We are announcing a new feature in Carousel 5.2… Interactive bulletins. Interactivity is an idea that we have been trying to tackle for a while now. We wanted to make sure we did it the ‘Carousel’ way, so here is what we did…

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Interactive bulletins allow Carousel users to upload or link to interactive content. This interactive content is displayed on a Carousel player and allows the viewer to interact with the digital signage. There are many different applications for interactivity including way finding, digital directories, and many more.

Note: You will need a touch panel display for interactivity to work properly.

The Carousel Display Engine composites Internet Explorer together with the rest of the digital signage channel. This allows you to place interactive bulletins into any zone, alert bulletin, or full screen alert. You can also schedule different interactive content just like you would schedule any bulletin in Carousel. This is powerful and simple. Because Carousel is using Internet Explorer, the interactive content can be anything a standard web browser can display; web pages, dynamic web pages, flash animations, etc. Carousel is not locked into any proprietary technologies.

Note: Carousel does not allow you to create interactive content, it just displays it. We decided using web standards for interactive content was a more powerful and flexible option for content creators.

Note: Interactive bulletins are licensed on a per channel basis. If you
do not have the Interactive bulletin option contact Tightrope sales.

To specify the interactive content you can either enter the Interactive URL which is a link to a the interactive content or Upload a file. This interactive content can be any web page, flash animation, or web element. The uploaded file is a .zip archive of content. This archive is extracted then hosted on the Carousel server and served the players with Internet Information Server (IIS).

Figure: Interactive bulletin options

The Inactivity timeout allows you to set a duration of inactivity before Carousel will reset this bulletin. After there has been a specified time of inactivity Carousel will either go to the next bulletin in the rotation or navigate back to the Interactive URL. This will ‘reset’ the interactive content back to the main screen.

Note: If the Inactivity timeout is set to ’0′ (zero) Carousel will never time out. This is used if your interactive content has it’s own timeout routine, or it is not desired to reset.

Note: The Carousel Display Engine will normally exit if you double-click the mouse or hold the Escape key. When there is interactive content double-clicking is disabled so users can’t accidentally close the display. To exit the Display Engine you will have to hold the Escape key.

Carousel sets the web browser to the size of the zone that is displaying the content. As you create content make sure you target the resolution of that zone. Carousel disables the built in scroll bars and navigation buttons, so that functionality will need to be built into the content if it extends past the zone resolution. For more tips on creating interactive content, check out our blog and forum.

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If anyone is interested in seeing some inner workings of TRMS, I made a prototype video of interactivity for our staff and and beta customers to show them how the feature would work. You can check it out if you would like. Interactive bulletins internal screencast