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Revised: May 13, 2015
OL-15762-03
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We prepared this material with specific expectations of you. |
Note This material pertains to multiple releases of Cisco DMS.
Our scheduling service helps you to control exactly when particular DMPs play your choice of assets or execute your saved commands. You can schedule these events to occur at any time. You can even set them to recur as often as needed. Moreover, you can schedule hundreds of future events.
You can trigger such events to start manually and run only once. We call this method “Play Now.”
Or, you can set them to run automatically from a schedule, with or without recurrence. (We call this method “Play in Future.”)
Topics in this section tell you how to plan deliveries of assets and commands that you prepare for DMPs.
The schedule can manage multiple deployments simultaneously and — assuming that a DMP has a fast network connection and you send deployments to it that are not mutually exclusive — a DMP can receive multiple deployments simultaneously.
You can schedule future time slots for elements that you will deploy once or repeatedly to:
You can deploy only one presentation at a time if the assets that it uses should be stored directly on your DMPs. To check the free space on the SD memory card in a DMP, choose Digital Media Players > DMP Manager, and then look in the DMP List table for the amounts of free space in internal and external storage. Alternatively, log in to the local instance of DMPDM, and then click Internal Storage.
Displayed times for deployments in the schedule are relative to the time zone where you deployed your DMM appliance, not the time zone where you deployed any DMP, and not the time zone for any other locale. You set the time zone value for your DMM appliance when you used AAI to configure it and you can use AAI to correct the time zone value if it is wrong.
Future time slots that the schedule describes will always designate hours in boldface numerals according to the UTC time zone offset for the locale where your DMM appliance is installed.
When you work from any other time zone and view the schedule, this offset will differ from the offset at your location and the difference might be confusing. Furthermore, the offset might be confusing even when you and your DMM appliance are together in one time zone but you want to schedule time slots for a DMP that is in some other time zone.
Whenever your pointer hovers over a event in the timeline, the schedule shows a tooltip. Information in the tooltip describes the current status of the corresponding event and summarizes its most important attributes. Information in the tooltip is organized as follows.
Whenever you let your pointer hover over a scheduled deployment in the timeline, we describe the current status and summarize its most important attributes.
We designed DMPs to restart gracefully when they run out of free memory. This is the fastest and most effective way to purge memory on a DMP.
For this reason, we recommend that you restart your DMPs deliberately from time to time, according to a schedule that you control. Doing so can reduce or prevent unscheduled restarts, which could otherwise occur at inconvenient or inopportune times.
Determine first if unexpected restarts occur at a predictable interval, as is likely. If you notice, for example, that your DMPs seem to restart unexpectedly after your playlists or presentations run for approximately 7 days, then you could schedule a controlled restart to run once every 6 days.
The interval that’s best for one network could be unsuitable for another. Your assets and how you combine them are the greatest predictor of how much time can elapse before your DMPs run out of free memory.
Avoid placing entries in your schedule that recur often and persist for an unreasonably long time, and also avoid all other practices that might cause your schedule to become too large. Otherwise, DMM might not generate your manifest files quickly enough and your ACNS CDM or root CE might time out. We recommend that you apply this rough algorithm:
– An entry that recurs monthly can persist in your schedule for as long as 3 months.
– An entry that recurs annually can persist in your schedule for as long as 3 years.
Furthermore, we recommend these additional best practices:
– Requested through Microsoft Proxy Server.
– Requested through Microsoft Internet Security and Acceleration Server.
In some cases, you might want to do something one time, or for a limited time, that overlaps with a recurring event. For example, you might schedule a presentation to run from 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. every weekday in the month of March, but want to show a different presentation on the second Tuesday in March.
The challenge is that your DMP cannot prioritize contradictory events that are scheduled to start simultaneously. However, there are several ways to pre-empt a recurring event.
1. Schedule and deploy a recurring event for the first uninterrupted span of dates.
2. Schedule and deploy the one-time event.
3. Schedule and deploy a copy of the first recurring event for the second uninterrupted span of dates.
Assume that you have created two DMP groups. This scenario calls them Group_A and Group_B.
