Digital signage around school - PowerPoints and Photos

[DrBeaker]

Hi All,

 

Just after some some advice on digital signage around the school.I like Xibo which is what I'd prefer to implement having used it before, but the biggest problems I keep coming across is the issue of PowerPoints and Photos.

 

PowerPoints

 

PowerPoint is 9/10 the thing they use for updates, news etc and PowerPoints seem to be the easiest thing for staff to update. However I don't really want to be uploading PowerPoints to Xibo or converting them to video files all the time.Sometimes there's lots of changes to the same PowerPoint file in the same day. To that end I want to put it back where it should be - the content owners managing and updating the content, not the IT team. E.g. this puts back the responsibility to the content owners/admin to update the PowerPoint correctly as this isn't a technical task, but an admin. e.g. if I'm not there on that day, I don't want them to say they had to wait for me, they can update it themselves.

 

Photos

 

Photos is the other big one where everyone needs to be uploaded to Xibo before being shown on a layout etc. Sometimes there's a need to show lots of photos in a slideshow type setup.

 

These 2x seem to be the biggest obstacles I've yet to fully solve. What have others done in this situation?

 

Thanks

Edited June 7, 2020 by DrBeaker

[Sanchez]

We just use a Google slides presentation that staff can update. It's embedded in a webpage (with time and date, etc) that refreshes every 30 mins to show any updated slides. We also have one display that pulls slides from different presentations around school and auto updates linked content every 10 mins.

 

Simple and just works.

[DrBeaker]

We just use a Google slides presentation that staff can update. It's embedded in a webpage (with time and date, etc) that refreshes every 30 mins to show any updated slides. We also have one display that pulls slides from different presentations around school and auto updates linked content every 10 mins.

 

Simple and just works.

 

We started to look at this at another place but other things took precedence ans never quite finished it. It looked promising.

 

 

We're a Microsoft/365 school. Not sure if MS PowerPoint online/365 has the same functionality? Hmmm.

 

 

Out of interest how did you get Google Slides to pull things from different presentations? That sounds pretty nifty.

[Sanchez]

When you copy any paste slides between presentations it asks if you want to copy the slides or link them to the original. I link to the original and have a Google apps script that runs every 10 mins to update the links.

 

function updateAllSlides() {
   var currentPresentation = SlidesApp.openById('1F0owlCejnOp-XYeZOkhE-okVlfifCznKBKJrx-632sM');
   var slides = currentPresentation.getSlides();
   for (var i = 0; i < slides.length; i++) {
       var slide = slides[i];
       updateSlide(slide);
   }
}

[robyholmes]

We show news from our school website. Xibo loads a page designed with just a news slider. Staff can then create news posts for the website which get SLT approval.

 

If it's an internal only message, then I do it manually in to Xibo.