Calendar widgets

This page is about the calendar data-driven widgets included into Elementi 2017 and later. For previous versions, see the links below.

Introduction

Elementi software features 250+ widgets, a dozen of which are designed to work with your everyday calendar tool – be it Microsoft Outlook, Office 365, Google Calendar etc. Elementi widgets are a simple way to easily connect your calendar data to a digital signage display that anyone can manage: a dedicated technical person or an assistant. Simply updating the calendar you use on a daily basis will update the content displayed on the screen.

Use the Elementi calendar widgets for any industry sector and across any organization size – from a startup to a large corporation. Here are just a few examples of how you can put your calendar widget to use at best:

• Hospitality

  If you are running a hotel, an events company or a travel agency, a calendar widget can help you: promote hotel services, guide events’ attendees, inform about locally organized events.

• Corporate

  Empower your employees and streamline your day-to-day dynamics by: displaying meeting room availability, keeping track of project deadlines, reminding staff about birthdays, promoting internal and community events.

• Education

  Use the Elementi calendar widgets to: display upcoming visits, events and ceremonies from your yearly calendar, inform students and staff about upcoming sports activities, promote special events and parent-teacher meetings to public, staff, and students.

• Healthcare

  When lives are on the line, making use of time efficiently and effectively matters most. Use the Elementi calendar widgets to: inform patients and staff about doctors’ availability, display information about upcoming medical procedures at specific locations, reduce perceived waiting time by showing upcoming patient scheduled appointments.

Visit

https://www.spinetix.com/products/apps-widgets/calendars for more details.

Getting started

Getting started is easy; download Elementi software, launch it and create away! Just follow the 4 quick steps below:

1. Get Elementi.
2. Open Elementi and on the main window, click on the "Widgets" tab.
3. Scroll down and open the "Calendars" folder. Pick a widget.
4. Include that widget into your content and configure it.

Tutorials

• Displaying calendar events in Elementi 2017
• Customize your Elementi 2015 calendar widget

Calendar widgets

Elementi software comes with several calendar widgets accessible from "Widgets" tab within the Browse panel of the Elementi GUI.

Calendar widgets

• Events

  Display the calendar events in a ready to use predefined layout.

• Monthly Events

  Display all the calendar events of the current month, grouped by day, using a ready to use predefined layout.

• Weekly Events

  Display all the calendar events of the current week, grouped by day, using a ready to use predefined layout.

• Text Bar

  Displays text content using a fixed number of lines and applying a bottom-to-top & line-by-line scrolling effect whenever the entire text doesn't fit into the widget area.

• Text Ticker

  Displays text content using a continuous horizontal scrolling effect. The font size is adjusted automatically for the text to fit into the widget area.

• Text Roll

  Displays text content using a continuous vertical scrolling effect. The font size is adjusted automatically for the selected number of lines to fit into the predefined area.

• Slideshow

  Displays slides composed of text & media layers, which are automatically filled out with data retrieved from the calendar. The slides are displayed one after another, with or without a transition effect in between, similarly to a playlist.

• Horizontal Table, Vertical Table, Table

  Displays slides composed of multiple cells of text & media layers, which are automatically filled out with data retrieved from the calendar. The slides are displayed one after another, with or without a transition effect in between, similarly to a playlist.

• Daily Events

  Displays a limited number of events, grouped by weekday of up to a maximum 10 consecutive days - by default, up to three events for the next three days, including today, are shown.

Note:

The support for displaying event image attachments has been added in DSOS 4.7.5 and Elementi 2021 Update 9.

Events

Events widget

The "Events" widget allows you to display a set of events in a configurable table layout.

Events widget properties

The following properties, found under "Properties" tab, can be used to customize the widget:

• Data

  Click the button to open the Data Properties dialog and set up the data source.

• Locale

  Select the locale used for displaying dates and numbers.

• Slide duration

  Enter the number of seconds each slide is displayed on the screen.

• Transition

  Click on the button to select a transition effect and its properties.

• Looping

  Select whether the widget ends after the last slide or loops to the first one.

• Number of rows

  Enter the number of rows of data to display on a single slide.

• Number of columns

  Enter the number of columns of data to display on a single slide.

• Delay per cell

  Enter the number of seconds to wait before displaying the next cell of data.

Monthly Events

Monthly Events widget

The "Monthly Events" widget let you display all the event of the current month, grouped by day.

Monthly Events widget properties

The following properties, found under "Properties" tab, can be used to customize the widget:

• Data / Data source

  Click on the button to edit the properties related to the data source from where the items are retrieved.

• Locale

  Select the locale used for displaying dates and numbers.

• Slide duration

  Enter the number of seconds each slide is displayed on the screen.

