Scheduler for outdoor LED message displays
The ooh!Media Scheduler decides when each message plays on each display. Operators assign messages by hour, day, week, month or year, run multiple recurrence rules in parallel, and send the complete schedule directly from inside the module.
How granular is the Scheduler's recurrence?
Recurrence ranges from one-hour blocks to multi-year plans. A message can play every day from 06:00 to 08:00, every Monday for a full year, on the first of each month, only during a specific week, or only on weekdays. Multiple rules combine on one display — the Scheduler resolves overlaps by priority and timestamp.
For industrial sites the typical setup is a shift-rotation schedule with three dayparts. For traffic-management deployments along Belgian E-roads it is a morning/afternoon split with seasonal weather variations. Retail bundles use weekly promo rotations. The Scheduler treats all of these as different parameter sets on the same engine.
What does year-ahead planning look like in practice?
Operators load an entire annual campaign in a single Scheduler session. A Belgian Daylight bv reference deployment plans safety milestones (Safety Week February, Heat Plan July, Fall Prevention October) twelve months in advance — once the schedule is sent to the display, the workstation can be shut down and the LED keeps playing offline. The display stores the full year-ahead schedule locally.
This offline-capability is a structural difference with cloud-only digital signage CMS products: ooh!Media schedules survive network outages on both sides. The displays continue to run the assigned playlist until the next sync delivers an updated schedule.
Can the Scheduler dayparts different content per time-of-day?
Yes. A single display can run morning safety briefings, afternoon production-target counters, and evening shift-handover messages — each on its own daypart. The Scheduler UI shows the daypart structure as a timeline grid, with operators dropping messages into time slots and adjusting boundaries by dragging the slot edges.
For weekend-active displays (sports venues, tourism boards) the same daypart engine handles Saturday-only and Sunday-only variants. The combination of weekday + daypart + recurrence produces a deterministic playback grid for every minute of the year.
How does inactivate-reactivate work for seasonal content?
Each message has an active/inactive toggle independent of its schedule entry. Setting a message inactive pauses playback on the next display sync but keeps the message in the library and in the schedule. Setting it active again restores playback without re-authoring. Seasonal campaigns (Christmas, summer-construction, end-of-year safety) live in the library year-round and toggle on for their valid window.
Does each display have its own independent schedule?
Yes. Multi-display deployments treat every connected display as an independent target. Display A in the warehouse can play one set of messages while Display B at the front gate plays another. The Scheduler workspace shows the active display in the Sign Management panel and lets operators switch targets without leaving the application. Each display keeps its own message library, its own recurrence rules and its own send-history.
How does the Scheduler interact with the Message Editor?
The two modules share the same database. A message authored in the Message Editor immediately becomes available in the Scheduler — operators drop the message onto a timeline slot without re-uploading. Conversely, editing a message in the Message Editor propagates the update to every schedule entry that references it on the next display sync. No duplicate content, no manual re-linking.
Frequently asked questions
What happens if a schedule has conflicting rules at the same moment?
The Scheduler resolves conflicts by priority. Higher-priority rules override lower-priority ones for the overlapping window. Operators set priorities per message; emergency messages (safety alerts, traffic warnings) are typically marked highest.
Can the Scheduler trigger messages from external events (alarms, sensors)?
The Scheduler is time-based by default. Event-driven triggering requires the Sign Options Editor and external signal integration via the Adaptive Alpha-protocol. For most deployments time-based scheduling covers all use cases.
How do operators verify what is currently playing on a display?
Each display's current playlist is visible in the Sign Management panel. Operators see the active message, the next scheduled message, and the full daily timeline. For remote verification, sending a quick test message overrides the schedule briefly.
Is the Scheduler limited to a number of displays per workstation?
No hard limit. Performance depends on network reachability of each display. A single workstation typically manages dozens of displays across a campus or a multi-site operation.
Can schedules be backed up and restored?
Schedules are file-based — they save, open and reopen as standalone documents. A backup is a copy of the workstation's schedule folder. Restoring on a new workstation reconnects the displays via Plug 'n Play.