What are Zone Tags?
Zone tags are keywords that describe a zone. These tags are unique to each system and are used in various ways. Tagging zones is extremely important, especially in larger systems, and should be discussed prior to any roll-out of the signage. While it’s not impossible to add zone tags down the road, it will save a lot of time, energy and confusion by thinking through how you can implement zone tags from the beginning.
Where do I add zone tags?
Zone tags are added in the zone configuration menu. Access it by simply logging into Carousel, clicking on your name in the upper right, then selecting Configure.
Then, select Zones.
Select the edit button next to the Zone to which you would like to add tags.
From here, you can see the tags that are already present, and add new and existing tags to the zone.
Why are zone tags important you may ask?
There are two primary functions of zone tags that set you up for success.
User Access Rights Assignment
As you add more and more users to your system to contribute content to your Carousel signage, zone tags allow you to simply assign rights to a zone tag to give users access to any zone that is tagged with that specific zone tag.
Examples:
Regional Locations
Your company has signage in multiple locations around the region (North, East, South, and West Campus). Each location has 3 unique channels located in the lobby, the breakroom, and the elevator platform. Also, each regional location has multiple employees contributing content to these channels. In this example, if you tagged all of the North Campus zones with North Campus, you could easily assign rights to the North Campus zone tag for North Campus users and they would then only see and have access to all of the zones on the North Campus.
If six months down the road, you add a new display in your North Campus with a new channel and tag those zones with “North Campus,” your North Campus users will automatically have access to the zones on the new channel without having to edit access rights.
Locations within your facility
Your company has signage in the lobby, breakroom, and warehouse. You want the receptionist to be able to upload content to the lobby displays only. In this example, if the zones on the lobby channel were tagged Lobby you could easily assign the receptionist access rights to the Lobby zone tag. The receptionist will only has access to the lobby zones which means they can't see nor access the breakroom or warehouse zones
Three months later, you add another display to the lobby to run a video reel of recent projects and tag the zones on that channel with “Lobby,” your receptionist would automatically gain rights to these zones as well without you having to edit access rights.
Zone Filtering in the UI
As your system grows and you add more channels, you will naturally have a much larger list of zones to scroll through to find the one you need. By using zone tags, you can easily filter the list of zones which saves time and makes the experience with the user interface more efficient and organized.
Examples:
Specific Locations
Your company has digital signage in all buildings and each building has their own channel. Example tags could be: Headquarters, Research and Development and Mission Control. To create and publish a bulletin on a Headquarters zone, if tagged properly, you’d select the Headquarters tag and the zone selector would filter from All Zones to Headquarters zones only.
Department
Your company has digital signage throughout their building, utilizing only 1 channel. On this channel, there are 4 zones, and specific departments maintain each zone: Human Resources, Training, Sales and Support. When you need to create and publish a bulletin on the Training zone, if tagged properly, you’d select the Training tag and the zone selector would filter from All Zones to Training zones only.
Shared Zones
Your company has digital signage across the nation with a channel at each branch. The channels are designed to have several local zones & 1 corporate zone. The local zones are used to display local branch content. These zones are unique at each branch and managed by branch employees. The corporate zone is shared on all channels and is managed by an employee at headquarters. When the corporate zone is updated with corporate messaging, it updates across all channels. Tags used in this scenario could be the branch location names (city name, street name, etc.), and for the corporate zone, the tag used could be named “Corporate” or “Shared” or the company name.