Application Word-book

Account

If someone wants to enter the application, he needs an account. Once his account is created, he has a login and a password identifying him each time he is entering the application. There are some information about him that can be detailed (address, email, telephone, etc.), and he can decide some eventual invoicing options from his account options. An account allows to use the application more or less deeply, depending on its permissions. For example, it can either be a super-administrator, or a simple user.

Account Group

The accounts can be aggregated in logical groups of accounts to manage larger organizations. To be clear, this allows one application to be divided into several users entities, which can be totally independent. In short, one application can allow to manage different networks, even if they are not related.

AccuWeather

AccuWeather© is the solution used in our application to display weather information in the web areas of the screens. You can have more information on their website: accuweather.

Activation

Activating a screen means starting its activity. In short, before activation, playlists are not even calculated, while once a screen has been activated, playlists are computed, sent to the player, and then the screen displays the content.

Administrator

An administrator is a particular user of the application, as he has some permissions allowing him to manage other accounts, credits, media, and/or screens. they can be divided in "sub-administrators" who have permissions, but limited, and "super-administrators" who have all the permissions.

Approval

Before allowing a media (image or movie) to be displayed on a screen, it must be approved for it. An administrator can decide which media are approved for which screens. He can also decide to give the "auto-approval" for an account he trusts. In this case, the media of this account are automatically approved for all the screens.

Area

An area is a part of a screen, dedicated to a specific type of content. There are five different types, corresponding to the five media types: image, movie, RSS, Television, and web. Each screen can be divided in as many areas as the administrator wants, but once the areas are set, he cannot change their types nor their position and dimensions.

Billboard News

The billboard news system allows an administrator to write messages to other users of the application. The messages can be targeted (to all users or just administrators), they are dated and displayed on the home page (the first page displayed when someone logs in). The administrator can of course edit or delete them when he wants.

Booking

A booking is a reservation, concerning either an image, a movie, or a synchro. The owner of the content can book it on the approved and compatible areas of the screens, at precise dates and times. The administrator can decide to charge the account for its bookings, or not. The media and synchro bookings are replacing the filling media and filling synchros in the playlists, depending on the very specific options that have been set during their creations.

Campaign

A campaign is a set of bookings, which can be very simple or extremely precise. The advantage of a campaign is that you can modify it, or book it again as much as you want. For example, you can book again a one week campaign each new week.

Credit

The credit system is useful for accounts the administrator wants to charge for their bookings. They can book media for an amount of credits, but they cannot exceed it. To re-credit his account, a user must pay his invoices, allowing him to book again his media. The credit level can be different depending on the trust the administrator has in the user.

Dwell-time

From a commercial point of view, the "dwell-time" is the duration a person is spending in front of a screen, before leaving. If this value is correctly evaluated, you can improve the impact of your content.

In our application, we have a more technical definition: the dwell-time is the "looping" duration of a playlist.

Let's take an example: there are playlists every hour, with 15 minutes dwell time.

  • 15 minutes of content will be computed from all the bookings and all the filling content (media and synchros), and will be played 4 times, constituting the 1 hour playlist.
  • Then, 15 minutes of content will be computed again and played 4 times again, during 1 hour to constitute the next playlist.
  • Then, again and again …

Event

The administrator can adapt the year policy of the screens to unexpected events. Concretely, a event is a set of following days, during which the screens will have different time slots from the scheduled year policy, and eventually a different pricing too.

Filling content

The filling content is the list of media and synchros which are randomly and automatically displayed, to fill the playlists "empty spaces" when there are no bookings, or not enough. This is a looping content, which means all created playlists are using this content by default, before being eventually replaced by bookings.

Image

Images are a particular type of media, used to display static content on the image areas of the screens. These images can be set by any user who booked them, or by an administrator who has decided the filling images that must be displayed when there are no bookings.

