Playlists

A playlist is an ordered list of slots that defines what plays on a screen and in what order. A playlist by itself plays nothing — it reaches screens through a schedule.

The Playlists page has the playlist tree on the left and a settings pane on the right. The pane follows your selection: select a playlist and it shows the playlist’s name and playback policy; select a slot inside it and the pane splits into the slot’s content on the left and the content browser on the right.

Creating a playlist

Go to the Playlists page.
Click New playlist.
Give the playlist a name.
Add slots with the + button next to the playlist name.
Select a slot and fill it — see Filling a slot.
Click Save.

A playlist must contain at least one slot, and every slot must have content. Saving with an empty slot is refused with "Some slots are missing media content, please fill or delete empty slots".

The saved playlist becomes available in Schedules.

Slot types

Manual: Plays one specific ad from a manual campaign. The slot lasts exactly as long as the ad. Drag the ad itself, not the campaign folder.
Automatic range: Hands the playlist over to the planner, which fills it with ads from campaigns whose settings match the screen. You choose nothing beyond adding the range; which ads play and how often follows the playback policy and each campaign’s own frequency. Drag the Automatic range folder from the content browser to create one.

The two types do not combine. As soon as a playlist contains an automatic range, the planner takes over the whole playlist and the manual slots in it are ignored. Use manual slots for a fixed loop you control yourself, or a single automatic range for planned rotation — not both.

An automatic range shows a Duration field, which has no effect on planning and can be left at any value.

Filling a slot

Select the slot, then supply content in one of three ways:

Drag from the content browser — expand a manual campaign and drag one of its ads onto the slot, or drag the Automatic range folder. Only campaigns that still have active ads appear in the list.
Upload a file — click Add files to upload new media directly.
From Media Library — click From media library to pick a file that is already there.

Uploading or picking from the library creates a new ad, so you are asked which campaign it belongs to.

Reordering slots

Drag slots up or down inside the playlist. The order in the tree is the order on screen.

Playback policy

Playlist’s playback policy is the dropdown in the playlist settings. It tells the planner how to turn an automatic range into a media plan — whether to honour, exceed, lower or ignore the repetition frequency each campaign asks for, and whether unsold time is filled with fillers or left as a gap.

Each policy, what it does with empty time and with overbooking, and how the planner behaves when campaigns ask for more airtime than exists, is described in Playback Policies.

The policy is only consulted for automatic ranges. A playlist of manual slots plays in the order you set it, whatever the dropdown says.

Manual periods

Everywhere CS Play charts a screen’s air over time — the screen’s Saturation tab and the Inventory Dashboard — each period is coloured by the policy of the playlist governing it. A period whose playlist carries the manual policy is labelled Manual playlist, and it behaves differently from every other kind on the chart.

A manual period is air the operator has already spoken for. The playlist plays in the order it was built, and the planner treats the period as territory it does not enter.

What a manual period displaces

The planner places nothing in it. Campaigns targeting this screen are not fitted into a manual period. They are not delayed, redistributed to neighbouring periods, or compensated for elsewhere — they simply do not play here, for as long as the manual playlist governs the air.
The frequency each campaign asks for is not honoured inside it. Frequency is a property of automatic planning; there is no automatic planning here to honour it.
It has no campaign roster to inspect. On the saturation timeline a manual period shows a dash where an algorithmic period offers an N campaigns button, and clicking the bar does nothing. There is no planner decision to explain — see Which Campaigns Fill a Period.

What a manual period does not displace

It is still measured. Manual periods carry a saturation percentage like any other, are drawn to the same axis, and count towards the oversold total. Filling a screen manually does not hide it from Saturation.
It does not remove the screen from targeting. Campaigns that target the screen still target it; they resume in the next period the planner does own.
It is still reported. Everything actually broadcast in a manual period is recorded and appears in Ad Play Statistics exactly like anything else.
It does not fail the media plan. Manual is one of the permissive policies: where a strict frequency policy would reject a plan the planner could not fill, a manual period that comes back empty is accepted.

Deleting a playlist

Select the playlist and click Delete. A confirmation dialog appears.

A playlist in use cannot be deleted — neither one assigned to a schedule, nor one set as a schedule’s filler playlist. Release it everywhere first.