Managing Large Digital Signage Networks and Content

More businesses than ever are using multiple digital signage screens to display content across a variety of uses and locations.

In fact, the very nature of business digital signage means that there are often multiple screens and different sites and locations. This might be between a manufacturing center, logistics hub and head office; a network of offices and departments in different cities, retail stores, or multiple dispatch centers in different states or countries. 

Managing hundreds of screens needs an efficient solution, and cloud based digital signage such as ScreenCloud takes away the hassle with connecting all those screens. 

We’re going to take a look at the features you need to manage an enterprise digital signage network, and keep that display network running smoothly.

What are the important features of a large digital signage network?

Multi-site digital signage has become a big feature for businesses of all sizes; Whether thats connecting retail stores, offices or manufacturing hubs, a network of screens across high traffic areas such as airports or train stations, or looking at digital signage for effective communication in enterprise settings.

When it comes to managing multiple screens for digital signage, there are typically five focus concerns:

1. Ease of Setup/Scalability: Rapid deployment across multiple sites.
2. Functionality and Ease of Use: Centralized control with local content flexibility.
3. Security: Enterprise-grade compliance and access controls.
4. Cost-Efficiency: Reducing the need for on-site maintenance.
5. Access to Support: Professional assistance for complex rollouts.

In addition to these key features, enterprise IT managers will also factor in useful features such as remote device management (RDM) for multi-site setups. This can be a huge time (and stress) saver, allowing teams to manage and troubleshoot devices without needing to visit a site or co-ordinate with local managers. 

Lets look at how these features impact the workload in the real world workplace. 

How easy is it to launch a large digital signage network?

Setting up a digital signage network across multiple locations has been made a lot simpler thanks to cloud based software such as ScreenCloud. The entire focus of cloud based digital signage such as ScreenCloud is simplicity, even at scale.

Whether you already have the hardware available, or you’re buying in new screens and media players, rolling out your multi-site digital signage is a straightforward plug-and-play based process with ScreenCloud.

1. Hardware: Select your display hardware. ScreenCloud connects to popular smart TV screens such as Samsung Tizen, LG webOS and Sony Bravia -  but for best results and control a media player should be used.
2. Connect Your Media Player: ScreenCloud is hardware-agnostic, but we highly recommend the purpose-built Station P1 Pro powered by ScreenCloud OS or PIXI for the best performance and RDM capabilities across your network.
3. Software: If using smart TVs or non-ScreenCloud media players, you’ll need to install the ScreenCloud Digital Signage Player app on your chosen device (available on Amazon’s Fire OS, Android, Chrome OS, Windows and more). If you’re using our proprietary devices you can skip this step as they will plug-and-play straight away.
4. Screen Pairing: Once the Player app is running, you'll be given a unique 6-character pairing code. Enter this code into your ScreenCloud Studio account to instantly connect and activate the display on your network.

Read more about ScreenCloud hardware compatibility.

How to monitor and manage a large signage network

Keeping an eye on multiple screens isn’t as challenging as it used to be. These days, live status notifications keep you up to date with whats happening on your screens, wherever they are.

ScreenCloud Studio is where you manage all of your screens - and while we do offer 99% glitch-free operation, sometimes the unexpected can happen. And thats when it’s good to know that these features will keep your screens running smoothly…

Screen monitoring: Know your screen status

When managing hundreds of screens, the error code is your enemy - whether thats a blue screen of death, loading page, Windows desktop screen or other non-useful display. Thankfully, ScreenCloud is built to make sure this doesn’t happen to you…

Within the Screens section of the ScreenCloud dashboard, offline/online indicators provide real-time status updates on whether a screen device has a network connection and is correctly communicating with your account and ScreenCloud servers.

You can also setup notifications to ensure you’re alerted when anything goes offline or if something needs your attention.

Cache is King: Offline displays

ScreenCloud offers full offline caching for all static assets (images, videos, documents, and applications like Canvas). This means if a screen drops its network connection, the content will continue to play uninterrupted. 

While streamed media (like live feeds) are an exception, this feature is vital for maintaining uptime across a distributed digital signage network.

If a screen appears totally blank, the quickest troubleshooting steps are to remotely restart the device or clear the cache.

Remote Device Management (RDM)

For enterprise IT teams, RDM tools are essential for managing large digital signage networks. ScreenCloud devices have Remote Device Management built in, which allows you to remotely:

• Check the connection status of your screens.
• Run remote diagnostics.
• Remotely reboot and troubleshoot devices.

Note: To effectively manage your devices remotely, you must use a remote-enabled media player, such as the Station P1 Pro (powered by ScreenCloud OS) or PIXI, which have RDM functionality built in, allowing you to update, reboot, and troubleshoot without a physical presence.

Controlling network access and permissions

When you manage large digital signage networks, it’s not always on the IT team to create the content or manage the displays. Which means that you need granular control over who can access which screens and content. 

ScreenCloud provides a sophisticated 3-in-1 solution: Roles, Spaces, and Groups. These allow screen managers to give specific people or teams access to certain screens, zones or permissions.

Spaces: Structuring your network

Spaces allows you to subdivide your single ScreenCloud account into 'mini-accounts.' This is crucial for large, multi-site organizations because it consolidates billing, security, logins, and SSO under one master account while effectively firewalling different locations or departments from one another. 

