Play your company video on idle room panels

A booking panel spends most of its day idle — a lit screen at every meeting room door with nothing to say. The screen saver turns that time into signage: a looping playlist of images, videos, YouTube clips or web pages that takes over after the panel has been left alone, and hands back to the booking screen the moment somebody touches it. A corporate video or a set of brand images on every panel in the building is the cheapest brand presence you will ever install — the screens are already on the walls.

Which panels can play video

Every panel can show the playlist’s images and web pages. Video is the part that depends on the hardware: an uploaded video is downloaded to the panel and played from its own storage — never streamed — so only panels with local storage can play one.

While a panel is still downloading a video, it skips that item and shows a small download badge; the video joins the loop as soon as the copy finishes. Once downloaded, it keeps playing through network outages — which is the reason to prefer an uploaded MP4 over a YouTube link for the video you want always on screen.

1. Open the panel configuration

Go to Devices › Booking panel › Panel configurations, click the configuration your panels use, and choose Edit in the detail panel on the right. Then open Screen saver, the fifth entry in the rail down the left.

2. Turn on Screen saver

Switch on Screen saver. The playlist and its timing settings appear underneath only once the toggle is on — and until you add something to the playlist, the panel keeps showing its normal screen.

3. Build the playlist

Choose Add content. There are three kinds of item:

• Image / video — from your files, or upload a new one. This is the one to use for the company video: an MP4, downloaded to each panel and played locally.
• Youtube video — paste the link; the panel plays the whole clip, sound off. It streams live, so the panel needs internet every time it plays.
• Webpage — any page that allows embedding. Use Check if it can be displayed in the item editor to confirm the page permits it before trusting it to a wall of panels.

Each item opens on its own page, with a preview and the settings that apply to that kind — images also get How it fills the screen (Fill, Fit or Stretch); videos always fill the screen.

The playlist plays in order and then loops; drag the handle at the left of a row to reorder.

4. Set the timing

Two settings under Timing decide the rhythm:

• Start after — how long the panel must sit untouched before the playlist takes over. A short setting turns the panels into signage almost permanently; a long one keeps the booking screen up through the working day.
• Each item shows for — how long an image or a web page stays up. Videos and YouTube clips ignore it and play to their end.

Hide the status bar, underneath, keeps the panel’s clock and icons off the artwork — worth switching on when the playlist is full-bleed brand imagery.

5. Save, and mind the blast radius

Save at the foot of the editor. Saving a configuration that already drives panels lists every panel the change reaches — that list is the answer to “which screens are about to start playing this”.

6. Check it on a panel

Leave a panel alone for the Start after time and watch the playlist come around once. For an uploaded video, give a freshly saved configuration a few minutes on the first pass — each panel is downloading its own copy, and skips the video until the download finishes.

What this does not control

• A sleeping panel shows nothing at all. Save energy mode always wins over the screen saver: once the screen turns off, the playlist stops until somebody wakes the panel. Both live on the same page — see Save energy on room panels.
• Uploaded videos are MP4 only. A file the panels may struggle with is marked in the playlist; the note under the playlist links to what to do about it.
• The booking screen always comes first. A touch interrupts the playlist instantly — the screen saver never delays check-in or booking.