maxOccurs="1" minOccurs="1" />
<xs:element name="Description" type="xs:string" maxOccurs="1" minOccurs="0" />
<xs:element name="GUID" type="xs:string" maxOccurs="unbounded" minOccurs="0" />
<xs:element name="PlayerStatusList" type="ctPlayerStatusList" minOccurs="0" maxOccurs="1" />
<xs:element name="Zone" type="ctZone" minOccurs="0" maxOccurs="unbounded" />
<xs:element name="Template" type="ctTemplate" maxOccurs="unbounded" minOccurs="0" />
<xs:element name="Bulletin" type="ctBulletin" minOccurs="0" maxOccurs="unbounded" />
<xs:element name="Media" type="ctMedia" maxOccurs="unbounded" minOccurs="0" />
</xs:sequence>
</xs:complexType>
</xs:element>
<xs:complexType name="ctChangePageStatus">
<xs:annotation>
<xs:documentation>
This command allows you to make a user’s page active or inactive.
For example, after creating a page to run every day all day for the next month, let’s say
you decide that it shouldn’t be run for the next few hours. Use this command to set it’s
status to "off" until you’re ready for it to go back on the air, at which point you’d set
it’s status back "on."
- UserName is a valid user in FrontDoor.
- Password is UserName’s password.
- GUID is the identifer for the page you wish to modify, which was returned when you created the page.
This page must be owned by UserName.
- Status is either "on" or "off".
</xs:documentation>
</xs:annotation>
<xs:sequence>
<xs:element name="UserName" type="xs:string" maxOccurs="1" minOccurs="1" />
<xs:element name="Password" type="xs:string" maxOccurs="1" minOccurs="1" />
<xs:choice maxOccurs="1" minOccurs="1">
<xs:element name="GUID" type="xs:string" />
<xs:element name="SelectBulletinTags" type="ctBulletinTagList" />
</xs:choice>
<xs:element name="Status" type="xs:string" maxOccurs="1" minOccurs="1" />
</xs:sequence>
</xs:complexType>
<xs:complexType name="ctDeletePage">
<xs:annotation>
<xs:documentation>
This command allows you to delete a particular page (owned by UserName) from the system. This deletion is
If you’d rather turn the page off for some time, use ChangePageStatus.
- GUID is the identifer for the page you wish to delete, which was returned when you created the page.

This page must be owned by UserName.
</xs:documentation>
</xs:annotation>
<xs:sequence>
<xs:element name="GUID" type="xs:string" maxOccurs="1" minOccurs="1" />
</xs:sequence>
</xs:complexType>
<xs:complexType name="ctDeleteAllUserPages">
<xs:annotation>
<xs:documentation>
This command will delete all pages created by the specified UserName.
</xs:documentation>
</xs:annotation>
<xs:sequence>
</xs:sequence>
</xs:complexType>
<xs:complexType name="ctDeactivateAllAlertPages">
<xs:annotation>
<xs:documentation>
This command allows you to deactivate all alert pages on a Zone. Note that the alert pages aren’t
deleted. Instead, their expire time is set to now. They will then be automatically moved to the Stale pag
of the user who created the alert page.
- ZoneSet restricts the deactivation to a certain set of Zones. Alert pages on Zones not in the ZoneSet ar
- (Zone is depreciated. Use ZoneSet instead.)
</xs:documentation>
</xs:annotation>
<xs:sequence>
<xs:element name="Zone" type="xs:string" />
<xs:element name="ZoneSet" type="ctZoneSet" />
</xs:choice>
</xs:sequence>
</xs:complexType>
<xs:complexType name="ctCreateCrawl">
<xs:annotation>
<xs:documentation>
This command will create or update a crawl on the system.
- UpdateGUID is the optional identifier for the crawl you wish to update. If not specified, this will becom
- SelectBulletinTags when used instead of UpdateGUID will be used to send this command to multiple crawls m
- CrawlText is the text you’d like to crawl.
H.6 RDA Schema 223

