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A centralized server site can be deployed with multiple remote sites in a multi-venue architecture. This document is intended for Cisco Vision Dynamic Signage Director administrators and describes how to enable and manage multiple venue support.
■Prerequisites for Configuring Multiple Venue Support
■Restrictions for Configuring Multiple Venue Support
■Information About Configuring Multiple Venue Support
■How to Configure Multiple Venue Support
■How to Migrate Deployed Devices From a Single Venue to a Multiple Venue System
Before you configure multiple venue support, be sure that the following requirements are met:
■You have read Cisco Vision Dynamic Signage Director On-Premise Architecture Overview.
■You understand the deployment of zones, groups and locations and the use of playlists and scripts in Cisco Vision Dynamic Signage Director.
■The centralized Cisco Vision Dynamic Signage Director server is installed with a minimum of Release 3.1.
■You have planned the configuration for any new or changes to existing Locations. For existing Locations be sure that you are aware of current group/zone associations that will be disabled once you reassign an existing Location to a specific venue.
Before you configure Cisco Vision Dynamic Signage Director for multiple venue support, be sure that you consider the following restrictions:
■Any remotely-located DMPs are controlled by the central Cisco Vision Dynamic Signage Director server.
■The PTP master for DMP time service must be co-located with those remote DMPs and on the same VLAN.
■Venue objects (such as locations, playlists, and scripts) are limited to a single-venue association, except for users who are assigned to the role of Venue Operator.
Caution: Once an existing Location is reassigned to a specific venue, any previous group/zone associations will be disabled and the Location will need to be reassigned to groups/zones.
■Only Venue Administrators or Venue Operators can be associated to one or more venues.
■Only certain areas of the Cisco Vision Dynamic Signage Director software are venue aware, which means that certain roles can apply venue-specific scope of control using the venue selector. These areas include:
Note: External content, channels, and Dynamic Menu Board (DMB) content items are global to all venues. Therefore, these global content items also can be deleted by a venue administrator.
For information about specific access allowed by user role, see Table 2.
Note: The following areas of the Control Panel > Setup are not directly venue-aware using the venue selector, but objects defined there can have a venue-specific relationship:
■Users—You can define all Users under Control Panel > Setup, but you can only associate venues to Venue Administrators or Venue Operators under the Venues tab. Therefore, the Users interface is not venue aware.
■Zones & Groups—Zones and groups inherit their venue association through the Location. Locations are associated to venues under the Venues tab by the administrator.
■Triggers—Triggers can be applied to venue-associated scripts, but the Triggers interface itself is not venue aware, and all defined triggers in Cisco Vision Dynamic Signage Director are global in scope.
■Playlists imported using the Media Planner Import API need to be manually assigned to venues after import into Cisco Vision Dynamic Signage Director.
Caution: Cisco Vision Dynamic Signage Director does not support disabling of multiple venue support (set the “Multiple Venue Enabled?” property to false) after you have enabled it and associated objects.
This section includes the following topics:
■Role-Based Access Control for Hierarchical Management of Multiple Venues
■Understanding Venue Association
■Understanding Scripts and Staging Behavior in a Multi-Venue Environment
Cisco Vision Dynamic Signage Director Release 5.0 introduces a new role of Venue Administrator.
For more information about user management and Role-Based Access Control (RBAC), see User Management in Cisco Vision Dynamic Signage Director.
The Cisco Vision Dynamic Signage Director administrator can perform all functions related to venue management.
Most of the configuration management for multiple venue support resides only with the Cisco Vision Dynamic Signage Director administrator role, which includes the addition of the following functions:
■Enabling Cisco Vision Dynamic Signage Director for multiple venue support.
■Creating venues in Cisco Vision Dynamic Signage Director.
■Creating users with role of Venue Administrator and Venue Operator.
■Capability for associating any venues to users, locations, content, playlists, and scripts.
In a multi-venue architecture a Content Manager can perform all of the same functions as within a standard Cisco Vision Dynamic Signage Director environment, with the addition of the following capabilities:
■Selecting the venue scope from the Content and Schedule screens in Control Panel.
■Importing content to be associated with one or more venues by using venue tags.
■Creating playlists and scripts to be associated with the currently selected venue scope or all venues.
Note: Content Managers can only create new objects with venue assignment based on the currently selected venue in the venue selector. To reassign an object to a different venue, the Content Manager must remove the object and add again.
