While there haven't been any public news since the release of 4.2.2 almost a year ago we have been busy improving sklera on several fronts. The main reason is owed to a big new feature: the SmartFlow mode for Advanced Playout, which enables you to bring your content on your screen in a new way.

But there are other news as well: you can now add Playlist spots to a playlist. And we've added the ability to limit how often a library element is played on all your players in total.

This time frame is called a 'loop' and can be freely set (e.g. 5 minutes). Much like in regular Playouts you're adding playlists in SmartFlow mode. The only difference is that we're now distinguishing between Priorised Playlists and Default Playlists.

A sklera Player in SmartFlow mode will attempt to fill the defined time frame with content from the priorised playlists. If for some reason there is not enough content in the priorised playlists the player will attempt to pull content from default playlists to fill the time.

Naturally you can continue working with further content restrictions like screen- and category filters, or validity times and impression counters – everything continues to be considered by the player in determining which content to show.

One new feature for our sklera standard users are Impressions. If you edit an item in your library you will now have the opportunity to define a global impressions counter for your item which limits how often this item can be played back across all playlists.

This counter applies globally to every playlist. Every time the item is played back on one of the screens the counter is incremented. As soon as the set limit is reached this item is automatically deactivated in all playlists.

When impressions are active you can always see how many times the element has been played back. The counter can also be reset manually if need be, or you can define regular intervals in which to reset that counter.

As soon as you set a location on your display any weather filter defined on playlist spots or library elements is applied. As an example: you can now define that certain spots are only played back if the weather at the location is within a certain temperature range, or should only be shown if it rains at the display's location. The possibilities are as varied as the weather forecast!

More Tweaks & Features in 4.3.1

• (Advanced Playout) More -> Settings -> Categories: Categories that are enabled for screens can now directly applied and removed from your screens.
• Library, Item properties: Reworked the Item Properties view to give a more comprehensive overview of where the item is used.
• Screens page: Several reworks and optimizations which should result in greatly improved performance in the standard view when dealing with a lot of screens at once. Additionally, some interface elements have been consolidated to ensure a cleaner view.
• Playlist Spots: You can now add Playlist spots to playlists. It behaves like a normal item spot (as in that it'll have its own display duration), but you can select a playlist to be put in that spot.
• Location Management: a new dedicated location management in the 'More' menu which enables you to more easily manage address/location information for screens. Multiple screens can be added to the same location.
• The screen monitoring page has been extended and is filterable by screen groups (and by categories if Advanced Playout is active). The screens are further filtered according to access permissions.
  

Bugfixes in 4.3.1

• REST API: Fixed a small server side problem with the Playouts API which on occasion returned incorrect data and caused errors.
• Library / Playlist Edit: The Item picker now correctly shows all linked libraries.
• Fixed an edge case when uploading content directly via playlists. If a maximum duration was set and the uploaded item would have violated this limit the item would not be properly removed and be stuck in a processing state. This has been rectified.