Note: This is a premium feature or service. This article only applies to your community if your Firstup contract includes this premium functionality. Please contact your Customer Success Manager with any questions about feature availability for your community.

This article provides an overview of microapp digital signage best practices. For details on how to configure microapps for your community, check out this article.

Firstup Digital Signage Solutions

Firstup Microapp widgets can be used to power content on Digital Signage and Kiosk screens without any extensive integration work. All content can be published centrally within our web based administrative interface, Studio, where communication for all your digital endpoints such as mobile apps, email, intranet and other web based endpoints are created and managed. Firstup does not provide direct support for any hardware such as TV screens, cables or media players.

Microapps are agnostic to the hardware used. However, the primary requirement to be able to display our microapps is that your screens should be web enabled and able to display a URL. This could mean placing our microapp URL in:

• TVs/Displays connected to computers/desktops/laptops
• Screens connected to media players
• Existing digital signage software (Brightsign, Screencloud, Spectrio, etc)
• Smart TVs (Sony, Samsung, or LG) with system on a chip integration with compatible browsers. TVs should be manufactured on or after 2021. Older TVs and non SoC TVs are not supported.

For organizations that do not plan to use any of the above options, they can power their existing TVs with devices such as Raspberry Pi and other micro-computers with standard browsers. Other players such as Chromebook and Apple TV can be used if they have compatible browsers. Firstup does not provide or provide direct support for any hardware such as media players and does not recommend Firesticks specifically.

With whichever device you choose, you’ll need to ensure:

• It is connected to the internet
• Has a compatible browser (we support recent versions of the major browsers such as Edge/Chrome/Safari/Firefox
• Can display an HTML5 page

In some cases, customers may need to ensure there is a protocol to bring up the browser with the microapp in case of a system restart or power interruption. Customers may also need to ensure there are no other interruptions such as the system falling ‘asleep’ etc. If you have questions about how your current setup would work with our digital signage options, please contact your Firstup representative.

Once the setup is complete on your device of choice, you will not need to make any ongoing or additional changes to the device configuration. All content will be published and targeted from the Studio interface and will automatically be displayed on the screens; any adjustments to the content (targeting, layout, etc) will be made directly in Firstup Studio.

Depending on the content strategy and screen locations, you can place:

• The same microapp URL on all the devices/screens. This will let you publish the same content across all screens
• A different microapp URL for sets of screens. For example - all screens in HQ will have the same microapp URL, all screens in Warehouse 12 will have a different microapp URL, etc. This will allow you to publish a combination of global and local content based on the location of those screens. This is the most common setup.
• A different microapp URL for each screen. This will give you the ability to control what is displayed on each screen.
• The microapp takes up the whole browser screen. If the microapp is placed in an existing digital signage software, it can be placed in part of the screen while other parts display other information.

Other things to consider:

• Not all microapp templates may work well with your screen layout, you would need to choose the best available template based on the screen and content.
• While the Firstup platform helps you publish once to all endpoints (mobile, email, web, digital signage etc), you may need to follow some best practices specifically for digital signage since they are a unique endpoint. For example, uploading low resolution images may work for all other endpoints, but will not look great on a large signage screen.
• Some digital signage screens may be touch screens, in which case you would have to consider which authentication options work best for your setup and content strategy.

Video

Check out the video below for an overview of how to create microapps for digital signage in Studio.