• Transition

  Click on the button to select a transition effect and its properties.

• Looping

  Select whether the widget ends after the last slide or loops to the first one.

• Number of columns

  Enter the number of columns of data to display on a single slide.

• Number of events

  Enter the maximum number of events to display for each column.

• Days: Events

  Enter the maximum number of events to display for a given day.

• Days: Slide duration

  If there are more than the above number of event for a single day, enter the number of seconds each group of events is displayed on the screen. This number should be inferior to the overall slide duration for all the events to be displayed.

• Headers: Show header

  Select whether the widget has a header or not.

• Headers: Text

  Select the text of the header to be displayed.

Weekly Events

Weekly Events widget

The "Weekly Events" widget let you display all the event of the current week, grouped by day.

Weekly Events widget properties

The following properties, found under "Properties" tab, can be used to customize the widget:

• Data / Data source

  Click on the button to edit the properties related to the data source from where the items are retrieved.

• Locale

  Select the locale used for displaying dates and numbers.

• Slide duration

  Enter the number of seconds each slide is displayed on the screen.

• Transition

  Click on the button to select a transition effect and its properties.

• Looping

  Select whether the widget ends after the last slide or loops to the first one.

• Number of columns

  Enter the number of columns of data to display on a single slide.

• Number of events

  Enter the maximum number of events to display for each column.

• Days: Events

  Enter the maximum number of events to display for a given day.

• Days: Slide duration

  If there are more than the above number of event for a single day, enter the number of seconds each group of events is displayed on the screen. This number should be inferior to the overall slide duration for all the events to be displayed.

• Headers: Show header

  Select whether the widget has a header or not.

• Headers: Text

  Select the text of the header to be displayed.

Configuration

Each of the widgets above can be customized using the options provided under "Properties" tab - for more details, see the dedicated page of each widget type, linked above.

Data source setup

To edit the properties related to the data source, click the button. This opens the "Data Properties" dialog, which offers different parameters depending on the selected data source type (further called channel).

Here are the parameters that are common to all channels:

• Channel

  Select the calendar data source type between: ICS File (default), Google Calendar, Outlook Online, Facebook Events

• Max count

  Enter the maximum number of events to be kept from the data set (starting from the first row).

• Refresh

  Specify the period (5m, 10m, ... , 24h) after which the widget should try to automatically refresh the data. You can also enter this as a number followed by s (implicit), m or h; the minimum refresh value is 10 seconds for ICS channel and 60 seconds for the others. This is useful when the widget is running in a loop.

  Select "When document opens" when the widget is periodically opened from an external document (playlist, layout etc.) and automatic data refresh is not needed.

• Starts

  Specify the starting date and time for the data to be displayed. No events before this date will be included in the final data set. The following options are possible:

  • Date

    Specify an absolute date / time for filtering the data.

  • Relative

    Select a date relative to the moment when the calendar data is parsed, such as: "Now", "Today", "Yesterday", "This Monday", "Current Month", "Last Year" etc.

  • Custom

    Specify a starting date using a custom date string. This option is only available in Elementi X.

• Ends

  Specify the ending date / time for the data to be displayed. No events after this date will be included in the final data set. The following options are possible:

  • Date

    Specify an absolute end date / time.

  • Relative

    Select a date relative to the moment when the data is parsed, such as: "Now", "Today", "Tomorrow", This Sunday", "Current Month", "Next Year" etc.

  • Duration

    Specify a duration relative to the starting time specified under "From".

  • Custom

    Enter an ending date using a custom date string. This option is only available in Elementi X.

  • Indefinite

    Select this when the end date doesn't matter.

Notes:

• At any point, the data source configuration can be tested by clicking on the "Test..." button.
• To insert a line break in the event description of an external ICS calendar item, use the line feed character ("\n").

ICS file channel

The ICS calendar files are plain-text files containing calendaring and scheduling information using the iCalendar data format - a standard for calendar data exchange, such as events, meetings, tasks etc. Most calendar tools, like Google Calendar, Microsoft Outlook, Apple Calendar (formerly iCal), IBM Lotus Notes, Yahoo! Calendar etc., are able to export the data as iCalendar (.ics) file.

When the channel option is set to "ICS File", the "Data Properties" dialog offers the above parameters, plus

• URI

  Enter the URI to the ICS file - this can be a relative path into the project or a remote HTTP(S) address.

Google calendar channel

Google Calendar is a time-management web and mobile application created by Google.

Security is a fundamental element to consider when giving access to your personal data and we've created our data-driven widgets with that in mind. To ensure secure access and permission control, without exposing any user credentials, Cockpit must authorize any request for third-party data. For that, you need to do the following:

1. Create a Cockpit account, if you don't have one.
2. Register your Elementi license into your Cockpit account.
3. Add your players into your Cockpit account.
4. Connect your Google account to your Cockpit account.