The Venue Administrator role was introduced in Cisco Vision Dynamic Signage Director Release 5.0 and provides limited permissions at the venues authorized by the central Administrator for that user, for the following areas of Cisco Vision Dynamic Signage Director:
■Control Panel—Content, Control (Script control and Staging), Schedule.
■Management Dashboard—Read-only access with limited command support.
■Setup—Devices (Display specifications only); Read-only access to Zones & Groups, Channels, Luxury Suites.
The Venue Operator role is based on a subset of Event Operator and Help Desk roles, with the added functionality of venue-specific scope of control. The Venue Operator role supports the following capabilities:
■Changing the user password in Control Panel.
■Selecting venue scope for the venues for which permissions are granted.
■Viewing and monitoring information on the Management Dashboard with read-only access to the venues for which permissions are granted.
■Executing scripts and related state functions during an event at the venues for which permissions are granted.
Legacy RBAC roles (roles that were available in releases prior to Cisco StadiumVision Director Release 3.1) can perform all of the same functions as within earlier Cisco Vision Dynamic Signage Director software releases.
Note: In a multi-venue architecture an Event Operator can perform all of the same functions as within a standard Cisco Vision Dynamic Signage Director environment. The Event Operator role is not venue aware. To support venue-specific scope of control for scripts, use the new Venue Operator role.
A centralized Cisco Vision Dynamic Signage Director site with multiple remote sites (venues) supports the following functionality:
■Association of venues to Users, Locations, Playlists, and Scripts (referred to collectively as venue objects).
■Inheritance of venue association from Locations for Groups, Zones, and Luxury Suites.
Tip: You can use the Bulk Administration Tool (BAT) to associate multiple locations to a venue.
This section provides information about scripts that you should be aware of when implementing them in a multi-venue environment.
When configuring scripts in a multi-venue environment, consider the following best practices:
■Configure scripts to control only a single venue.
■When creating venue-specific scripts, use the following process:
a. Create the script first without any actions—Name it and save it.
b. Assign the script to the venue.
c. Edit the script to assign it to zones/groups.
d. Use playlists that belong to the same venue.
e. Edit the script to further define states.
■Be sure that scripts that are intended to run at a remote site are not also being run on any non-site DMPs.
■For optimal operation, avoid running multiple event scripts to the same DMPs at a site.
Note: If you move a script assignment from one venue to another, be aware that the zones/groups/playlists might still be associated with the old venue until they are manually reassigned. If a script is part of one venue and zones/groups/playlists are part of another venue, then the script will not start.
In Cisco Vision Dynamic Signage Director, script staging is always serialized. For example, if a manual staging job is running, a script-initiated staging job will begin after the manual staging has completed. The scripts will not start at the same time.
In the case of content replacement, content staging happens right away. If current staging is going on, content replacement staging will go into the queue. The DMP will play old content until confirmation of successful staging occurs, so there could be some time delay.
This section includes the following tasks:
■Enabling Multiple Venue Support in Cisco Vision Dynamic Signage Director (required)
■Adding Venues to Cisco Vision Dynamic Signage Director (required)
■Associating Venues with Cisco Vision Dynamic Signage Director Objects (required)
■Removing Venues From Cisco Vision Dynamic Signage Director (optional)
■Selecting Venue Scope (optional)
■Monitoring Venues From the Management Dashboard (optional)
By default, Cisco Vision Dynamic Signage Director is not configured for multi-venue deployment. To support Cisco Vision Dynamic Signage Director with a centralized server and remote sites, you must configure the Multiple Venue Configuration property, which will set the corresponding registry key. Once this registry key is set, it will be preserved during an upgrade.
Caution: Cisco Vision Director does not support disabling of multiple venue support (set the “Multiple Venue Enabled?” property to false) after you have previously enabled it and associated objects. In other words, do not toggle between enabling multiple venue support and disabling it.
To enable multiple venue support in Cisco Vision Dynamic Signage Director:
1. Log into Cisco Vision Dynamic Signage Director as an administrator.
2. From the main menu, click Management Dashboard.
3. Go to Dynamic Signage Director Configuration > Multiple Venue Configuration.
4. Set the Multiple Venue Enabled? property value to “ true.”
5. Click the Refresh icon to update property values.
The multiple venue management functions are enabled in Cisco Vision Dynamic Signage Director and the registry key named “ multiVenueDeployment.”
7. Confirm that the “ Choose venue: ” control appears in the upper right corner of the Management Dashboard window.
8. Go to Control Panel > Setup and confirm that the Venues tab is available.
Tip: If you already had the Control Panel open before enabling multiple venue support, refresh the browser to display the Venues tab.
