Curation
Announcements for the people on your server, and the featured sections that make up their home screens.
Written for highsea 0.1.0.
Curation decides what people see first: announcements, such as movie night, a restart or a new address, and the featured sections that make up every home screen. Owners and Admins can use it.
It has two tabs, Announcements and Featured sections, with New announcement or New section at the top.
Where they show today
highsea 0.1.0 has no apps for watching yet; the web, desktop, phone and TV apps come later. Until then:
- Announcements show in the admin, as a banner above every page, when they're placed as a Banner and their audience includes the admin. The other places are for highsea's apps and show once those arrive.
- Featured sections show in the preview beside the composer. highsea's apps will read them for their home screens.
The preview is the best way to see what you've made.
Announcements
Write an announcement
- Open Curation and choose New announcement.
- Write a Title, up to 80 characters. It's the first thing people read.
- Write the Message.
**bold**,_italic_and[links](https://…)work here. - Optionally, choose an Image: a backdrop from your library, shown with the dialog and on a TV's screen.
- Optionally, turn on Add a button and give it a Button label and a Link starting with
https://. - Choose How important: Info, Notice, Warning or Critical. Warnings and critical ones take their colour in banners, so they stand out.
- Choose Where it shows (see below).
- Choose Who sees it and When (see below).
- Choose Publish, or Schedule when it starts later. Save as draft keeps it without showing it to anyone.
A draft needs only a title. Anything missing for publishing is pointed out beside its field.
Where it shows
- Banner: above the page on the web, desktop and the admin.
- Home card: a card under the header on phones.
- Toast: a short notice on the web and desktop, shown once.
On TV, the newest announcement shows as a pill at the top of Home, whatever you choose here.
Turn on Everyone has to acknowledge it for things people must not miss. The announcement then opens as a dialog with only Got it, and on TV as a screen of its own before Home. In the admin, its banner has Got it instead of a close button.
Who sees it
- Everyone.
- Roles: any of Owners, Admins and Users.
- People: the people you tick.
- Apps: any of TVs, Phones and tablets, Web and desktop and The admin.
When
- Start now, or Start later at a date and time.
- No end, or End at a date and time. The end has to come after the start.
A scheduled announcement goes out on its own at the start time and comes down at the end. highsea checks every hour, and once more at each start and end; it's the Start and end announcements and featured sections task under System.
The list
Each announcement is a card, live ones first, then scheduled, drafts and ended. It shows its status (Live, Scheduled, Draft or Ended), Must acknowledge when that's required, where it shows, its audience and its schedule.
The card also shows its reach: Seen by 2 of 5, or Acknowledged by when it must be acknowledged, or Not shown yet. Reach counts people, not devices, and updates as people close or acknowledge it.
Change, end or delete an announcement
- Edit opens the composer. Save changes applies them at once to a live announcement.
- End now, in the card's menu, takes it off every screen and keeps it, with its reach, as Ended. Ending a scheduled one means it never goes out.
- Delete, in the card's menu, removes it from every screen along with the record of who saw it. To keep the record, end it instead.
Featured sections
Sections make up every home screen: a hero at the top, then rows and spotlights.
Add a section
- Open Curation, then Featured sections, and choose New section.
- Give it a Title. It shows above its titles.
- Optionally, fill in After the title: a shorter line in a lighter weight, such as who picked it or what ties it together.
- Choose a Layout:
- Hero: the top of every home screen, with big artwork, the title and Play. The first hero in the order fills it; another hero shows as a row.
- Row: a row of posters.
- Spotlight: wider cards with a line of synopsis, for a theme. Phones show it as a row.
- Choose Where the titles come from: Pick them or Use a rule (see below).
- For a hero, you can write Taglines on the hero: a line of your own for each title in place of its synopsis. Leave one empty to use the synopsis.
- Choose Who sees it and When, as for an announcement.
- Choose Add to home.
Pick titles by hand
Under Add titles, search the library by title and choose Add. Only titles with a file show up, since they're the ones people can play. Reorder the picked titles by their drag handles, or remove any you no longer want.
Use a rule
A rule keeps a section fresh as the library changes:
- Recently added, in the last 7, 30 or 90 days, newest first.
- A genre, best rated first.
- A collection: your own collections first, then TMDB's, in release order.
The composer shows what the rule picks right now. A rule that picks nothing hides the section until something matches.
Order the sections
The Featured sections tab lists sections in home-screen order. Drag a section by its handle to move it, or press Space on the handle, move it with the Up and Down arrows, and press Space again to drop it. The new order is saved as soon as you drop it. Continue watching always comes right after the hero.
Change or delete a section
Edit opens the composer; Save changes applies it. Delete, on the card or in the composer, asks first, then removes the section from every home screen; the titles in it stay in the library.
Preview
Both composers have a Preview beside the form, or below it on a narrow screen. It draws a home screen as someone would see it, with your draft as it stands, and follows as you type.
- Preview on: TV, Web or Mobile.
- Preview as: anyone with an account on your server, starting with you.
The preview shows the draft as if it were live, whatever its schedule. The announcement preview leaves other announcements out, and the section preview leaves announcements out. If the person isn't in the audience on that kind of app, the preview says so.
Nothing changes for anyone until you save.