- ZoneSet specifies the zones on which this crawl should run. See the documentation for ctZoneSet.
- AlwaysOn sets the crawl to always run until manually deleted or turned off.
- DateTimeOn sets the date and time that the crawl will become active. (Overridden if AlwaysOn=true)
- DateTimeOff sets the date and time that the crawl will deactivate. (Overridden if AlwaysOn=true)
- CycleTimeOn sets the time that the crawl will start beign shown on any given day. (Overridden if AlwaysOn
- CycleTimeOff sets the time that the crawl will stop being shown on any given day. (Overridden if AlwaysOn
- Weekdays is a byte determining which days of the week the crawl will be show. (Overridden if AlwaysOn=tru
- WebEnabled determines if this crawl should be displayed on Carousel’s public web site. If not supplied, d
- Description is an optional text-based description for the crawl.
</xs:documentation>
</xs:annotation>
<xs:sequence>
<xs:element name="UpdateGUID" type="xs:string" />
</xs:choice>
<xs:element name="CrawlText" type="xs:string" maxOccurs="1" minOccurs="1" />
</xs:choice>
<xs:element name="AlwaysOn" type="xs:boolean" maxOccurs="1" minOccurs="1" />
<xs:element name="DateTimeOn" type="xs:dateTime" maxOccurs="1" minOccurs="0" />
<xs:element name="DateTimeOff" type="xs:dateTime" maxOccurs="1" minOccurs="0" />
<xs:element name="CycleTimeOn" type="xs:time" maxOccurs="1" minOccurs="0" />
<xs:element name="CycleTimeOff" type="xs:time" maxOccurs="1" minOccurs="0" />
<xs:element name="Weekdays" type="xs:byte" maxOccurs="1" minOccurs="0" />
<xs:element name="WebEnabled" type="xs:boolean" maxOccurs="1" minOccurs="0" />
</xs:sequence>
</xs:complexType>
<xs:complexType name="ctCreatePage">
<xs:annotation>
<xs:documentation>
This command will create or update a page on the system.
- UpdateGUID is the optional identifier for the page you wish to update. If not specified, this will become
- SelectBulletinTags when used instead of UpdateGUID will send this command to multiple bulletins matching
- ZoneSet specifies the zones on which this bulletin should run. See the documentation for ctZoneSet.
- AlwaysOn sets the page to always run until manually deleted or turned off.
- DateTimeOn sets the date and time that the page will become active. (Overridden if AlwaysOn=true)
- DateTimeOff sets the date and time that the page will deactivate. (Overridden if AlwaysOn=true)
- CycleTimeOn sets the time that the page will start beign shown on any given day. (Overridden if AlwaysOn=
- CycleTimeOff sets the time that the page will stop being shown on any given day. (Overridden if AlwaysOn=
- DisplayDuration forces the page to be displayed for a given number of seconds. If not specified, the syst
- Weekdays is a byte determining which days of the week the page will be show. (Overridden if AlwaysOn=true
- WebEnabled determines if this page should be displayed on Carousel’s public web site. If not supplied, de

- Description is an optional text-based description for the page.
- PageType is either "standard" or "alert". Any active alert pages will override all active standard pages
- PageTemplate determines which Carousel template this page should use. If you are updating a page, you may
</xs:documentation>
</xs:annotation>
<xs:sequence>
</xs:choice>
<xs:element name="DisplayDuration" type="xs:int" maxOccurs="1" minOccurs="0" />
<xs:element name="PageType" type="xs:string" maxOccurs="1" minOccurs="1" />
<xs:element name="PageTemplate" maxOccurs="1" minOccurs="1" type="ctTemplate" />
</xs:sequence>
</xs:complexType>
<xs:complexType name="ctTemplate">
<xs:annotation>
<xs:documentation>
A template is identified by the TemplateName, which corresponds to the list of templates
in the Carousel Web Interface. In a template, there can be several blocks of text. If you
want to enter text in a particular block, it must be listed here.
You can set the text of 0 or more blocks, regardless of the number of blocks in the template.
An attempt to set the text of a block that cannot be found inside the template will be ignored.
</xs:documentation>
</xs:annotation>
<xs:sequence>
<xs:element name="TemplateName" type="xs:string" maxOccurs="1" minOccurs="1" />
<xs:element name="Block" type="ctBlock" minOccurs="0" maxOccurs="unbounded" />
<xs:element name="PreviewImagePath" type="xs:string" maxOccurs="1" minOccurs="0" />
<xs:element name="TinyImagePath" type="xs:string" maxOccurs="1" minOccurs="0" />
<xs:element name="ThumbnailImagePath" type="xs:string" maxOccurs="1" minOccurs="0" />
<xs:element name="FullImagePath" type="xs:string" maxOccurs="1" minOccurs="0" />
</xs:sequence>
</xs:complexType>
<xs:complexType name="ctBlock">
<xs:annotation>
<xs:documentation>
Each block inside a template has a unique Name. To set the text in a block, provide
the text in the Value attribute.
</xs:documentation>
</xs:annotation>
<xs:attribute name="Name" type="xs:string" use="required" />
H.6 RDA Schema 225

