Shuffle Playlists in Digital Signage
Shuffle is a feature that can shuffle slides from multiple playlists. Imagine you had a corporate playlist, a local store playlist, and perhaps even a playlist for external advertisers. With Shuffle, you ask your player to play 2 slides from one playlist, 1 slide from a second playlist, and 5 slides from a third playlist, and the cool part is, Shuffle will keep track of all your slides.
How does it work?
First of all, let’s confirm Shuffle is what you’re looking for.
Shuffle can grab slides from multiple playlists and play those slides in the order you want. For example, you have a Playlist A, a Playlist B, and a Playlist C, and you’d like slides from all playlists running on your TVs. You could set it up so that you play 3 slides from PLaylist A, then 2 slides from Playlist B, and then 5 slides from Playlist C, that would look something like this; A1-A2-A3-B1-B2-C1-C2-C3-C4-C5. Now Shuffle will keep track of all slides, so when the first cycle has been executed it will grab the next slides in the playlist, so that you don’t keep playing A1-A2-A3-B1-B2-C1-C2-C3-C4-C5, instead, it would look something like this, A1-A2-A3-B1-B2-C1-C2-C3-C4-C5-A4-A5-A6-B3-B4-C6-C7-C8-C9-C10, etc., until all slides in each playlist have been played.
Let’s take a look at how you set up Shuffled Playlists.
Go to Groups and Schedules, find the group that should be set up using Shuffled Playlists, and click Schedules.
Assuming you have no rules in this group, let’s click + Add schedule.
Give the schedule a name, toggle on/off Repeat Daily, and start adding the playlists you will be using. You will notice that when you add the second playlist the Shuffle feature appears on the right. Toggle on Shuffle and the shuffle ratio appears next to each playlist you’ve added.
All you have to do now is choose how many slides you’d like to play from each playlist in a cycle, then set the time, date, and days if necessary, and click Publish.
Options
These are the options you have when working with Shuffle.
- Shuffle – Turn Shuffle on and off (Toggle)
- Shuffle Ratio – Set the # of slides to be played from this playlist
FAQ
What happens when I use slide conditions and Shuffle?
Using slide Conditions will exclude a slide that is not active. This will initially interrupt the order of slides playing.