Make a board announce new requests out loud

A board that people walk past does not have to be watched to be useful. With voice announcements on, it plays a short chime and a spoken phrase when something arrives, so the person on the service desk hears the request instead of noticing it three minutes later.

It is off by default, and stays off until two separate switches agree.

What it says, and when

There are four phrases, and only these four:

Each is a two-note chime followed by a recorded phrase. Nothing else on the board makes a sound.

Turn it on

1. Switch the board on

Open the board’s editor. Voice announcements is on the first page, in the Display group, below the display language.

Switching it on reveals a Play sample row — “Chime + New service request” — with Play and Stop. Use it to set the volume on the device before anybody relies on it, since a board nobody can hear is the same as one that never speaks.

2. Switch the widget on

The board-level switch only permits sound; the widget decides what is worth saying. Turn on what you want in the widget’s own settings:

• Service request list — Announce new request, and Announce ending soon & ended, which are separate so a busy desk can hear arrivals without hearing every countdown.
• Support ticket list — Announce new ticket.

Both switches have to be on. A widget switch alone is silent, and the board switch alone announces nothing.

Why a board sometimes stays quiet

This is the part worth knowing, because most of it looks like a fault and is not:

• It never speaks on boot or reload. The first list a widget loads only seeds what it has already seen. Otherwise every restart would read out the whole queue.
• The same thing is only announced once in ten minutes. Two widgets showing one ticket therefore speak once, not twice.
• The admin preview is always silent — both the editor’s live preview and a board shown with sample data. An admin tab must not chime while somebody is editing.
• A browser may refuse to play until the page is touched. Autoplay rules belong to the browser, not to Offision; a board that has never been interacted with can start silent and begin working after the first tap.

Check it worked

With the board on a screen, raise a service request against the room it shows. The chime and the phrase should follow within a few seconds.

If nothing is heard, check the device’s own volume first, then that both switches are on, then that the request is genuinely new — one raised in the last ten minutes may already have been announced.

What this does not control

• Which requests appear at all. That is the widget’s own filtering — Service request list and Support ticket list.
• Any other widget. Bookings, visitors and calls have no announcements.
• Volume. There is no volume setting on the board; it plays at the device’s.