<xs:attribute name="Value" type="xs:string" use="required" />
<xs:attribute name="Type" type="xs:string" use="optional" />
</xs:complexType>
<xs:complexType name="ctZoneSet">
<xs:annotation>
<xs:documentation>
A ZoneSet is used to represent a collection of Zones in the system.
You can specify zones by their ID or Name, or you can specify a Zone Tag and all zones with that tag will b
You can use as many ZoneID, ZoneName, and ZoneTag elements as you’d like, and you can specify them in any o
</xs:documentation>
</xs:annotation>
<xs:choice minOccurs="1" maxOccurs="unbounded">
<xs:element name="ZoneID" type="xs:int" />
<xs:element name="ZoneName" type="xs:string" />
<xs:element name="ZoneTag" type="xs:string" />
</xs:choice>
</xs:complexType>
<xs:complexType name="ctGetPlayerStatus">
<xs:annotation>
<xs:documentation>
This command will return a ctPlayerStatusList containing an array of ctPlayerStatus elements representing t
All the registered players on the system will be returned. See the documentation for ctPlayerStatus for a d
</xs:documentation>
</xs:annotation>
<xs:sequence>
<xs:element name="UserName" type="xs:string" />
<xs:element name="Password" type="xs:string" />
</xs:sequence>
</xs:complexType>
<xs:complexType name="ctPlayerStatus">
<xs:annotation>
<xs:documentation>
After calling GetPlayerStatus, you will receive a response containing array of ctPlayerStatus elements, enc
- HostName: The DNS host name of the player
- HostAddress: The IP address of the player
- HardwareID: The Carousel HardwareID of the player
- VersionStatus: Will either be "OK" if the player’s version matches the Carousel server, or "ERROR" if the
- PlayerVersion: The version of the Carousel Player software installed on this player
- CheckinStatus: Will either be "OK" if the player has checked in recently, or "ERROR" if this player’s las
- LastCheckinUTC: The time of the last checkin from this player, specified in UTC.
- SubscribedChannelName: The name of the Carousel channel that this player is currently subscribed to (at t
</xs:documentation>
</xs:annotation>
<xs:sequence>
<xs:element name="HostName" type="xs:string" />
<xs:element name="HostAddress" type="xs:string" />
<xs:element name="HardwareID" type="xs:string" />
<xs:element name="VersionStatus" type="xs:string" />
<xs:element name="PlayerVersion" type="xs:string" />
<xs:element name="CheckinStatus" type="xs:string" />
<xs:element name="LastCheckinUTC" type="xs:dateTime" />
<xs:element name="SubscribedChannelName" type="xs:string" />

</xs:sequence>
</xs:complexType>
<xs:complexType name="ctPlayerStatusList">
<xs:annotation>
<xs:documentation>
Simply a container for the ctPlayerStatus objects.
</xs:documentation>
</xs:annotation>
<xs:sequence>
<xs:element name="PlayerStatus" type="ctPlayerStatus" maxOccurs="unbounded" />
</xs:sequence>
</xs:complexType>
<xs:complexType name="ctBulletinTagList">
<xs:annotation>
<xs:documentation>
A list of Tag elements which should contain bulletin tags. Bulletins matching all of the specified tags wi
- Tag: The name of a bulletin tag.
</xs:documentation>
</xs:annotation>
<xs:sequence>
<xs:element name="Tag" type="xs:string" maxOccurs="unbounded" minOccurs="1" />
</xs:sequence>
</xs:complexType>
<xs:complexType name="ctUpdatePage">
<xs:annotation>
<xs:documentation>
This command will create or update a page on the system.
- UpdateGUID is the optional identifier for the page you wish to update. If not specified, this will become
- SelectBulletinTags when used instead of UpdateGUID will send this command to multiple bulletins matching
- ZoneSet specifies the zones on which this bulletin should run. See the documentation for ctZoneSet.
- AlwaysOn sets the page to always run until manually deleted or turned off.
- DateTimeOn sets the date and time that the page will become active. (Overridden if AlwaysOn=true)
- DateTimeOff sets the date and time that the page will deactivate. (Overridden if AlwaysOn=true)
- CycleTimeOn sets the time that the page will start beign shown on any given day. (Overridden if AlwaysOn=
- CycleTimeOff sets the time that the page will stop being shown on any given day. (Overridden if AlwaysOn=
- DisplayDuration forces the page to be displayed for a given number of seconds. If not specified, the syst
- Weekdays is a byte determining which days of the week the page will be show. (Overridden if AlwaysOn=true
- WebEnabled determines if this page should be displayed on Carousel’s public web site. If not supplied, de
- Description is an optional text-based description for the page.
- PageType is either "standard" or "alert". Any active alert pages will override all active standard pages
- PageTemplate determines which Carousel template this page should use. If you are updating a page, you may
</xs:documentation>
</xs:annotation>
<xs:sequence>
<xs:element name="UpdateGUID" type="xs:string" />
H.6 RDA Schema 227

