Here are some observations that, unfortunately, reveal some major shortcomings with the new scheduler.
PLEASE read the following conversation I had with Tech Support. I hope that you can understand what is trying to be articulated here. If not, please, please contact me so I can try to explain. THANK YOU!!!
14:44 Ray: The schedulder has been set up assuming that a sequence or timeline will play out for however long and by setting a higher priority on a certain day or time to interrupt and play something different and then revert back. This poses a huge problem for businesses that operate 24 hours a day and need lots of different timelines that are product/service time sensitive to play.
14:46 Stein S: im not sure i understand. so what are you not able to do with the current setup?
14:48 Ray: Ok, timeline 1 will play for two minutes and does not contain any time sensitive items. Timeline 2 is simply a Happy Thanksgiving and will need to play from now until midnight of Nov. 28. I create sequence 1 with timeline 1 and sequence 2 with timeline 2 (the Thanksgiving item).
14:49 Ray: I want to run sequence 1 from now until June of 2015 and run sequence 2 from now until Nov 28, 2014.
14:50 Stein S: do you need to play timeline 1 for two minutes then timeline 2after? and the two of them repeating one after the other until nov 28?
14:50 Ray: If each sequence is only two minutes in length for a total of four minutes, how do I add them to the scheduler so that they play one after the other every day until sequence 2 expires.
14:51 Ray: See, we really need a scheduler that acts more like a sequencer.
14:52 Ray: ...and allows many sequenced to be scheduled with start/stop days and time and then added to a playlist.
14:54 Stein S: we can only have sequences scheduled on specific dates and times
14:55 Ray: Ok, but what if the total time between two sequences is only 4 minutes in a 24 hour period. How do you get the two sequences to repeat one after the other for the whole 24 hour period.
14:57 Ray: This is where a playlist would make a lot of sense.
14:57 Stein S: what you need to do is add all the timelines in a single sequence
15:02 Ray: I see what you are suggesting. Add all timelines to seq 1 and schedule it until Nov. 28th so the Happy Thanksgiving plays until then. Then add seq 2 with all timelines except the Thanksgiving and schedule it to play from the 28th on.
15:11 Ray: ...NOW, try this with 10 items that expire at different times in a 10 day period. Talk about everything getting very difficult to keep track of. NOW, multiply this scenario by 20 different clients or campaigns. This is why I say that a sequence or timeline should have all of the start/stop time parameters and then be added to a playlist that plays them all out according to those time parameters. When one expires, it just drops off the playlist.