See more about secure data access.

When the channel option is set to "Google Calendar", the "Data Properties" dialog offers the above parameters, plus

• Account

  Select one of the connected Google accounts, or click "Connect account..." if none was previously connected.

• Calendar

  Select the calendar from which to get the events.

Google channel connection

When selecting this channel in the "Data Properties" dialog, your existing Google accounts are automatically retrieved from Cockpit and displayed in the "Account" drop-down box. If you need to connect a new account, follow these steps:

1. Select "Connect account..." option .
2. Click the link displayed within the "Connect account..." dialog to open it in a browser.
3. If you are not signed into your Cockpit account, you are asked to do that.
4. Cockpit then checks that your Elementi license is registered into your Cockpit account; if not, you are asked to do that.
5. You are then redirected to the Google website. Log into your account there, if you are not already.
6. Then, you need to authorize the SpinetiX app to access the specified information of your Google account.
7. Once done, you are redirected back to Cockpit channels page and you can find your account listed under "Connected Accounts".
8. Then, return to Elementi and click the "OK" button within the "Connect Account..." dialog.
9. The list of accounts is refreshed and you can select the new one from the "Account" drop-down box.

Notes:

• The Google account can be disconnected at any time from Cockpit from the "Channels" page.
• The support for Google Calendar event attachments has been added in DSOS 4.7.5 and Elementi 2021 Update 9.

Outlook Online channel

Outlook Online is part of the Microsoft Office suite of applications, servers, and services developed by Microsoft.

Security is a fundamental element to consider when giving access to your personal data and we've created our data-driven widgets with that in mind. To ensure secure access and permission control, without exposing any user credentials, Cockpit must authorize any request for third-party data. For that, you need to do the following:

1. Create a Cockpit account, if you don't have one.
2. Register your Elementi license into your Cockpit account.
3. Add your players into your Cockpit account.
4. Connect your Outlook Online account to your Cockpit account.

See more about secure data access.

When the channel option is set to "Outlook Online", the "Data Properties" dialog offers the above parameters, plus

• Account

  Select one of the connected Microsoft online accounts, or click "Connect account..." if none was previously connected.

• Calendar

  Select the calendar from which to get the events.

Outlook Online channel connection

When selecting this channel in the "Data Properties" dialog, your existing Microsoft accounts are automatically retrieved from Cockpit and displayed in the "Account" drop-down box. If you need to connect a new account, follow these steps:

1. Select "Connect account..." option .
2. Click the link displayed within the "Connect account..." dialog to open it in a browser.
3. If you are not signed into your Cockpit account, you are asked to do that.
4. Cockpit then checks that your Elementi license is registered into your Cockpit account; if not, you are asked to do that.
5. You are then redirected to the Microsoft website. Log into your account there, if you are not already.
6. Then, you need to authorize the SpinetiX app to access the specified information of your Microsoft account.
7. Once done, you are redirected back to Cockpit channels page and you can find your account listed under "Connected Accounts".
8. Then, return to Elementi and click the "OK" button within the "Connect Account..." dialog.
9. The list of accounts is refreshed and you can select the new one from the "Account" drop-down box.

Notes:

• The Microsoft online account can be disconnected at any time from Cockpit from the "Channels" page.
• The support for event attachments (images) has been added in DSOS 4.7.4 and Elementi 2021 Update 8.

Facebook events channel

Starting with April 4, 2018, Facebook decided to immediately disable some capabilities, which resulted in the lost of the capability to retrieve Facebook events.

Troubleshooting

• Displaying a calendar takes some time, freezes or even triggers an HMP restart (or safe mode).

  Most probably the calendar file has grown too much and the HMP requires too much time to parse it - if so, the quickest solution is to remove all the past events from the calendar.

• Multiscreen usage.

  These widgets can only be used on a single screen when creating a multiscreen project; for multiple screens, a data feed widget must be used instead.

• Publish error in Elementi 2020: Firmware not compatible - Firmware version on the device ( 3.x ) is too old. Version 3.4.8 required.

  The calendar widgets from Elementi 2020 are not compatible with older firmware versions of HMP200, HMP130, and HMP100 players.

See also

• Calendar widgets in Elementi 2016
• Calendar widgets in Elementi 2015
• Elementi 2018 Widgets, Elementi 2017 Widgets
• Data feeds
• Data-driven widgets
• Feed widgets in Elementi 3.x
• Soft scheduling widgets
• Create / edit a calendar file from Elementi (see Schedule and Calendar panel pages)
• Displaying calendar events tutorial
• Accessing data from calendar applications
• For other uses of calendar files, see Calendar file usage page