</xs:choice>
<xs:element name="Block" maxOccurs="unbounded" minOccurs="0" type="ctBlock" />
<xs:element name="ExclusiveAlertOn" type="xs:boolean" maxOccurs="1" minOccurs="0" />
</xs:sequence>
</xs:complexType>
<xs:complexType name="ctGetZoneList">
<xs:sequence>
</xs:sequence>
</xs:complexType>
<xs:complexType name="ctGetTemplateList">
<xs:sequence>
<xs:element name="ZoneID" type="xs:int" maxOccurs="1" minOccurs="1" />
</xs:sequence>
</xs:complexType>
<xs:complexType name="ctZone">
<xs:sequence>
<xs:element name="ZoneID" type="xs:int" />
<xs:element name="ZoneName" type="xs:string" />
<xs:element name="ZoneType" type="xs:string" />
</xs:sequence>
</xs:complexType>
<xs:complexType name="ctGetBulletinList">
<xs:sequence>
</xs:sequence>
</xs:complexType>
<xs:complexType name="ctBulletin">
<xs:sequence>
<xs:element name="CrawlText" type="xs:string" maxOccurs="1" minOccurs="0" />
<xs:element name="Block" type="ctBlock" minOccurs="0" maxOccurs="unbounded" />
<xs:element name="CycleTimeOff" type="xs:time" minOccurs="1" maxOccurs="1" />

<xs:element name="ObjectType" type="xs:string" />
<xs:element name="PageStatus" type="xs:string" maxOccurs="1" minOccurs="1" />
</xs:sequence>
</xs:complexType>
<xs:complexType name="ctGetPictureList">
<xs:sequence>
</xs:sequence>
</xs:complexType>
<xs:complexType name="ctGetVideoList">
<xs:sequence>
</xs:sequence>
</xs:complexType>
<xs:complexType name="ctMedia">
<xs:sequence>
<xs:element name="Name" type="xs:string" maxOccurs="1" minOccurs="1" />
<xs:element name="Value" type="xs:string" maxOccurs="1" minOccurs="1" />
</xs:sequence>
</xs:complexType>
<xs:complexType name="ctArchivePage">
<xs:sequence>
</xs:sequence>
</xs:complexType>
<xs:complexType name="ctSetPageStatus">
<xs:sequence>
<xs:element name="Status" type="xs:int" maxOccurs="1" minOccurs="1" />
</xs:sequence>
</xs:complexType>
H.6 RDA Schema 229

</xs:schema>

Appendix I Clone Tool
The Clone Tool is a simple, yet powerful application used to replicate and implement
a channel. The basic function of this tool allows you to export and import a channel
out of or into Carousel, including all of the zone settings and media associated with
the channel. The end product is an exact duplicate of the original channel, hence
the term Clone Tool.
There are two common scenarios when the Clone Tool comes into play. The first
scenario being anytime that you want to duplicate an existing channel, perhaps
after adding a new channel to your Carousel configuration. Imagine that the new
channel will have the same layout and basic content as the initial channel, with
minor adjustments making it unique to its purpose. The second scenario being after
you purchase a Channel Design Package from Tightrope Creative1 .
I.1 Using the Clone Tool

Before we start using the Clone Tool we need to verify the following:
• You must be running Carousel version 5.2.1 or above. The Clone Tool was
introduced in version 5.2.1, prior versions do not contain this functionality.
• Every channel in Carousel must have a license. If you are not replacing an
existing channel, an additional channel license is required. To verify the
number of available channel licenses, select the Configure button from the
Main Menu of Carousel, then click on Channels. The number of available
channel licenses will display under the channel list2 .
• As a precaution we recommend that you back up your database before using
the Clone Tool. For instructions on backing up your Carousel database please
reference FrontDoor: The Manual.
• Lastly, you will need remote or physical access to your server and an internet
connection.
If there are no additional channel licenses available, you will be asked if you
would like to overwrite a channel. If you choose to overwrite the original channel,
the setup will be replaced with the new setup, however, your zones, bulletins,
and media will remain intact. If you have an additional channel license, the
Clone Tool will add the channel without overwriting anything.
I.1.1 Exporting a Channel
Step 1: From the Tools directory on the Carousel server, double click on Clone.exe to
launch the application.
1 For more information about Tightrope Creative, please visit our website: http://store.trms.com
2 If necessary, additional channel licenses should be purchased through your dealer.
231
Step 2: From the Clone Tool splash screen select Export. Select a channel you would like
to export and click OK.
Step 3: Specify a location for it to be saved.
232 Appendix I Clone Tool

