Digital signage can accomplish many different goals depending on your audience — from distributing important corporate communications to employees to selling the benefits of your products to retail customers. No matter your goals, they’re easier to achieve when the tech behind your digital signage is easy to use.
One of the ways that Korbyt Anywhere’s intelligent content management system (CMS) stands out is how easy it is to create digital signage content. With multi-zone layouts, flexible content templates, and customizable user permissions, your team can build engaging screens effortlessly. In particular, Korbyt Anywhere Layouts and Playlists make your organization’s digital signage content more consistent, scalable, and efficient to create.
In this post, we’ll explain how to embed Layouts and Playlists into your content templates, but first, let’s cover why you would want to in the first place.
The Importance of Scalability in Digital Signage
So, you have your media players and your screens. Now comes the most important part: establishing a process for digital signage content creation and approval among your team.
For many organizations, especially enterprises and corporations, this workflow comes with the potential for efficiency challenges and red tape. How can you manage dozens or hundreds of screens with minimal frustration?
That’s where Layouts and Playlists come in. A Layout in Korbyt Anywhere is the dynamic visual interface used to arrange and modify content on digital signage screens. You can drag and drop design elements in Korbyt Anywhere’s Builder tool to create a Layout. Playlists are collections of Layouts and other multimedia content that rotate on a loop. They can contain static or dynamic content, including audio and video, and Korbyt Anywhere’s Clever Playlists allow you to automate content delivery based on rules you set.
These reusable elements help you scale content to as many screens as you’d like, even if they’re not controlled by the same media player, ensuring that important content remains consistent no matter who is editing a screen. Layouts and Playlists also reduce the need for repetitive content creation, saving your team valuable time.
How Are Layouts and Playlists Used?
For example, you might know that you want every screen in your corporate office to rotate the date, the time, the local weather, and your company’s logo. You could create a Playlist containing these elements, then embed it into other Layouts you make for the screens around the office.
Whether you create and embed a Layout or Playlist depends on how you want the content to look. In this example, you could make a basic Layout to display the date, time, weather, and logo side by side, then embed this group of design elements within another Layout. On the other hand, if you want these elements to rotate and show one at a time, a Playlist might make more sense. The great thing about Korbyt Anywhere is that you can decide what works best for your needs!
How to Embed Layouts and Playlists (Technical Overview)
To embed a Layout or Playlist within other Layouts and Playlists in Korbyt Anywhere, you’ll want to become familiar with the External URL Element and the Playlist Element.
Embedding Layouts
The External URL Element is typically used to visualize external websites, but it can also be used to embed Layout templates that users have created — in other words, to embed Layouts within other Layouts. Here’s how to do it:
- Create a Layout. Use Korbyt Anywhere’s intuitive drag-and-drop Builder tool to craft your primary visual template.
- Select the External URL Element. This feature allows you to embed previously created Layouts.
- Select the desired Layout within the External URL element. Select from your pre-built Layout library, embedding the chosen Layout within your current project.
By following these steps, you can seamlessly incorporate smaller templates into larger screens, providing a unified, dynamic content experience.
Embedding Playlists
The Playlist Element works the same way, but instead of pointing at a specific Layout, it points to a Playlist. The Playlist can be a combination of multiple content types, including Layouts. Follow these steps:
- Create a Layout using Korbyt Anywhere’s drag-and-drop Builder for a user-friendly experience.
- Select the Playlist Element. With this feature, you can embed a previously created Playlist in your Layout.
- Select the desired Playlist within the Playlist Element. The titles of your existing Playlists will be shown so you can easily find the one you’re looking for.
Embedding a Playlist allows multiple content types to rotate within a section of a single template.
Improve Collaboration and Security with User Permissions
Korbyt Anywhere’s flexible permission system allows you to designate control over specific content zones to different team members, enabling collaborative content creation while preserving control over critical brand assets. As an administrator, you can also lock down design elements you don’t want changed. This ensures that multiple stakeholders can contribute to content while key design elements remain protected. Plus, Korbyt Anywhere’s detailed user activity logs provide complete transparency and accountability for every action taken in the system.
Scale Digital Signage Content Faster with Multi-Layer Embedding
Korbyt Anywhere’s multi-layer embedding capabilities allow you to build highly customized content flows that suit diverse environments — from an enterprise with hundreds of screens to an expansive university campus. For example, you can show a primary Layout on all your screens with an embedded Playlist Element that rotates between numerous other Layouts. This layered approach ensures that content remains adaptable and scalable, regardless of how many screens or zones need to be managed.
With Korbyt Anywhere, the content possibilities are endless. Learn more about our digital signage solutions.
