Screenly helps you launch digital signs in minutes and easily manage your digital signage content from anywhere. Please watch the video below for a high-level overview on how to get started.

How to add a Screen with Screenly

The first step to getting the most out of Screenly is adding your first screen.

Once you order and receive your Screenly player you are just a few steps away from having a professional digital signage system. First take the player and accompanying cables out of the box and make sure you received both a power cable and an HDMI cable. Then follow these steps:

1. Connect the power cable to the player and plug it into the wall
2. Use the included HDMI cable to connect the Screenly Player to your TV or Monitor
3. Connect your Screenly Player to the internet using an ethernet cable or Wi-Fi

We will cover wi-fi setup in more detail later in this lesson.

Once you plug the player in it will start up and think for a minute or two, and if it is connected to the internet it will display a pairing code. The video below will explain how to use that code to pair your player to your Screenly account.

Wi-fi setup and using the Screenly Knowledge Base

If you are setting up your Screenly player on a Wi-Fi network for the first time then your player will display a “Network Error” message on screen indicating it has no internet connection. No need to panic, you will just need to perform a few additional steps to tell your player which wi-fi network to connect to. You can find step by step instructions for this setup in our help library called the Screenly knowledgebase, or KB for short. You can access the KB from within the Screenly web console under the Help menu (? icon at the top), or by navigating your browser to https://support.screenly.io/.

Once you are in the KB search for “wifi”. Then find the article titled “How do I configure WiFi for the Screenly 2 Player?” in the results and read through it. At the bottom of the instructions you will also find some tips for troubleshooting common setup problems users report.

If you follow the instructions and are still having trouble please reach out to our support team for help. To open a support ticket go to the Screenly KB, click “Submit a request” on the top right, and fill out the form. In your message please describe the problem to the best of your ability and if there is an error message on screen tell us what it says so that we can better assist you.

How to add content with Screenly

Once your first screen is paired to your account it will spend a few minutes downloading content and updates, then start to play an example playlist of images and web pages. In the next three lessons you will learn how to control what plays on your screens using content, playlists, and group labels.

We will define these terms briefly here, then go into more detail in the courses ahead:

Content: Pieces of content, also called assets, are the files and web URLs that you have made available to your Screenly devices.

Playlists: A playlist is what you use to tell Screenly what order to play your pieces of content in, how long to show each of them on screen, when to play them, and which of your screens to play them on.

Group Label: You can assign labels to your screens to help identify groups of screens that should receive the same playlists. These labels can be based on anything, but for most companies they are related to the function or location of the screens.

Content

Screenly can display images, videos, web pages, and a few other types of files. You can find a detailed list of supported content types in the Screenly Knowledgebase. Learn more about uploading content to your online Screenly account in the video below.

How to add Playlists with Screenly

Now that you have content uploaded to your online Screenly account, you can now organize your content into playlists. You can then schedule playlists to play at particular times and on one or multiple screens.

Some things to know about playlists:

• You may create as many playlists as you want.
• When multiple playlists are assigned to a screen, it will play them in alphanumeric order by playlist title. Alphanumeric means numbers 0-9 first, then capital letters A-Z, then lowercase letters a-z.

How to add Group Labels with Screely

To control multiple screens at once, use our screen group labels, also called tags. Learn more about this feature in our video below.

What are group labels used for?

Group labels are most useful when you have a large number of screens and you have subsets of screens that need to show the same content. Here’s an an example to illustrate:

Let’s say that we have four grocery stores, two in New York and two in Boston. Our marketing department has designed three sets of advertisements to display on our screens. The first set should be displayed at all of the stores, the second set should only be shown at stores in New York, and the third set should only be shown in Boston area stores.

By adding a group label to identify which city each of our screens are in, we can make it much easier to ensure playlists are assigned to play on the right screens. Next, we upload the 3 sets of advertisements from marketing, and create a playlist for each set. The playlist for the first set we can assign to play on the “All Screens” group because it should be played everywhere. The playlists containing the ads that should only be played in Boston we assign to the Boston group, and the playlist with the New York ads we assign to play on the New York group.

Set up this way our screens in the Boston group will play the “Ads for all stores” playlist, then the “Boston Ads” playlist and then start over. Likewise, the New York group screens will play “Ads for all stores”, then the “New York Ads” playlists on loop. Any changes to the content in these playlists will automatically be synced to players in the field, so Marketing can rest assured that the right content is playing in the right stores.

That’s just the tip of the iceberg

Lets say we add a Pizza counter to three out of four of our stores next year. If we add the group label Pizza to those stores screens, then we can use a playlist to make sure pizza ads get played in the three stores that sell pizza, while making sure they don’t in the store that doesn’t have one.

There are no limits on how many labels you can create or assign to a screen. As your organization grows labels will make it easier to display the right thing in the right place. Like:

• If we add a new store and screen in Boston, all we have to do is add the Boston label to the new screen and it will start playing the appropriate playlists.
• If we display menus with pricing that varies from region to region.
• Manage screen content across many countries and languages.
• Separate what plays on your office screens from what plays on your in-store screens.

Tip: On the Screens or Playlists pages click on any group label and it will filter the current list to show only the items tagged with that label. To get back to the full list just click on Screens or Playlists on the left hand navigation menu.

Congratulations you have completed the course!

We have covered the basics of how to:

• Connect and pair a Screenly player to your account
• Upload content to Screenly
• Create playlists
• Employ scheduling rules to control when a playlist is active
• Use group labels to assign playlists to specific subgroups of screens

Now it’s time to put your knowledge to use, remember the old adage “use it or lose it”? Make some time to put your new skills into action so that you remember them. For practice you can upload content and create playlists, just don’t assign them to any screens or groups and they won’t play in the “real world”.

Remember the following

• You can review this course at any time if you need a refresher. It’s natural to forget some of what you learned over time, you can bookmark the course page for easy reference.
• The Screenly Knowledgebase is a helpful resource when you are stuck.
• If the answer isn’t there, reach out to the support team by opening a support ticket

Good luck, and thank you for using Screenly.

If you have any feedback about this course, areas that we could improve, or parts that were unclear you can send feedback to: [email protected]