After you enable multiple venue support in Cisco Vision Dynamic Signage Director, you can add remote sites as venues in the Control Panel.
To add venues in Cisco Vision Dynamic Signage Director:
1. Log into Cisco Vision Dynamic Signage Director as an administrator.
2. From the main menu, click the Event Management > Control Panel.
4. Click the plus (+) icon (Figure 1).
Figure 1 New Venue Intro Panel
5. (Required) In the Name box, type a unique and identifiable name for the venue. “new venue” is the default.
6. (Required) In the Time zone box, click the arrow to open the drop-down box and select the time zone for the remote site.
Note: This option is informational only and for proof-of-play reporting.
You can associate venues with Locations, Playlists, Scripts, and Users in Cisco Vision Dynamic Signage Director. Only the administrator can perform associations for all of these objects for all venues using the Venues tab in the Control Panel Setup screen.
After the initial multiple venue configuration and association is completed by the Cisco Vision Dynamic Signage Director administrator, other roles (Content Manager, Venue Administrator, and Venue Operator) can use the venue selector in Cisco Vision Dynamic Signage Director for their authorized functional areas of the interface to select their venue scope of control. Any related tasks will be based on that selected venue scope (All Venues or a specific venue).
This section includes the following topics:
Before you associate venues in Cisco Vision Dynamic Signage Director, be sure that you understand the following guidelines:
■Each object is limited to a single-venue association, except for users.
■Only users with the assigned role of Venue Administrator or Venue Operator can be assigned to one or more venues by the administrator.
■Only the following roles can see the venue selector in the Cisco Vision Dynamic Signage Director interface and use it to select the venue scope of control for their authorized areas:
Caution: If a location is already in a group/zone configuration, it will be forcibly removed from those groups and zones when you either associate or disassociate the location from a venue. Scripts might fail to start on those endpoints because they are not part of the group anymore.
■Refer to Script Best Practices for guidelines on script creation and association.
To associate venues with Cisco Vision Dynamic Signage Director objects:
1. Log into Cisco Vision Dynamic Signage Director as an administrator.
2. From the main menu, click Control Panel.
4. In the Venue list, click the name of the venue that you want to associate.
5. Do the following to assign object types to the selected venue:
a. Click Locations, Playlists, Scripts, Users, Tags, or Folders.
b. In the “Available” box, select the name of the location, playlist, script, user, tag, or folder that you want to associate.
Tip: You can multi-select objects. Click the checkbox and Ctrl+Click to select additional objects.
The object name is added to the Assigned box.
d. Repeat from Step a. or Step b. for as many objects as you need to associate.
Figure 2 Associate Scripts to Venue Example
6. (Optional) To remove an assigned object, select the name of the object in the “Assigned” box and click the >> button.
When you attempt to associate objects to venues, certain conditions can cause the system to provide you with a warning about objects that are not optimally configured to be associated to the venue, such as a Location already being associated to a group or zone in another venue. The warning message identifies the objects, which allows you to do one of two things:
■Click Close to go back to the Cisco Vision Dynamic Signage Director configuration to confirm that the object best follows venue association guidelines and note or change the configuration.
■Click Force to permit the system to attempt to make the requested association for the objects in conflict.
Note: The Force button might not work for all associations. It is important to understand that an attempt is made by the system to force the specified user action but several factors influence its success. For best results, read the error message and see what objects are identified as being in conflict with the requested action and take corrective steps to avoid the conflict within Cisco Vision Dynamic Signage Director.
Figure 3 shows an example of an error message that can appear when you attempt to associate venue objects and there are conflicts within the Cisco Vision Dynamic Signage Director configuration. Any other objects not in conflict will be associated to the venue as requested.
Figure 3 Venue Association Conflict Message Example
Figure 4 shows an example of a venue assignment conflict message where the location, playlist, or script that you tried to assign to a venue is identified as already assigned to another venue. The original venue assignment is displayed in the message (“Cheyenne2” in this example). You can do one of two things:
■Click Remove & Re-assign to proceed with the new venue assignment and remove the specified object from its current venue assignment.
■Click Cancel to retain the original venue assignment and return to Cisco Vision Dynamic Signage Director.