Step 4: The Clone Tool will report its status while it exports. The tool will provide you
with a <Your Channel Name>.csl file3 in the location that you specified.
I.1.2 Importing a Channel
Step 1: Take the <Your Channel Name>.csl file that you exported from Carousel or down-
loaded from Tightrope Creative and copy it to the desktop of the Carousel server
to which you are importing the channel. Double click on the the <Your Channel
Name>.csl to launch the tool. Click on the Yes button to confirm the import. If the
channel you are importing is unique to the system, the Clone Tool will close once
completed and the your channel will be in the system. If the channel that you’re
importing already exists in your system and you are simply duplicating the channel,
please move on to Step 2.
3 Channels larger than 4 gigabytes will have a .csxl extension and cannot be imported into Carousel
versions 5.2.4 or below.
I.1 Using the Clone Tool 233

Step 2: When duplicating a channel, Clone will ask you to rename the channel. By default
it will append a number to the name if it is the same. Rename the channel and click
OK.
Step 3: Now you are asked to rename the zones, giving you control over how the channel is
setup. If you’re planning on sharing the same content on both the original channel
and the duplicate channel, you should map the duplicate channel’s zones to the
original zones, which is the tool’s default. The benefit being that bulletins would
only have to be created in one zone, which would serve multiple channels. Note that
each zone is independent so if you need a zone unique to your duplicate channel,
simply uncheck Map to Existing Zone for that zone and give it a new name. If
you want to make a true copy of the channel, including all of the zones, uncheck
Map to Existing Zone for each zone, enter a new unique name for each zone and
click OK.
Step 4: The Clone Tool will report its status while it imports. Once finished, depending on
how the tool was launched it will close or report the process complete, signaling a
successful import.

Visit our help page for detailed instructions and video tutorials at
http://store.trms.com/pages/help.
I.2 Advanced Settings

If you’re running Carousel on an enterprise system provided by your organization,
there is a chance that Carousel has been configured to use an advanced configuration
such as a remote SQL server or media directory. Further information on enterprise
setup and configuration can be found in the Carousel Deployment Guide. We’ll go
over the possible scenarios below.
I.2.1 Remote SQL servers
To interface with a remote SQL server, you’ll need to edit the Clone Tool’s config
file. If we don’t, the Clone Tool won’t know how to contact the SQL server
database!
Step 1: Modify D:\TRMS\Tools\Clone.exe.config using your favorite text editor. You
need to add the login connection string in the <connectionStrings> area.
Example: Connection string login into a remote server with SQL authentication might be:
<add name="FrontDoorConnectionString" connectionString="Data Source=MyServer;
UserID=MyUser; Password=MyPwd; Initial Catalog=FrontDoor50;" />
<add name="CarouselConnectionString" connectionString="Data Source=MyServer;
UserID=MyUser; Password=MyPwd; Initial Catalog=Carousel50;" />
Be sure to set both of the connection strings! FrontDoor and Carousel each have
their own line, and need to be updated.
I.2.2 Remote media storage
To set your remote media storage location, click on the . . . icon located in the top-
right corner of the Clone Tool window. In this window you’re also given the option
for the Clone Tool to set folder and file permissions at Launch. Disabling this can
increase the speed of the Clone Tool for large installations, but you must ensure that
folder permissions are set correctly.
I.2.3 Command line arguments
The Clone Tool will accept the following command line arguments:
Export a channel to a file:
clone.exe export <Channel Name> <Path>...
Import a channel from a file:
clone.exe <Path>... [/force]
Display the help message
clone.exe help
I.2 Advanced Settings 235

