This guide provides an overview of the three main bulletin types in Carousel Cloud, the benefits of each, and some tips and tricks to get the most out of them.
Template Bulletins
All of Carousel’s channels include a variety of bulletin templates to work with, but if you’re creative, you can always make your own!
Benefits of Using Templated Bulletins
Pre-made templates provide users with helpful prompts. Other content managers simply fill in the blanks.
You can easily edit content and re-publish with a few clicks.
Templates, with the use of text blocks, help keep messages short & sweet. This allows your audience to quickly & easily absorb the information as they pass by.
Templates give you more control over your brand identity.
Templates make it easy for users to publish content without needing to be creative.
Pro Tips for Template Bulletins
By default, templates maintain the original aspect ratio of your images and videos, unless otherwise specified. This keeps content from stretching or squeezing.
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Create Templates in Desired Zone > Templates > Orange New Button
Uploaded Bulletins
You can upload many different kinds of content directly from your computer into Carousel Cloud as a bulletin.
Benefits of Using Uploaded Bulletins
Reuse content that was originally made for other purposes that you already have on hand.
If the specific font you want to use is not one of our curated fonts, you can create content outside of Carousel Cloud and simply upload it to achieve the look you want.
Create more advanced graphics in the software your team already uses and then upload them to Carousel Cloud.
Pro Tips for Uploaded Bulletins
These are the supported file types you can upload to Carousel Cloud.
Uploaded content will stretch or squeeze to fill the entire zone, so be mindful of the zone’s aspect ratio.
Uploaded bulletins cannot be edited inside Carousel Cloud. You must edit the content where it was created.
There is a 2 GB limit per upload. If you have large video files, they may need to be split into smaller chunks and uploaded as separate bulletins. To help reduce video file size, check out how to optimize your videos using free software called Handbrake.
Dynamic Bulletins
Using Dynamic Bulletins in Carousel Cloud is a great way to automatically keep your content up-to-date.
Benefits of Using Dynamic Bulletins
Content is automatically updated. The default update check timer is every 15 minutes.
Using dynamic bulletins helps keep your signage fresh and relevant.
As shown in the screenshot above, dynamic bulletins allow you to pull in information from a variety of sources.
Pro Tips for Dynamic Bulletins
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Make sure the zone dimensions where your dynamic bulletin will be located are large enough to accommodate all of the items in the event bulletin Layout tab, including any possible long event titles. If the zone where the event bulletin is located is too small to display all of the items in the dynamic bulletin layout, rendering errors will occur.
Players support different types of dynamic bulletins, so check the following link to see what your players support: Carousel Cloud Feature Support by Player Type
To maintain audience engagement, it is generally recommended to have at least one dynamic bulletin type on each channel. A “word of the day” RSS feed, our Fresh Feed bulletin, an event bulletin, or even a clock or weather bulletin will help train your audience to look at your displays when dynamic content is shown.