Signage

Signage is the screens that are not attached to a single room: the display in the lobby, the availability wall by the lifts, the board in a corridor. Two things make one work — a board, which is the content, and a player, which is the device showing it.

The board is the content

A board is built from widgets on a template: live room and desk availability, today’s bookings, a welcome message for expected visitors, announcements, air quality from the sensors, a clock, a QR code. Nothing on a board is a picture of data taken earlier — the widgets read the same bookings and the same sensors the rest of Offision does, so a screen is never a stale copy.

Boards are built once and reused. The same reception board can run on every lobby screen in the company, and each screen still shows its own building’s visitors, because what it shows is decided by where the player is.

The player is the device, and its location is a setting

A player is the hardware in front of the board: an iPad, a Crestron or Qbic display, an IAdea box, a Neat screen, or any modern display that can run the player app. Enrolling one pairs it to a board.

Its location is the part that catches people out. A lobby board greets the visitors expected at the building the player says it is in, and a walk-in registered from it is registered there. A screen that greets nobody is usually a screen with no location, not a broken board.

Interactive, where it needs to be

A screen is not always something to read. A lobby board can register a walk-in visitor; an availability board can book the desk somebody is standing next to; either can hand off to a phone with a QR code. Signage is often the only piece of Offision a guest ever touches.

What Signage does not cover

The panel outside a single meeting room is a different device with a different job, and it lives in Devices. Rooms, desks and their rules come from Booking — a board reports availability, it never decides it.