Appendix J CarouselDetective
The CarouselDetective is a tool that can be run on your Carousel server to check
some common settings to make sure everything is operational. It is similar to the
connection tester in the DisplayEngine, but for server configuration instead of player
communication.
It can be found in the Tools directory of your server, typically C:\TRMS\Tools or
D:\TRMS\Tools.
F IGURE J.1: The CarouselDe-

tective application window upon
opening.
The top of the tool shows several options which usually don’t need to be touched. It
will look at common locations (D:\TRMS, C:\TRMS) to find your Install Path and
beneath that for your Media Path. If you have customized these, it is possible you
may have to click the link to set the correct path. Also, our servers don’t normally
use SSL or a port other than port 80 for the web server, but if you have configured
IIS differently (not recommended), it is possible to test with that setup.
At the bottom of the tool there is a big empty box when you run it, this is where it
may put a helpful explanation if things go wrong with certain tests that might need
more detail than fit in the result summary. Then, in the bottom right there is a Run
Tests button that you click to run the tests (you can do this repeatedly while you are
making fixes to see if you’re on the right track).
That leaves the center of the tool, this is where the good stuff is, a big table of
statuses, test names and their results. When running them, you’ll see the status icon
change from a to a , then to a result of if everything is okay, a do not enter
if the test is skipped due to a feature not being present or a (which you hopefully
don’t see).
These tests won’t hurt anything by running them. They make sure some of the
player communication works (firewall settings, web server configuration), make
237
F IGURE J.2: The CarouselDe-
tective application window after a
failed test.
sure the database is configured properly, nothing is wrong with your media direc-
tory (permissions, file integrity), that your server can reach the internet to access
information such as weather, etc.
238 Appendix J CarouselDetective

Appendix K Release History
Tightrope makes frequent revisions to Carousel. Below is a detailed list of those

changes from the beginning of Carousel Release 6.
K.1 Carousel 6.6.0 Release Notes

Story 9593 : A player’s channel is now chosen on the server Channel selection is now done
in the player dashboard on the Carousel server. If you don’t choose a channel
for a player, it will use the system’s default channel.
Story 9614 : Micro Player Licenses are no longer supported Micro Player Licenses have been
removed from Carousel and any micro players will now require a standard
player license.
Story 9595 : The name of a player can now be specified The name used for a player on the
dashboard can now be changed. It will default to the hostname of the player.
Story 9642 : Built-in Monitor Control You can now define a Monitor Control Schedule as well
as Monitor Controls codes in the Configuration : Players section of the user
interface.
Story 9610 : Newly Connected Players display ’Initial Channel’ until they are Configured
to use a Different Channel You can now specify an Initial Channel in the
Configure : Channels screen. This channel will be used for newly connected
players.
Story 9645 : Scheduled Player Channel Changes Carousel Players will now automatically
change channels based on the new Configuration : Players : Channel Schedule
section of the user interface.

Bug 9970 : Display Engine Background Can Cover Splash Screen New or un-configured
Players with no data cache could see a situation where the Display Engine
black background took over the screen, keeping the Slash Screen from being
seen. The Display Engine now handles un-configured situations correctly.

Bug 9986 : Chrome does not Appear in the Correct Location for Interactive Bulletins A
problem was fixed where Interactive bulletins would appear in the wrong
location on the player’s screen if Chrome is installed on the player.
239
240 Appendix K Release History
List of Figures
2.1 Monitor Varieties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

2.2 Channel Layout . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
3.1 Multi Zone Example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
4.1 A comparison between the different available Carousel Player soft-

ware types. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
5.1 The FrontDoor login . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

5.2 A Carousel System that has not been set up . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
5.3 The Carousel Main Menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
5.4 The Status Bar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
5.5 Quick Links . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
5.6 Selecting Zones with Pop-Down Menus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
5.7 Selecting Zones with the Tag Picker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
5.8 The Media Picker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
5.9 Selecting media with tags. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
6.1 Configure Main Menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41

6.2 Adding Zones . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
6.3 The Zone Properties Page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
6.4 The Channel Configuration Editing Menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
6.5 The Channel Setup Form . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
6.6 Adding full-screen alert zones to this channel. . . . . . . . . . . . 44
6.7 You can re-order the list by dragging and dropping the items. . . . 45
6.8 The Channel Layout Menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
6.9 Zone Properties Form in Channel Layout . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
6.10 A zone added to the preview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
6.11 The Crawl Settings Menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
6.12 The Date and Time Menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
6.13 The channel list, with preview buttons. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
6.14 Example of the web-based channel preview. . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
7.1 Closing the Display Engine before it loads . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53

7.2 The Display Engine Configuration Form . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
7.3 Successful connection tests . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
7.4 Connection tests with failures and possible solutions . . . . . . . 56
7.5 Player Dashboard and Player Alerts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
7.6 Player Dashboard list with some troubled players . . . . . . . . . 58
7.7 Player Status list with healthy players . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
7.8 The Edit Player Settings screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
7.9 The Channel Schedule list . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
7.10 The edit channel schedule screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
7.11 The Monitor Control Schedule screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
7.12 The Monitor Control Schedule edit screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
241
7.13 The Control Codes list . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
7.14 The Control Code edit screen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
7.15 Adjusting the Player Alerts settings distribution list. . . . . . . . . 64
7.16 Red Bar Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
7.17 The Carousel Display Engine loading zones . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
7.18 The ConvertDVI Control Panel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
7.19 Select Display Properties from the player’s desktop . . . . . . . . 67
7.20 Loading the Display Properties Dialog . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
7.21 Rotating the display . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
8.1 Email Approval List . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71