Invoice

Each time a booking is played, the application is warned about it, and an corresponding invoice item is created and inserted in an invoice. Concretely, an invoice item is one line of an invoice. It indicates that a media has been played, on which screen area, which day, at what time, how many times, and its price. It can be useful to charge the user account, or as a simple proof of playback reporting.

Log

The application gives you access to the log files. A log file is a text file reporting an activity of the application, with the date of it, precise at the millisecond. Log files are grouped by thread type: you have log files concerning the playlists, the media, the bookings, the players, the global administration, and the accounting. Each player is also reporting to the application its logs, containing all the details of its activities.

Media

There are five different types of media: image, movie, RSS, Television, and web. Those five types can be regrouped in 2 different categories. First, images and movies are media that you can schedule in playlists, making them played in rotation. They can be sent and booked by all the users of the application. Second, RSS, TV and web media are managed by an administrator who must explicitly change them each time he wants to modify the source of what is displayed on the corresponding screens areas. The synchros can be assimilated to a bookable media type, even if actually it is the combination of several images and movies.

Movie

Movies are a particular type of media, used to display videos on the movie areas of the screens. These movies can be set by any user who booked them, or by an administrator who has decided the filling movies that must be displayed when there are no bookings.

Order

Orders allow an administrator to remotely control the players of the screens. They are sent from the application, and then quickly executed by the player at the screen's location. The orders enable the administrator to start a player, stop it, restart it, reboot it, synchronize it (to force an immediate update of the content displayed), assign or unassign it from a screen. More simple orders can also be sent, such as changing the volume or the resolution of the player.

Penalty

A penalty is an amount of credit, appearing on an invoice, which is removed from a user remaining credits. A penalty corresponds to a booking canceled, or changed for a cheaper one. In this case, a penalty is created, proportionally to the value cancelled, and also to the time during which the cancelled booking has prevented other users from the possibility to book anything else. The penalty percentage can be set by an administrator. If set to 0%, penalties are never charged.

Permissions

The permissions give the possibility for an application to be used by multiple users, by clearly defining who can do what. Administrators can share the management of different screens networks, accounts groups can be defined and managed independently, some users can be restraint to a certain actions only, etc. Basically, an application can be divided between administrators ensuring the smooth functioning of the application, and the users only booking media.

Player

The player is the computer in charge of displaying the content on the screen. It is connected to the application server through the network, downloading its content (media and playlists) and uploading its feedback reporting (log files and media acknowledgement). One player is needed per screen, but several screens can be displaying the same content with only one player, through a signal splitter. Our solution requires mac players, such as macminis, which are powerful enough for HD content and easily integrated in any screen installation.

Playlist

A playlist defines the order of the media to play on a specific area, which can be of two types only: movie or image. The type is set once during the screen creation, and then you cannot change it: a movie area will display movies only, whereas an image area will display images only. In brief, a playlist concerns an area of a screen (image or movie only), on a specific day, and at a precise hour. For example, it can be the playlist of the area#1 of screen#1 on July 4th between 2pm and 4pm.

Quality

The notion of quality is used in the application for both media and areas. Each media is reformatted into five different resolutions maximum: from thumbnail to High Definition quality. Depending on each area resolution, the media versions which fit the best are selected to be sent and displayed. The different qualities of a media can be checked by an administrator in the approval section.

Plus

The application contains an advanced mode: when the "Plus" option is activated, the playlists have a pricing value, defined in the year policy of each screen. This allows media and synchros to be booked at different prices, depending on the date, the location, and the user invoicing rate. To do this, the accounts have a credit value limiting their bookings, and invoices are created, allowing an administrator to recredit an account when they are paid.

RSS

RSS is a particular type of media, used to display textual information on the RSS areas of the screens. The content of it can only be chosen by an administrator who must explicitly modify it from the application each time he wants to change it. RSS means Really Simple Syndication, and technically it is a XML file containing brief information. It can be any real time information available on the Internet (news headlines or stock exchange information, for example), or private messages written by the application administrators themselves.

