We are excited to announce that our development team is just wrapping up Carousel 5.1!  We will be moving into Beta soon, therefore, we are looking for some vanguard users that are geared up to take the maiden voyage through 5.1. 

Carousel 5.1 Features

• Enhanced housekeeping features allow you to delete bulletins in bulk by type, user, and zone.
• File downloading in the Display Engine has been optimized so that smaller files are downloaded first, saving the larger files for later.  As a result the content is displayed in a more timely matter due to the prioritization by file size.
• Multiple tags may be added to Zones and Media.
• The Carousel Service is much more efficient when procuring data from the database, which allows Carousel to scale larger installations.
• All timezones are represented and can be assigned to various zones.

The list above are just a few of the enhancements made to 5.1.  Additionally, there have been several minor improvements and bug fixes.  The complete list of release notes can be viewed at the conclusion of this post.

Requirements for Carousel Beta 5.1 Participation

• You must be currently running Carousel 5.0
• The ability to work with TRMS staff describing and trouble shooting problems that you may encounter.
• You will need to send weekly emails to beta@trms.com updating us on your Beta testing.
• Acceptance that your system may be unstable.

Steps For Becoming a Beta Tester

• If you have not already completed the Customer Registration form, print a copy and fax it to (612)-866-4110.  Http://www.trms.com/support/CustomerRegistration.pdf
• Send an email to beta@trms.com expressing your interest in Beta testing Carousel 5.1.  Please include the current version number that you are running, your average number of bulletins, the number of channels and zones that make up your system, and whether or not you have Cablecast.

We look forward to your input on Carousel.  Happy testing! 

Release Notes-Carousel: 5.1.0 Beta

New -1494:  Bulk adding of tags to Zones and Media

You can now add several tags to Zones/Media in a single field by separating them with a comma, rather than adding them one at a time.

New -1515:  A Zone’s RSS output can be enabled or disabled

The RSS feed for zones can be disabled to prevent subscriptions to that zone.  You can find this setting in the Zone Settings screen, under the "Other Zone Outputs" area.

New -1516:  Transition Previews appear in setup menus

A small preview of the transition can be seen in the zone transitions list, and when selecting the default transition for a zone.

New -1525:  Robust Housekeeping options

Allows users to delete bulletins in bulk by bulletin type, including Active, Stale, Saved, and Waiting bulletins.  You may also specify deletion for all users, for all zones, for a particular user, or for a selected zone.

New -1532: Display Engine versions reported in the WebUI

The version of each connected Display Engine is visible on the "Display Engine Registration" web page.  Now you can quickly determine which of your players need to be updated.

New -1291: Bulletins have a ‘Last Updated’ field in the database

Users should go in and re-edit their bulletins with web pictures to update the "IsDynamic" field otherwise the pictures will not get updated by the service.

New -1325: Optimized file downloading in the Display Engine

The Display Engine downloads smaller files from the server first, saving the larger files for later.  This is so the Display Engine can display content as quickly as possible, rather than waiting for larger files to finish downloading.

New -1374:  More efficient "caching" of data in service

The Carousel service is much faster when procuring data from the database, which allows Carousel to scale to larger installations.

New -1595:  Repeating bulletins now obey the proper repeat interval

Repeating bulletins will now intersperse themselves between each and every bulletin, rather than only between groups of bulletins.  This works even when the repeat interval is greater than the total number of bulletins within the list.

New -1503:  Carousel represents all timezones

It is now possible to assign any timezone in the world to each zone via the Zone Configuration screen.