You can organize your network into logical units like "Global Space," "Logistics Hub," or "Location #1 Space," enabling location-specific content and screen management.

Roles & Groups

• Roles: Allows you to define specific access levels and permissions for team members.
• Groups: These are teams of users attributed to any number of Spaces, with individualized permissions (e.g., creator, viewer, manager, admin).

Restricting global permissions ensures that your Content HQ maintains total control over core brand content. But the HQ team can also empower local teams to manage their own localized content efficiently within their designated Spaces.

This is great for large organizations with specific local departments, for example a gym franchise managing nationwide promotions, but also local events; or a courier and logistics center sharing company wide information, but local schedules and targets. 

Another great use is for display resellers, who might have clients in different locations or industries. They might want to show broader messaging across all screens, but also allow clients to display their own content too - without affecting the network wide messaging.

Sharing is Caring: Content localization at scale

For company-wide messaging, you can share global Channels between Spaces as "read-only." 

This is ideal for sharing corporate Playlists into each local team’s Space, allowing local teams to add their unique content around the global content without being able to modify the core corporate messaging.

Multi-screen management housekeeping

When it comes to keeping track of your screens and network, sticking to rigid naming conventions is going to be important.  As you’ll be remotely managing hundreds of screens, make sure naming is clear. For example, name your screen after its exact location (e.g., “LA Office#2-Reception-Left”). 

You can then use the drag-and-drop feature to organize your dashboard view by location or content type.

Multiple screen content management

Specialized digital signage software simplifies a content management system across a large network. When it comes to creating or managing your digital signage content, some of the ScreenCloud features to streamline the process include:

• Multi-Select: Quickly cast new content or set specific Channels across multiple screens simultaneously by multi-selecting devices. This dramatically speeds up network-wide updates.
• Content Scheduling and Expiry: Use media availability settings to schedule content and set automatic expiry dates (e.g., for seasonal campaigns). The Playlist will skip expired content, eliminating the need for manual removal.
• Customization and Integration: Use the search function to find assets quickly. For bespoke needs, ScreenCloud’s GraphQL API allows your team to build custom integrations with unique enterprise systems that are not yet available in the app marketplace.
• Connect Data and Content Sources: With over 80 ready to go apps, you can pull real time updates and data from a huge range of sources, from RSS feeds to data dashboards, social media or live news - and more...
• Stay on Brand with Canvas: The Canvas app allows non-design teams to create compliant content instantly using branded templates, ensuring consistency across every screen in your digital signage network.
• AI-Powered Digital Signage Content: Our QuickPost app is designed to speed up the process, creating professional looking displays in seconds. Add your text and images, select the style and QuickPost does the rest.

Whats more, you can easily mix and match your displays, allowing you to customize your signage as you need. Create content for specific audiences, with one set of screens for your production team, and another set of screens for your high traffic public facing network.

Check out this video guide for a run through.

Enterprise security: Securing your digital signage network

Security is non-negotiable when you manage large digital signage networks. And ScreenCloud is built for this at scale:

• Enterprise-Grade Compliance: ScreenCloud is SOC 2 Type II compliant, with further certifications like SOC 3 Type II and adherence to ISO 27000 standards, ensuring trust and data protection.
• Data Protection: ScreenCloud's CMS platform offers various levels of end-to-end encryption for data storage and transmission.
• Access Control Countermeasures:
• Roles and SSO: Enforce correct user permissions, use Single Sign-On (SSO) for secure access, and utilize deep provisioning to automatically deactivate user access upon departure. Audit logs provide a record of all actions taken within the system.
• Kiosk Mode: Use remote management to run the ScreenCloud Player in Kiosk Mode on devices like the Station P1 Pro. This means nothing else can run on the screen except ScreenCloud, preventing screen hijacking.

Find out more about ScreenCloud's security credentials.

Enterprise digital signage hardware for network reliability

While ScreenCloud is hardware-agnostic, allowing you to mix and match devices across your network, dedicated hardware is recommended for large scale digital signage.

Our own ScreenCloud OS devices are purpose-built for digital signage, offering unmatched reliability, full RDM capabilities, and seamless integration required to manage large digital signage networks efficiently.

ScreenCloud professional services

For the most complex and global enterprise digital signage deployments, our Professional Services team offers a hands-on, strategic approach. They work with your own team to ensure your digital signage roll out is a success from the get go.

They'll discuss your strategic digital signage plans and assist with creating custom app development and system integrations, ensuring a smooth, tailored rollout of your large digital signage network.

In fact, our pro-services team are not just here to get you started. We're the only digital signage provider to offer ongoing after sales support, working with you as your network grows to make sure you're getting the best from your screens.

Try ScreenCloud for your large digital signage network

We get it. Launching a large scale digital signage network is daunting, and you want to be sure you're choosing the right partner for optimal success. And with ScreenCloud, your in good hands.

We already power some of the biggest global enterprise with multi-site screens, connecting teams at Coca-Cola Consolidated, Orbia and Compass Group, among many others.

And with a digital signage solution designed for a huge variety of industries, ScreenCloud offers unrivalled functionality and crucially after-launch support.

Try ScreenCloud for free for 14 days, or book a demo today.