Screen

Materially, the screen is the display device plugged to the player, which is displaying its content. Most of the time, it is a simple television (42 inches LCD for example), but it can be whatever as long as it can be plugged to the player: television, projector, computer monitor, giant screen, etc.

In the application, a screen is a set of necessary settings which must be given: its size, resolution, template (layout of the areas), year policy (time slots and pricing), filling media (default content), etc. Once the screen is set up by an administrator, it can be assigned to a player, in order to be activated.

Screen Group

The screens can be aggregated in logical groups of screens for easier management of multiple screens. This allows one application to be divided into several screens network entities, which can be totally independent. In short, one application can allow to manage different networks, even if they are not related.

Screen Template

A screen template is a pre-configured layout of the areas constituting a screen. A screen template allows to create as many screens based on the same layout as needed. The screen template is defining several elements: the areas dimensions, their positions, their transition, sound and border options, etc.

Season

A season is a variation in the pricing of the year policy, applied to some consecutive days. For example, an administrator can decide to increase the prices of the media bookings, from Christmas to the new year day, by 50%.

Synchro

A synchro is the combination of media playlists corresponding to all the areas of a screen template. Visually, it is a synchronized display management of different media in different areas within one screen. It ensures the media are correctly played together, for a better global visualization of the screen content (on the different areas at the same time).

To be precise, what we call a synchro is a set of private media sub-playlists displayed on an entire screen (on all its areas). The timing must be specified for your media displayed in each area of the screen template concerned. Thanks to a synchro, media of the same user can play in a given order, and are synchronized on all the areas of an entire screen. A synchro can be used with any screen based on the same screen template than the one used for the synchro.

Television

Television is a particular type of media, used to display television channels on the TV areas of the screens. The channel can only be chosen by an administrator who must explicitly modify it from the application each time he wants to change it. The TV tuner compatible with our application is compatible with free-to-view digital TV as well as analogue TV, but also with any S-video or composite signal.

Theme

The application web page design is independently managed by the CSS standards. It means that the "look-and-feel" of the pages of the application can be designed in many different ways, without changing anything to the available actions. For the moment, the application is proposing two themes: the "Classic" theme (colored in blue) and the "Winter" theme (colored in white).

Thread (or Process)

A thread is an operation which is automatically processed by the application itself. They ensure the system mechanisms to be working all the time without any user intervention. There are six threads regularly running: the monitoring thread to ensure everything works well, the media converter thread to optimize the media sent, the media uploader thread to send media to the players, the playlist creation thread to create the media playlists, the playlist calculator thread to order the media mix, and finally the invoicing thread to manage the played playlists.

Time Period

A Time Period is a time slot of a specific day, generally used to define when a playlist will be displayed. For example, "Monday between 2pm and 4pm" is a Time Period. They are used to structure a day in different time and price categories.

Transition

The transition is used in a playlist, between images or movies, to avoid brutal change of content: when a media is over, a "fade-out" effect is used to make it disappear, and immediately after the next media appears in a "fade-in" effect. The timing of the transition can be determined, and also if a media must keep playing during it or not.

User

An user is the owner of an account. When he can only view his account, manage his own media and book them, the user is generally called a "simple user", whereas when he has more permissions, he is called an "administrator".

Web Media

The web media is a particular type of media, used to display any web based content (any reachable URL) on the web areas of the screens. The URL can only be chosen by an administrator who must explicitly modify it from the application each time he wants to change it. Web media allow to display any web page, or the weather with the AccuWeather© system integrated in the application.

Year Policy

The year policy consists in defining the time slots and the pricing for a screen and its areas. Each area can have a different price per minute, from costless to any price. This price can then be adjusted for the week days, the time slots, and the seasons (groups of consecutive days). The time slots defined will correspond to the playing hours of the screen, and can be different depending on the week day.