Figure 4 Confirm Object Reassignment Message Example
To remove a venue from Cisco Vision Dynamic Signage Director:
1. Log into Cisco Vision Dynamic Signage Director as an administrator.
2. From the main menu, click Control Panel.
4. Remove association from all objects that are linked to the venue that you want to remove.
5. In the Venue List box, select the venue that you want to remove.
You can select venue scope in the Control Panel and in the Management Dashboard. However only certain areas of the Control Panel interface are venue aware. Once you have enabled the software for multiple venue support and added new venues in the Control Panel, you can use the venue selector in those areas that are venue aware.
Venue status is indicated in the venue selector using a radio button that is colored red to indicate that the venue is disabled and green to show that the venue is online.
Caution: Take note that the venue selector will show the last venue that you selected, but the scope will not be limited to the selected venue if you are not in a venue-aware area of the interface. The global scope will apply (All Venues). For more information, see Understanding Venue Association.
1. Log into Cisco Vision Dynamic Signage Director as an administrator, content manager, venue administrator, or venue operator.
2. Go to the Control Panel (or Management Dashboard, as allowed by your role).
3. At the top of the window, look for the venue selector drop-down box.
Figure 5 shows an example of the venue selector in the Cisco Vision Dynamic Signage Director Control Panel.
Figure 5 Venue Selector Drop-Down Box in the Control Panel
–To apply the scope of operation to a specific venue, select the name of the venue in the drop-down box.
–To apply the scope of operation to all venues, select All Venues.
5. Continue to the Control Panel area that you want to configure.
You can monitor the status of remote devices for selected venues from the Management Dashboard.
Traffic monitoring of remote DMPs in the Management Dashboard is performed using unicast messaging, so multicast optimization does not apply.
To monitor venues from the Management Dashboard:
1. Log into the Cisco Vision Dynamic Signage Director server as an administrator.
2. Go to the Management Dashboard.
3. At the top of the window, select the venue whose devices you want to monitor.
5. Select the area that you want to get information about.
Figure 6 shows information about zones in the Tokyo venue.
Figure 6 Monitoring Devices for a Specific Venue in the Management Dashboard
This section describes the best practices for migrating a large number of deployed devices and locations from a single venue to a multiple venue system using the Bulk Administration Tool (BAT).
For more information about the tasks referenced here for exporting, editing, and importing TSV files using BAT, see the Cisco Vision Director Bulk Administration Tool guide.
This section includes the following tasks:
■Prerequisites (required)
■Exporting a Device List for the Original System Configuration (required)
■Creating New Venues (required)
■Removing All Locations From Existing Groups (required)
■Removing Locations From Existing Suites (only required if DMPs are in suites)
■Associating Initial Locations to Venues (required)
■Completing Venue-Specific Information and Association of Locations Using BAT (required)
■Populating Group Information in the New Device List (required)
Before you migrate deployed devices from Cisco Vision Dynamic Signage Director, be sure that the following requirements are met:
Caution: Cisco Vision Dynamic Signage Director does not support disabling of multiple venue support (set the “Multiple Venue Enabled?” property to false) after you have previously enabled it and associated objects. In other words, do not toggle between enabling multiple venue support and disabling it.
■You must be sure that the following object types are configured to be unique per venue:
Groups, zones, locations, scripts, suites, and playlists.
■A recommended best practice is to use a naming convention that easily identifies the venue to which an object is associated by assigning a prefix to the object name. This can make it easier to find and track related objects.
For example, to name scripts, playlists, and locations that belong to a venue called “WEST-SIDE-VENUE” you could use the prefex “WE” such as WE-Script1, WE-Script2, WE-Playlist1, WE-Location1, and so on.
■If you have existing DMPs in a group that are targeted to be in multiple venues, they need to be split up so that each group contains DMPs only for a single venue.
For example, if there is a group (ALL-DMPs) that consists of all of the DMPs in Cisco Vision Dynamic Signage Director, then the group needs to be sub-divided into smaller groups of DMPs by venue, such as “ALL-DMPs-Venue1,” “All-DMPs-Venue2,” “ALL-DMPs-No-Venue” and so on.
This same rule applies to other objects like zones, scripts, suites, and locations. If any of these have objects that are targeted to be in different venues or to be global (that is, objects that are not part of any venues) then they need to be sub-divided on a per-venue basis.
■(For DMPs in suites only) All suites must have a suite controller attached.
Tip: You can easily verify whether or not a controller is defined for a suite by looking at the original exported device list (See Exporting a Device List for the Original System Configuration.) If Column N (Suite Name) has a value and Column M (Suite Control Type) does not have a corresponding value in the same row, then you know that the Suite named in Column N does not have a device list attached to it.
