Creating Campaign

Campaigns are the main entity of CampaignManager Web. It is used to organize the content in terms of format, schedule the time that the content needs to appear on the screens and ultimately publishing the content to the appropriate player/screen, dappler/sound card, Android Player/screen or zusa/screen saver. In terms of organizing the content, we can place a variety of media types, web sites, flash content and etc. Also, the media files have the property of how much time they will air on the screen and in what matter.

To create a campaign in CampaignManager Web, click on Campaigns button from the left navigation menu. NOTE: You must previously select some existing Project. Otherwise, the navigation menu will not be shown.

This opens the all campaigns listview page. Click on the first button (Create New) from the left navigation menu or right-click inside the listview to open the context menu and select Create New.

A Modal window will be shown where you can enter the name of the Campaign. Enter the name of the campaign and click on Create button (or click Cancel if you want to cancel the whole operation).

A new campaign workspace is created and we are automatically transferred to that workspace. By default, Campaign opens on What tab. In the campaign navigation panel there are total five tabs: What, When, Where, Settings and History.

Media is added to what section. Different types (video, image, audio, flash etc.) of media can be added to what section. What section consists of two parts: Zone Playlist and Preview of current zones (screen designer). In Zone Playlist are shown three sections: Playlist Settings, Playlist Item Settings (shown only when media items are selected) and the list of media items added in the selected zone (Playlist itself). Preview of current zones gives a preview of the zone and all options related to the zones. There are two main sections: Zone preview (screen designer) and Zone Properties (all settings related to the selected zones). Above the screen designer is shown drop-down list that contains the names of all created zones. You can select any zone by clicking on its name from this drop-down list.

The When section gives information for the starting and the ending time of the campaign. At the top, there are two buttons called Basic and Recurrent schedule. By clicking on these buttons, you can select basic or specific recurrent schedule for the campaign. By default, Basic schedule is selected for every newly created campaign.

Target channel is added to Where section. This section has two parts: Available Channels list and Targeted Channels list. If the project has existing channels, then these channels will appear on available channels list.

By default, the target channel list will be empty. Between these two parts, there are few buttons: Add selected channel, Add all available channels, Remove selected channel and Remove all selected channels. Using this buttons, one or multiple channels (using SHIFT or Ctrl key from keyboard) or all channels can be moved from available list to target list and vice versa. The channels are moved from one list to another. The same channel cannot exist in both lists.

Above both Available Channels list and Targeted Channels list there are search boxes. Type some text string in these boxes to search for a channel. The available channel list will return the filtered result of all channels that match the searched string in their name. The string text will be highlighted in green.

NOTE: At the same time can search channels in both channel lists.

In this area are shown some settings for the campaign. This section contains three parts: Campaign Details, Behavior with other Campaigns and Remote Interaction.

Campaign Details shows a textbox to change the name of the campaign and a trigger checkbox to convert the campaign to a trigger campaign. By default, trigger checkbox is unchecked. If the media has been added to what section then Campaign size should show the correct size for the media, this field is not editable. The edited value should show when the campaign was last edited. Priority by default should be normal. Priority can be changed from the combo box. It will have values: lowest, low, normal, high and highest.

The settings will also have an option for settings behavior of this campaign with other campaigns. This is mainly for configuring this campaign so that it defines how this campaign will interact or interrupt other campaigns. Three radio buttons with different settings are shown under this part:

There is also one checkbox, which says: If this Campaign is interrupted, resume playing at the point of interruption. Select this check box to resume interrupted campaign at the point of interruption. This means that after higher priority campaign finishes, the interrupted campaign will resume playing from the point of interruption.

There is also another setting for remote interaction. This setting enables a user to remotely turn on or turn off a published campaign from player or dappler. Four options can be selected under this settings: Default published behavior is Active, Default published behavior is Inactive, Play once and then stop after switching and Remotely control random number generator.

History shows all the changes that have been done to this campaign. History list view shows the entity name, entity type, verb, description, user, created on time and IP address. Entity name will be the name of the campaign, entity type will be always Campaign, verb will depend on what action has been taken (such as create, modify, delete etc.), description will state what change was done to the campaign, user denotes the user that made those changes, created on shows the date/time of when the history record was created while IP address shows the IP address of the machine where the change was carried out.

Above the History records are three buttons: Selected User, Selected Date and Selected Verb, which gives filtered results for the history. By selecting any row in the history table these buttons become enabled. The first button gives results for the history filtered by selected user, the second one gives results filtered by the selected date and the last button gives results filtered by Selected Verb. Select (click on) the button again to retrieve all items.

While in the Campaigns list view, a campaign can be created by pressing Create New button from the left navigation menu or from the context menu.

Once the new campaign is created, it will automatically be saved and shown in the Campaign listview. To save any changes made to certain Campaign, click on the ‘Save’ button from the left navigation menu or context menu. The third way of saving a campaign can be done by pressing Ctrl + S keyboard buttons. NOTE: Save button will become active only if there are changes made to the Campaign in any of the five sections.