Build a signage board and put it on a screen

A board belongs to no room and no building. It is a design — a welcome screen, an availability map, a video that loops — and the same one can run on every screen in the company. The hardware is a separate record, and it is the hardware that knows where it is standing.

That is the whole reason creating a board never asks which room it is for. It asks about the screen: how big, what shape, and whether anyone can touch it.

1. Create the board

Go to Signage › Content and choose Add.

The wizard asks two questions. The first is what the screen is for:

Picking one moves you straight on — there is no Continue button. The purpose also becomes the board’s name, which you can change in a moment.

2. Describe the screen

The second question is the hardware: Orientation and Touch screen across the top, then physical size and shape below.

Size is measured in inches, not pixels, and it is not cosmetic — it is what decides how large the text has to be. Each option says the distance it is written for: ~10" tablet at arm’s length, ~18" on a desk a metre away, ~32" for a zone display at two or three, 43" + for a lobby wall at three or more.

Shape is drawn to scale — Standard TV (16:9), Wide panel (16:10), Tablet (4:3), Square (1:1). More shapes underneath adds the ultra-wide and video-wall shapes, including two or three panels stacked into one canvas.

Touch screen is the answer people get wrong. On a screen nobody can touch, the interactive widgets are hidden rather than shown-but-dead, and the visitor self-service buttons are quietly swapped for a QR code — there is no point offering a button nobody can press. Answer it honestly, or you will spend a while wondering where your buttons went.

None of these answers is final. All four move to the editor’s Screen page later, and the board re-fits itself, so a design drawn for a 10-inch tablet can be widened to a 43-inch wall without starting again.

Choose Create. The board opens in the editor.

3. Learn the two surfaces

The editor is a live board on the left and a sliding rail on the right, and there are exactly two ways to change anything:

• Click a part of the board in the preview to change what is in it. The big area, each card, each button — clicking one opens its settings in the rail. This is the whole of Put content on a board.
• Open the Layout page in the rail to change what parts there are — how many cards, whether there is a column beside the stage, which edge it sits on. See Change a board’s layout.

The rail’s first page is the board’s own settings, and everything on it applies to the whole board rather than to any one widget: Name, Font size, Appearance, Widget background, Corner radius, Display language and a Background image. Give it a name that says where it will be shown, since the purpose name it arrived with will not stay distinctive for long.

4. Put something on it

Click the largest area of the preview — the main stage — and pick a widget. Booking lists, room maps, video, a website, a welcome screen: what is offered depends on where you clicked, because a tall list and a small square tile cannot hold the same things.

That is as far as this article goes. Which widget can sit where, playing several in turn, and interrupting everything when a visitor arrives are all covered in Put content on a board.

5. Save it

The button at the foot of the rail is in two halves. The pill saves and leaves you where you are — it flashes Saved and goes back to blue. The small caret beside it offers Save and close.

Nothing is written until you press it. The ✕ in the corner asks before throwing unsaved work away, and clicking outside the editor or pressing Escape will not close it.

6. Connect the screen

The board still shows nowhere. Nothing you have done so far has touched hardware.

Look at the screen itself: the player app is showing a six-character registration code. Then, in the console, either press ＋ on the board’s own card in Signage › Content, or go to Devices › Signage › Devices and choose Add.

The wizard asks three things and then confirms:

1. Content — the board this screen will play.
2. Brand — the hardware you are installing. Certified devices is what Offision tests against: BrightSign, Crestron, Crestron AirMedia, Qbic, LG webOS, Microsoft Teams Rooms, Zoom Rooms and Neat. Other devices underneath covers an iPad, an Android or Windows tablet, or a third-party system loading the player in a web view. Each tile carries Support models, for checking the exact model on your desk, and its own installation guideline — read it, because the steps that get a BrightSign box into the player app are not the steps that get a Qbic panel there.
3. Connect — the six characters from the screen, typed into the six-box field. It submits itself on the last one.

Nothing is created until that code lands, so backing out of the first two steps costs nothing. Within a few seconds the screen stops showing the code and starts showing the board. A screen plays exactly one board; a board can play on any number of screens.

If the code is refused, read it off the screen again rather than retyping what you noted down — the code lives on an open connection, so a screen that has slept, rebooted or lost the network since is now showing a different one.

7. Give the screen a location

The wizard’s last step offers Set location, and it is worth taking while you are still standing next to the hardware.

A board carries no place of its own, so every location-aware widget on it — whose visitors to greet, which building’s rooms to map, which floor to start a route from — reads the device’s location instead. A screen with none falls back to everything, everywhere. Nothing errors; it just quietly answers the wrong question.

There are two ways to answer it. Tapping a room on the floor plan binds the screen to that room, which is right for a screen inside or beside one. Dropping a point on the floor gives it a floor and a position but no room, which is right for a lobby or a corridor.

8. Check it worked

Devices › Screen monitoring shows a live picture of what each screen is actually displaying. It is the fastest way to confirm the board landed without walking back to it.

Then change something small on the board, save, and watch the screen catch up. That is the only check that proves the pairing, the content and the network are all working at once.

What this does not cover

• Which widget goes where, and how to play several things in turn — Put content on a board.
• Changing the shape of the board itself — Change a board’s layout.
• A reception screen specifically, where the walk-in QR code and the device’s location need more care than a general board does — see Set up a lobby screen for visitors.
• The screen’s own settings — its name, its location and its connection are edited on the device, not on the board, in Devices › Signage › Devices.