8.2 Bulletin Pacing Form . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
8.3 The Bumper Graphic Form . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
9.1 The Zone Synchronization Menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75

9.2 The zone picker. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
9.3 The external data source authentication menu . . . . . . . . . . . 77
9.4 The proxy configuration menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
11.1 Picking a Template . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83

11.2 The Edit Bulletins Form . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
11.3 Adding HTML tags to some bulletin text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
11.4 Example of HTML tags in action . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
11.5 The Quick Edit Palette . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
11.6 Scheduling Bulletins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
11.7 The Bulletin Properties Form . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
11.8 Viewing Bulletin Impression statistics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
11.9 Choosing a sound . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
11.10Existing tags will appear as you type . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
11.11Adding four bulletin tags at once . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
11.12Deleteing a bulletin tag . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
11.13Adding Another Bulletin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
11.14Selecting the bulletin type. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
11.15Sending bulletins to multiple zones using the zone list. . . . . . . 93
11.16Sending bulletins to multiple zones using the zone picker. . . . . . 94
11.17Bulletin Confirmation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
12.1 Example Crawl (Free ‘kudos’ if you name the band that wrote these
lyrics.) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
12.2 Choosing a Crawl Zone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
12.3 Making a Crawl Bulletin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
14.1 Uploading a picture or video . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102

14.2 Flash Bulletin Properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
14.3 Insert a background in Flash to avoid a black background. . . . . . 104
14.4 Bulletin Upload Confirmation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
15.1 Analog Clock Properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108

15.2 Digital Clock Properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
15.3 Coutdown Timer Properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
15.4 Choosing the location for weather information . . . . . . . . . . . 111
15.5 The Weather Templates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
15.6 The Default Weather Template . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
242 List of Figures

15.7 Weather crawl options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
15.8 Previewing the weather crawl . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
15.9 place . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
15.10Cable Display Bulletin Properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
15.11Editing Cable Display Bulletins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
15.12Editing the RSS properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
15.13Editing an RSS Bulletin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
15.14RSS Bulletin Example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
15.15RSS Crawl Creation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
15.16The RSS Crawl Properties Form . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
15.17Editing Twitter properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
15.18Editing Facebook properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
15.19EDS bulletin creation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
15.20Selecting a Database for EDS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
15.21The EMS and Ad Astra Bulletin Properties Form . . . . . . . . . 130
15.22An example configuration for Resource25 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
15.23Here we are restricting the space to a specific ID number. . . . . . 132
15.24In this screen shot, there are no calendars, but you can see that this
is what setting up an Exchange server within carousel looks like. . 133
15.25EDS Properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
15.26Editing an EDS Bulletin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
15.27An Example of an EDS Bulletin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
15.28The Event Schedule Form . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
15.29The EDS Calendar Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
15.30The Live Video Form . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138
15.31Live video bulletin creation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138
15.32Interactive bulletin options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
16.1 A List of Bulletins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144

16.2 Filtering by tags . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
16.3 Select two tags by shift-clicking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
16.4 Bulletin Groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
16.5 Moving a Bulletin In a List . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
16.6 Dragging a Bulletin In a List . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
16.7 Move/Copy Bulletins Form . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
16.8 A Bulletin is Waiting for Approval . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
16.9 Waiting Bulletin Email . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
16.10The Waiting Bulletins List . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150
16.11The Housekeeping Menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150
16.12Bulletin Reporting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
16.13The Slide Show . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
17.1 The My and Zone Tabs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156

17.2 Alpha Channel Example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
17.3 A List of Backgrounds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
17.4 Items and the Buttons at the Bottom of a Media Asset List . . . . 159
17.5 Adding a Tag . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
17.6 Copying a Media Asset . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
17.7 The Properties Form of A Media Asset . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
17.8 Bulletin Made from Template . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162
17.9 The yellow outline is around a simple rectangle block. In this case,
the box is surrounding multiple text fields. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
List of Figures 243