If a suite controller is not attached, then you must assign a suite controller to it. If there are not any available suite controllers, you can create an artificial one and assign it to the suite. These fake controllers can be deleted after the migration process has completed successfully:
a. Go to Control Panel > Setup > Devices > IP Phones.
b. Create artificial IP phone entries with fake, non-pingable IP addresses.
d. Select the suite that does not have a suite controller.
e. Click the Phone & Remote tab on the right panel that has suite properties.
f. Assign the artificial IP phone that you created to the suite by selecting the checkbox.
This task should be done to preserve initial single venue system configuration information and to aid re-population of that information to the new multi-venue device list created later.
For more information, see the “Exporting and Downloading a TSV File for Locations and DMPs” topic in the Cisco Vision Director Bulk Administration Tool guide.
To export a device list for the original system configuration:
1. Go to Control Panel > Setup > Devices > Locations & DMPs.
3. When the Export box displays, click Download.
4. When the “Select location for download” window appears, type the name of the.txt file that you want to save, or accept the default name and click Save.
5. Be sure to save a master copy of the originally exported device list.
This task describes how to create a new venue with basic information, which will be further updated in a later task using BAT.
1. Go to Control Panel > Setup > Venues.
Note: Before you remove locations from existing groups, be sure that you have completed the requirements in the Prerequisites section to place all objects in unique groups per venue.
Before associating Locations to the new venues, you need to remove them from existing groups.
To remove all Locations from Groups:
1. Go to Control Panel > Setup > Zones & Groups > Location<->Group.
3. Select an individual group.
4. In the Locations panel on the right, select all Locations for the selected group.
5. You can use Ctrl+Click or Shift+Click key sequences to multi-select the Locations.
7. Repeat from Step 3. for all groups that need locations removed.
8. Refresh the browser to reload the UI so that the changes are updated.
To associate locations to a venue, they need to be removed from any existing suites. These locations will be added back to the configuration using the BAT tool using the original Device list that was exported.
To remove Locations from existing suites:
1. Go to Control Panel > Setup > Suites.
2. Select any suites that contain locations that are targeted to be moved to venues.
3. Select each location and click the red '-' button on the top to delete it from the suite.
Tip: Click the red '-' button rapidly to delete DMPs quickly from the suite.
4. After all DMPs are removed from the suite, be sure to click Save.
5. Repeat from Step 2. for each suite from which you need to remove locations.
To establish the venue-specific fields when you export the new multi-venue device list, you need to associate at least one Location to each new venue that you created.
For more information, see Associating Venues with Cisco Vision Dynamic Signage Director Objects.
This task is performed to more easily complete configuration of any remaining venue-specific information and association of locations using BAT.
To complete venue-specific information and association of Locations:
After the association of at least one Location per venue, the newly exported device list file now contains the venue-specific field entries that can now be more easily populated with the remaining required configuration information.
The venue-specific field entries in the BAT file are:
–Venue JMX Password—The JMX password is saved in the venue information only when the system is disabled for global credentials.
Note: The Venue JMX Username field is always ignored.
2. To complete association of Locations to venues, edit the TSV file using a spreadsheet application such as Microsoft Excel to:
a. Complete the venue-specific information.
b. Copy (or auto-fill) to add rows for new Locations that you want to add to the venues.
For more information, see the “Importing a TSV File” topic in the Cisco Vision Director Bulk Administration Tool guide.
4. Go to Control Panel > Setup > Venues and confirm that the Locations are properly associated to their venues.
This step allows you to more easily re-populate the original system’s Group information to the new multi-venue device list.
To populate Group and other information from the original device list:
1. Export a new device list and open the file in your spreadsheet application.
2. Excluding the first row, select all rows and columns.
3. Sort the spreadsheet by the Name field (column E).
4. Obtain the copy of the master device list that you exported in in Step 1. Also sort the master spreadsheet by the Name field.
5. From the original master file, copy the columns that have Group information (Z, AA, AB, AC, and so on) and paste them appropriately into your new device list.
Tip: When working with certain rows and columns in Microsoft Excel, the hide/unhide columns or rows feature and freeze/unfreeze feature can be used to efficiently do this job. For information about these features, see the Microsoft support site.
6. From the original master file, also copy columns that have Suites and Suite Controller information (J–Y).
8. Import the new device list into Cisco Vision Dynamic Signage Director.