1. Move targeted DMPs from Group_A to Group_B when the one-time event should begin.
2. Return the DMPs to Group_A when the one-time event should end.
3. Choose Schedules > Play Now.
4. Click Group_A in the DMP Groups tree.
5. Ctrl-click each DMP that should start again to show the recurring presentation.
6. Choose Select an Event Type > Digital Signs.
7. Click Select Digital Signage.
Assume that the one-time event is live streaming video of an important meeting or conference. You can schedule the interruption far ahead of time and simply set it to occur once.
1. Schedule a recurring event to run every weekday, as you might expect, from 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.
2. Schedule the (Go to) URL command to start at 9:05 a.m., so that it interrupts the recurring event but does not conflict with its start time.
3. Schedule the (Go to) URL command to stop at 6:00 p.m.
The recurring event begins again, as expected, at 9:00 a.m. the next day.
You can deploy immediately to one DMP or to one DMP group.
Step 1 Choose Schedules > Play Now.
Step 2 Choose one of these from the Event Type list, according to your need.
Your choice reveals a button whose name is derived from your choice.
Step 3 Click the button to choose particular assets or particular commands.
A dialog box opens. Its name and elements vary by event type.
Step 4 Click the name of the command or asset to be deployed.
Step 5 Click OK to confirm your selection and close the dialog box.
OR
Click Cancel to discard your selection and close the dialog box.
Step 6 Expand a group in the DMP Groups tree to list its member DMPs.
Step 7 Ctrl-click in this list the name of each DMP that should receive the deployment.
Step 8 Click Submit to confirm your selections and deploy the element immediately.
OR
Click Cancel to discard your work for this deployment.
Step 9 Stop. You have completed this procedure.
Step 1 Choose Digital Media Players > DMP Manager.
Step 2 Navigate in the DMP Groups object selector, expanding its levels as necessary until you find in its hierarchy the parent group for a DMP that should receive assets or instructions. Then, click the name of this DMP group in the object selector.
OR
Choose an option from the Filter list to restrict which DMPs the DMP List table describes.
Step 3 (Optional) If DMP data in the table straddles multiple pages, use pagination controls above the table to move between pages.
Step 4 Choose which DMPs in the DMP List table should receive the assets or instructions that you will deploy.
Step 5 Choose an action from the Action list, above the DMP List table.
Step 6 Click Go. The specified action starts immediately.
Step 7 Stop. You have completed this procedure.
Step 1 Choose Schedules > Play in Future.
Step 2 From the calendar, choose the year, month, and day when the deployment should start.
The timeline is updated automatically, so that it shows the schedule for that day.
Step 3 From the Event Type list, under the timeline, choose the deployment type.
Step 4 When the Schedule Task dialog box opens, complete these steps:
a. Click Select Group, click the group name for the DMPs or the external (FTP) deployment servers that should receive this deployment, and then click OK.
b. Click the Select < event_type > Tasks button, click the name of the specific event to be deployed, and then click OK.
c. To designate the start and stop times for this event:
Step 5 From the Repeat list, choose the recurrence interval for this event. The intervals are:
Step 6 To save your selections, click Save All.
Note ● If you do not click Save All, the schedule discards your selections immediately after you refresh your browser or load any other page.
Step 7 (Optional) To make copies of an event in the schedule, so that it recurs as many times as you want and at any interval that you specify:
a. Click the event description on the timeline, and then choose Add an Event > Duplicate All.
b. Click the first Select button to choose the group whose event will be copied, and then click OK.
c. Click the second Select button to choose the group that should receive the copy, and then click OK.
Step 8 Click Publish All to transmit the deployment according to your defined schedule and synchronize it if you use ACNS or WAAS.
Step 9 Stop. You have completed this procedure.
In addition, a status bar at the bottom of the popup window counts the number of errors associated with the described deployment.
Q. Can I schedule an event that has no stop date?
Not exactly. However, when you use Play Now to initiate an event, it runs until another event starts.
Q. What prevents me from seeing the software user interface for Play in Future?
Refresh you browser. If the problem persists, make sure that your client OS, browser, and JRE are all set to English.