The S4M Daily Scheduler is a custom app which provides an interface to configure, test and automate the scheduling of the S4M assets. The daily list of S4M assets are pulled from a custom S4M data source and then scheduled evenly across the 24 hour period. This app provides a UI to the console app that originally served this purpose.
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Create a new Channel Instance
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You can use the Test S4M button to see what the currently available list of assets is for station. It doesn’t make any changes to any data but simply connects to the S4M data source and returns a list of results.
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You only need define the Station ID and URL settings on the S4M tab to use the Test S4M button. |
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Alternate URLs
You probably won’t use these. The Alternate Event URL and Media URL can be used to facilitate testing on a test machine that doesn’t have direct access to the live S4M data. It’s not designed to be used as a backup/failover source.
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Be sure to SAVE your changes using the File or Instance menus. |
Field | Example Value | Description |
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Instance Name | BC1 | A name for this instance - typically the same as the station ID |
First Hour | 5 | The first hour of the day to start scheduling the assets into. 5 represents 5:00 am |
Occurrences | 40 | Repeats each item this many times in the 24 hour period |
Content Group | BC | The content group of the channel used |
Channel | Global News BC1 | The channel used for scheduling |
Media Content Group | BC | The content group of the Media bin |
Media Bin | BC1 Zone Ads | The Media bin where the assets associated media will be looked for
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Project Content Group | Global | The content group to find the Project in |
Project Name | L-Frame 2022 Ad Zones | The project that contains the published asset scenes that will be used by the S4M assets. Must have scenes named:
(Required when creating a new asset because the scene names are defined as |
Media Field | media.media | The name of the media tag that the media will be assigned to |
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Run
Last but not least is the Run tab where you can configure when the instance will be run or run it manually.
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The app will only check for and run the scheduler if it is enabled via the toggle switch at the bottom of the app.
Enabled toggle switch |  |
Disabled toggle switch |  |
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Note that only saved and enabled instances will be run automatically. |
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Be sure to SAVE your instance settings so that they will be run on schedule correctly. |
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Manual Run Prevents Scheduled Run
If you manually run the scheduler using the Run Now button at any time during the same calendar day before the scheduled run time - the app will not run that instance at it’s schedule time. For example if at 3:30 pm you run an instance that is scheduled for 5:35 pm, the scheduled run at 5:35 will be skipped.
Catching Up
When you enable the app for automatic scheduling the app will look for any instances that are past their Run At time for the current day and proceed to run them if they have not already been run today.
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Then it will check the next instance and see that its Run At time has not yet arrived. It will continue to wait, checking each minute to see if there are any new instances that are now ready to be run.
Log Output
There are 2 types of log data that are generated as of version 1.0.2. They are subject to being deleted automatically to avoid creating an overwhelming amount of log history unnecessarily.
Log Files
These files that use a .log extension include logging statements generated by the app in the process of its operations including errors that occur.
CSV Files
Each time the app generates a schedule for a station - it will generate a basic CSV file that shows the times and what S4M item was scheduled. It is named with the station name and the date.
Example:
BC 1 Test_2023321.csv
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StartTime,Title
2023-03-21 09:00:00,01015722
2023-03-21 09:02:08,01005157
2023-03-21 09:04:16,01014394
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If you open it in Excel you may only see the data and time up to the minute by default. To show the seconds detail you can change the formatting of the column from type General to type Time (or another custom format).
Troubleshooting
Missing Media Problem
We had a problem where some assets weren’t having their media attached automatically when the scheduler was running:
… every once in a while, an asset once ingested via the Media Folder Watcher fails to be attached to the schedule when the S4M Daily Scheduler runs.
The Media was in the system via the watchfolder on 12-02-2024 as expected and it was ingested into the DB into the BC1 Zone Ad Directory and on 12-04-2024 it was picked up by the S4M Daily Reader and scheduled.
Everything played out the way it’s supposed to….except this link. We had to manually link the asset to the media in the schedule.
(NOTE that the media are attached via a dynamic field.)
Solution
It's a configuration issue: (Dec 9, 2024)
The Media Folder Watcher was pushing media into the BC1 Zone Ads bin in the BC content group.
Meanwhile the S4M Scheduler is looking for them in L-Frame 2022 in Global content group.