Tag-based playlists

Tag-Based Playlists — User Guide

Tag-based playlists keep a playlist's content up to date automatically, based on the tags you put on your media and scenes. Instead of dragging items into a playlist by hand every time something changes, you tell the playlist "show everything tagged Promo" — and the playlist looks after itself.

When you tag new content with Promo, it appears in the playlist. When you remove the tag (or delete the content), it disappears. If you turn on auto-publish, the screens already showing that playlist are updated for you too.

When to use a tag-based playlist

Tag-based playlists are a great fit when:

• You add and retire content often (weekly promos, seasonal offers, news items).
• Several people contribute content and you want it to appear without anyone re-editing the playlist.
• You want one playlist per "theme" (e.g. one per store, campaign, or department) and let tags decide what goes where.

If your playlist content rarely changes, a normal hand-curated playlist is perfectly fine — you don't need tag-based sources.

How it works in a nutshell

1. You create tags and apply them to media files and scenes.
2. In a playlist, you add one or more tags as tag-based sources.
3. Any content carrying one of those tags is added to the playlist automatically as a managed item.
4. Whenever tagged content changes, the playlist reconciles itself:
   • newly tagged content is added,
   • untagged or deleted content is removed.
5. If auto-publish is enabled, the playlist is re-published to every screen currently showing it, so the displays update without any manual step.

Managed items (the ones added by a tag) live alongside any items you add manually. Your manual items are never touched by the automation.

Step 1 — Tag your content

Tags are the link between your content and your tag-based playlists.

Tagging media files

1. Go to the Media library.
2. Select one or more files (use the checkboxes for several at once).
3. Click Add tags.
4. Pick the tag(s) you want to apply and confirm.

Bulk tagging adds tags — it never removes the tags a file already has.

Tagging scenes

The same flow is available from the Scenes list:

1. Select one or more scenes.
2. Click Add tags.
3. Choose the tag(s) and confirm.

Removing a tag

Open the item and remove the tag from it. As soon as the tag is gone, the item is removed from any tag-based playlist that was pulling it in via that tag.

Step 2 — Add a tag as a source

1. Open the playlist you want to make tag-based in the Playlist editor.
2. Expand the Tag-based sources section.
3. In Add a tag source, choose a tag.

That's it — every file and scene currently carrying that tag is added to the playlist immediately, and the playlist will keep itself in sync from now on.

You can add multiple tag sources to the same playlist. The playlist then contains everything matching any of those tags.

Shared content appears only once. If a single file or scene matches more than one of your tag sources, it's added to the playlist a single time (the first matching source "owns" it). You won't get duplicates.

Step 3 — Configure each tag source

Each tag source you add has its own settings.

Image duration

Images don't have a natural length, so each tag source defines how long each image it adds is shown on screen. Click the Image: … chip on the source to change it. The default is 30 seconds.

• This applies to image files pulled in by that source.
• Videos play for their natural length and are unaffected.
• Presentations (PDFs) use a per-page duration automatically.

If you change a source's image duration later, the images it already added are updated to the new duration.

Auto-publish

Each tag source has an Auto-publish switch (on by default).

• On — when this source's content changes, the playlist is automatically re-published to every screen already showing it. The displays update on their own, with no manual publish step.
• Off — the playlist content still updates in the editor, but the screens are not refreshed automatically. You'll need to publish the playlist yourself when you're ready for the change to go live.

Use off when you want to review changes before they reach the screens, and on when you want truly hands-off updates.

Removing a tag source

Click the delete (trash) icon next to a source to remove it. All items that were added by that tag are removed from the playlist. Any items you added manually stay in place.

Step 4 — Watch the automatic change history

Once a playlist has at least one tag-based source, an Automatic change history section appears in the editor. It lists the most recent automatic changes, with:

• an Added or Removed badge,
• which content was affected (click to open the file or scene),
• a Re-published badge when that change was pushed to screens,
• the date and time it happened.

This is the easiest way to confirm that tagging an item actually updated the playlist — and whether the screens were refreshed.

A typical workflow

Imagine a "Weekly Promotions" screen:

1. Create a tag called Weekly Promo.
2. Open the Weekly Promotions playlist and add Weekly Promo as a tag-based source, with Auto-publish on.
3. Publish the playlist to your screens once.

From now on:

• A colleague uploads a new promo image and tags it Weekly Promo → it appears on the playlist and on every screen showing it within moments.
• A promo ends → you remove the Weekly Promo tag (or delete the file) and it disappears from the screens automatically.

Nobody needs to open the playlist editor again to keep the screens current.

Tips and good practices

• Name tags by purpose, not by file. Tags like Lobby, Summer Sale, or Menu describe where/when content should appear and make tag-based sources intuitive.
• Combine tag-based and manual content. You can keep a fixed intro or a permanent welcome scene as a manual item, and let a tag fill in the rest.
• Use auto-publish off for review. For high-visibility screens, leave auto-publish off, review the change history, then publish on your schedule.
• Check the history if something's missing. If a newly tagged item doesn't show up, confirm the tag matches a source exactly and look at the change history for what was added or removed.

Frequently asked questions

Will tag-based sources delete the items I added by hand? No. Only managed items (those added by a tag source) are added or removed automatically. Your manual items are left untouched.

What happens if I delete a tag entirely? Content that had that tag stops matching the source, so those managed items are removed from the playlists that used the tag.

Can one playlist use several tags? Yes. Add as many tag sources as you like; the playlist shows content matching any of them, with duplicates removed.

Does auto-publish create new schedules? No. It only refreshes the screens that are already showing the playlist. It won't start showing the playlist on screens that weren't already displaying it.

Why didn't my screens update? Make sure Auto-publish is on for the relevant tag source. If it's off, the playlist updates in the editor but you must publish manually for the change to reach the screens.