17.10Making a New Template . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164
17.11Dragging a block . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166
17.12Resizing a block in the preview window. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166
17.13Font controls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
17.14Text Alignment controls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
17.15Text Gradient controls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
17.16The Block Reflection controls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
17.17A reflection example. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171
17.18The reflection collides with the picture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171
17.19In Block Reflection, an offset of “72” pixels was added to take
away the collision. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172
17.20Add luminance to the color in order to see a change when you select
a new hue. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172
17.21Picture block properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
17.22The logo on the left has Maintain aspect ratio deselected. . . . . 173
17.23Web picture address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
17.24Carousel logo has a higher z-order . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174
17.25Carousel logo has a lower z-order . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174
17.26Changing the z-order of blocks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174
17.27Bring to Front and Bring to Back in Block Options properties . 175
17.28Repeat blocks pop-down list in Block Options properties . . . . 175
17.29The Media Tags List . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176
17.30The Add Seamless Background form. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
17.31Splitting a background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
17.32Uploading Media Packages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178
18.1 The Extras Form . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181

18.2 The Public Website . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182
B.1 Selecting a template with a Web Picture block . . . . . . . . . . . 189

B.2 Enter the URL of the page you’d like to include in the bulletin, and
enter a delay if needed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
B.3 Crop the page as needed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190
B.4 The final result . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190
C.1 The Template Editor Form . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193

C.2 Naming a Template . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194
C.3 Template Field Size Example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194
C.4 The Position and Size Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
C.5 Text Editing Properties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
C.6 Editing the Backdrop and Outline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196
C.7 Template Editor’s Preview Window . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196
E.1 Saving a presentation as a list of PNG files . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199

E.2 Have it save every slide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200
E.3 Make the folder into a ZIP file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200
E.4 Importing a zip file as a bulletin package . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200
E.5 Upload Bulletin Package Confirmation form. Save To Group is a
nice way to organize your PowerPoint presentation within Carousel 201
E.6 The presentation imported as a group . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201
F.1 The TVOne hardware . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
244 List of Figures

F.2 Configuring the Display Engine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204
H.1 RDA Diagram . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212
J.1 The CarouselDetective application window upon opening. . . . . 237

J.2 The CarouselDetective application window after a failed test. . . . 238
List of Figures 245

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Copyright:

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Carousel The Manual Ver 6.6.2

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Release 6.6.

c Tightrope Media Systems

Printed August 16, 2016

I Introduction and Tour 11

2 The Essentials of Carousel 17

II Planning and Setup 25

4 Carousel’s Video Capabilities 31

5 Introduction to Carousel’s User Interface 33

6 Setup Basics: Step-By-Step 41

8 The Zone Settings Menu 71

9 The Configuration Menu: The Missing Pieces 75

10 Users and Carousel 79

III Making Bulletins 81

13 Alert and Full Alert Bulletins 99

14 Uploading Bulletins 101

15 Dynamic Bulletins 107

17 Managing Media 155

B Web Page Snapshots 189

C Limited Template Editor 193

D Custom Time Format Chart 197

E PowerPoint: How To Import Slides 199

F Live TV Input (TVI) Devices 203

G Common Alert Protocol (CAP) 207

H Remote Data Adaptor 211

I Clone Tool 231

List of Figures 241

“I was born not knowing and have had only a little

1.1 Welcome to Carousel!

1.2 About Tightrope

Throughout this guide, the following conventions will be used:

1.3 About This Documentation

1.3.1 Turnkey and Software Only Versions

1.4 Default Passwords

We recommend changing these immediately.

1.4.1 Windows Login

1.4.2 FrontDoor Login

1.3 About This Documentation 15

2.1 Note To Carousel Installers

2.2 Note to Carousel’s Users and Administrators

2.3 What Does Carousel Do?

F IGURE 2.1: Monitors can be in

2.4.2 Carousel Players: Adding More Outputs

18 2 The Essentials of Carousel

2.4.3 Zones and Channels

F IGURE 2.2: Here is an exam-

2.4 Displays, Channels, Zones, Bulletins and Media 19

2.4.4 Zones on Multiple Channels

!→ In Carousel, you can place a zone on any number of channels.

20 2 The Essentials of Carousel

2.4.6 Alert and Repeating Bulletins: Interrupting a Zone’s Bulletins

2.4.7 Full-Screen Alert Zones: Interrupting All of a Channel’s Bulletins

2.4.8 Crawl Zones

2.4 Displays, Channels, Zones, Bulletins and Media 21

A Carousel system consists of:

2.4.10 Categorizing Zones with Tagging

22 2 The Essentials of Carousel

2.4 Displays, Channels, Zones, Bulletins and Media 23

“A goal without a plan is just a wish.”

3.1 Designing Your Channel