Cyclogram (Playback Forecast)
A cyclogram is a visual forecast of what ads will play on a specific screen at a given point in time. It shows the computed playback sequence based on current campaign settings, playlists, and schedules.
Use the cyclogram to verify your scheduling before it goes live and to detect problems such as overbooking or missing content.
A Cyclogram Is a Forecast, Not a Record
A cyclogram answers one question: what would this screen broadcast if the clock stood at this moment? It never answers what this screen did broadcast.
Nothing in a cyclogram was ever played. The slots it lists produce no impressions, appear in no export and reach no invoice. For what actually went to air, use Ad Play Statistics, which is built from the plays the players reported back.
Three properties of the forecast follow from this, and each of them catches somebody out sooner or later:
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The moment must be in the future. You cannot generate a cyclogram for a moment that has already passed, so a cyclogram is never an alternative way of getting a report.
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It is computed once and never re-run. A cyclogram is a snapshot of the schedule and the campaigns as they stood at the instant the planner solved it. Change a campaign, a playlist or a schedule afterwards and the stored cyclogram does not follow — it quietly becomes an accurate forecast of a plan that no longer exists. The page shows both the simulated moment and the moment the forecast was computed, so that the two can be compared.
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It is the plan, not the outcome. A player that is offline, short of disk space or running an older configuration will not broadcast what the cyclogram says it would.
Read a cyclogram to decide whether a plan is sound. Read Ad Play Statistics to find out whether it was carried out.
Generating a Cyclogram
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Go to the Screens page.
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Click on the screen you want to forecast.
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Open the Cyclograms tab.
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Click Generate.
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In Simulate from, set the date and time to simulate. It must be in the future, and it is read on the screen’s own clock rather than yours.
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Click Generate.
Generation is queued and runs on the server. The entry appears in the list immediately and moves through Queued and Generating to Ready; Check again refreshes its state. An entry that ends in Failed carries no simulation and there is nothing in it to read.
Reading the Chart
Expand a Ready cyclogram and the solved cycle is drawn as a horizontal lane, with the same data repeated as a table underneath it.
One row is one block. The cycle is cut into blocks of equal length, and the header above the lane states that length as Block, together with the schedule and playlist that produced it, the number of slots per block, and the filler duration.
The horizontal axis is time from the start of the block. Every row starts at the same left edge and shares the same scale, so a block is directly comparable with the block above it. A segment’s width is the on-air duration of that slot — a ten-second creative draws twice as wide as a five-second one. Segment height carries no meaning at all; every segment is the same height.
Colour identifies the campaign. The legend beneath the lane names each campaign in the cycle against its colour, and marks fillers and pool fill-ins so they are not mistaken for sold time. Colour is never the only carrier: hovering a segment names the campaign, the advertisement and the duration, and the By block table lists every segment in the cycle with its colour, block, start offset, duration, campaign, advertisement and role.
Each segment carries a role, which says why the planner put it there:
- Campaign
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A booked advertisement, placed to satisfy a campaign’s frequency.
- Frequency filler
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Filler inserted to keep a campaign’s spots evenly spaced rather than clustered.
- Pool fill-in
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Filler drawn from the filler pool to occupy time nothing was booked into.
- Tied filler tail
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The remainder of a filler that is bound to the spot before it.
- Unclassified
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The planner recorded no role for the segment.
A gap means unsold air. Segments pack from the left with no waiting between them, so there are no gaps in the middle of a row. Space left at the right-hand end of a row is time the planner had nothing to put in — it is labelled Unsold air and, in the legend, Empty — not broadcast. A row that is short across many blocks is a screen with capacity to sell; see Saturation for the same fact expressed as a percentage over time.
Above the lane, a verdict of PASS, WARN or FAIL summarises the solve, and the Defects and Warnings lists say what earned it. Below the lane, the slot list can be shown as a List, as Tiles, or By block.
| If the page says the solved cycle is not available, the problems and slot lists are still readable; generate a new cyclogram to get the lane. |
Which Campaigns Fill a Period
A cyclogram resolves a single moment in complete detail. When the question is broader — which campaigns are competing for a whole stretch of a screen’s air, and by how much — the answer is on the screen’s Saturation tab.
In the table under each frame’s chart, a period booked by the planner shows an N campaigns button. Clicking it opens a panel below the charts for that one period:
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Sold — the period’s saturation as a percentage. See Saturation for what the figure means and why it can exceed 100%.
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Booked, Available and Free, in minutes. These appear when the forecast provides them. Some forecast periods report a percentage only; there the panel shows the percentage alone. An absent figure means the forecast did not supply it.
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Recomputed from the campaign list — the same percentage worked out independently from the campaigns listed below, shown next to the server’s figure. The two normally agree. When they do not, the server’s figure is the one the planner acted on; the difference is usually a campaign that has since been paused or edited.
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Any warnings the forecast raised for the period.
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The campaign list itself: each campaign’s name, its state, and its frequency for this period expressed as a number of spots per loop of a stated length.
Only periods the planner filled automatically have a roster to open. A period governed by a manual playlist, a blank-screen period, or a period with no playlist at all shows a dash in place of the button — nothing selected campaigns for it, so there is nothing to list. See Manual Periods.
Understanding Overbooking Warnings
The cyclogram highlights scheduling conflicts:
Overbooking
Some ads cannot be displayed because there are not enough vacant time slots with the current campaign settings. This typically happens when the combined frequency requirements of all campaigns exceed the available airtime.
To resolve overbooking:
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Reduce the frequency setting on one or more campaigns.
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Remove campaigns from the playlist or schedule.
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Extend the schedule time window.
After making changes, generate the cyclogram again to verify the result.
Managing Cyclograms
Previously generated cyclograms are stored and listed on the Cyclograms tab. You can:
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View any previously generated cyclogram by clicking it in the list.
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Delete outdated cyclograms you no longer need.
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Generate multiple cyclograms for different dates to compare scheduling outcomes.
| Generate a new cyclogram after making changes to campaigns, playlists, or schedules to verify that the updated configuration produces the expected playback sequence. |