Editing the Settings Panel
- Kelcie Des Jardins (Deactivated)
The Settings panel of the Touchcast CMS is where you’ll be able to enable or disable external features for your page experience, as well as upload and modify the branding and appearance of your page. This guide will cover each section of the Settings panel to give you a better understanding of what each tab allows you to do.
1. Go to the dashboard for your Showtime.
2. Click on the gear icon on the left side panel to open Settings.
3. Select General Settings. This is where you’ll be able to add branding and determine overall page settings, outlined below.
General Settings - Branding
1. Upload a homepage background video for desktop and mobile.
a. Desktop main page video - 1920 x 1080 MP4 (up to 10 MB)
b. Mobile main page video - HD 1080 x 1920 MP4 (up to 10 MB)
We recommend creating separate assets for both desktop and mobile backgrounds. If a mobile asset isn’t added, the CMS will automatically pull the asset used for desktop, but the formatting may not be the best for your design.
2. In addition to a background video, you should also upload a static poster image for desktop and mobile. This image will appear while the background video loads, and when a live player is present on the page.
a. Desktop main page static image - 3200 x 1800 JPG (up to 2 MB)
b. Mobile main page static image - 1080 x 1920 JPG (up to 1 MB)
3. Upload the logo that will appear on the main page of your experience. You can modify the size of this logo in the Logo - max height field.
a. Logo should be a transparent PNG, high resolution.
This field is for the logo that will appear on the homepage experience. You can upload a unique logo for the login/registration page under Login and Registration Settings.
General Settings - General
1. You have the option of showing the conference date, which will display the event date you selected when setting up your Showtime under the event title on the main page. If your experience is meant to be a showcase versus a live event, we recommend hiding the conference date.
2. To make Resource cards stand out, we do recommend checking the box for Use Large resource previews. This will feature your Resource cards more prominently on the page by increasing the size of the thumbnail image.
3. Check the Enable Search box to allow users to use the search feature on the Showtime page. Users will be able to search by titles, descriptions, and tags to media uploaded to Showtime.
4. You have the option of uploading a Welcome video to your Showtime. This video will play in a lightbox once the user enters the page, and gives you a chance to introduce the content, theme of the event, or best ways to navigate through the experience in a brief video.
The welcome video can be shown every time a user signs into the Showtime page, or you can choose to display the video once by checking the Show welcome video only once box.
5. By default the Show Realtime Update Notification box will be unchecked. This is a notification that appears whenever updates are published in realtime to the external Showtime page. We recommend leaving this unchecked unless your experience dictates otherwise.
Uploads and edits made in the CMS are reflected on the external Showtime page once your updates are saved. If you have the user-facing page already open in your browser, you’ll need to refresh the page in order to see the changes, unless you use the Realtime Push feature.
6. Showtime allows you to upload a custom font for your title on the login/registration pages and the main page. Checking the Use Custom Font box will prompt a new field to select from the Custom Fonts added to your organisation.
To add a new custom font to your org, please contact the Touchcast product team.
General Settings - VoD
1. In this section you can also enable global settings for VoD, meaning boxes checked here will apply to all VoD added to Agenda cards. We recommend checking the boxes for:
a. Display VOD duration on the card
b. Enable article in player by default
c. Enable search in player by default
d. Enable chapters
General Settings - Links
1. Add hyperlinked text and icon in the description with the Description extra link title, Description extra link, and Description extra link icon fields. This allows you to add a callout and external link above the fold, a nice addition to other callouts that can appear further down the page.
2. Use a Floating banner for persistent messages along the top of the Showtime.
a. You can elect for this banner to appear on the Main page, the Teaser page, and/or the Login/Registration pages.
b. When the floating banner checkbox is enabled you’ll see the Floating banner text field for you to add your message.
When you’re finished editing your General Settings be sure to hit the Submit or Save button at the bottom of the page. The CMS does not autosave—if you leave the page before saving your work will be lost.
Agenda Settings
1. From the Event Settings panel click Agenda Settings to configure global options for the agenda cards.
2. The vertical agenda cards will always appear on your Showtime experience - you can additionally choose the Show the desktop and tablet text agenda at the very bottom of the Showtime page.
On mobile, a separate agenda experience similar to the text agenda will be displayed in lieu of the large vertical agenda cards.
3. Check the Show track name box if you’ll be using track names as a way to organize your content.
4. You can choose to Show the date in track name; for multi-day events, we recommend removing unchecking this box.
5. If you do have a multi-day event, we suggest you check the box to Enable agenda date navigation. This allows attendees to easily jump to the section of cards on a specific day, instead of scrolling through the agenda cards manually.
6. There is a global option to display the speaker’s job title on the agenda cards. If you leave this box unselected the speaker’s company will appear on its own.
7. For most events you’ll want to have the Show session start time on agenda cards selected, with the exception of content hubs or VoD-only events. You may also choose to de-select this box if times are subject to change before the live event.
8. Likewise, you can choose to display or hide the session start time and date in the lightbox that expands when an attendee clicks on the agenda session.
9. If your Showtime features many tracks or track categories, a great way to keep the page neat and organized is to use the Enable Agenda Expand/Collapse feature. This allows attendees to select which tracks they want visible on their page (e.g. for a Showtime with tracks divided into timezones, an attendee in Europe may only want to display the Europe track relevant to them).
If enabled, this feature is managed by attendees themselves; currently CMS admins cannot choose which tracks or track categories are automatically displayed or hidden.
10. The field Agenda PDF for download is a way to add a downloadable version of the agenda to the Showtime page. This agenda does need to be created outside the Showtime CMS, and is only possible to view if you have the desktop and tablet text agenda enabled.
11. After selecting or unselecting the relevant boxes, click Save.
Login and Registration Settings
1. Click the Login and Registration Settings tab from the Settings panel to customize your login/registration page background, logos, and calls to action.
The login and registration pages use the same title, background, and logo, with either the Login or Registration portal box overlaid. While these pages have distinct URL slugs, their branding will remain the same.
2. Add a page title to your login/registration portal. This title can be the same (or different!) from the title that appears on your main Showtime page.
There are a few places in the CMS where HTML tags can be used to apply formatting; the login and registration page title is one of them.
3. Choose a call to action for your Login page button text. This is the button users will click after entering their login credentials to enter the page, and should indicate the type of experience they are about to explore and be in line with the tone of your brand.
4. The login and registration page can also have a unique logo. If you do not upload a logo here the CMS will default to the logo used for the main page. Logos should be PNG and high resolution.
5. The next four fields are for your Login and Registration background images and videos. You should upload at least a static desktop image; we recommend adding an ambient video for a more engaging login experience.
a. Desktop background static image - 3200 x 1800 JPG (up to 2 mb)
b. Mobile background static image - 1080 x 1920 JPG (up to 1 MB)
c. Desktop background video - HD 1920 x 1080 MP4 (up to 10 MB)
d. Mobile background video - HD 1080 x 1920 MP4 (up to 10 MB)
6. Add text to the Trouble joining popup content text box if you’d like to add a hyperlinked help box to the login and registration portals. This is a useful place to add links or emails for support and enquiries, and you can format your messaging using the text editor at the top of the box.
If you do not add any text to the Trouble joining popup content the link for this box will not appear on the login or registration page. You can customize the call to action for the link from the Common Labels tab in Settings.
7. Pending your page requirements, you may want to add a Terms of Service link. Enter your text with the [terms_of_service] tags as indicated below the box to create a hyperlink.
a. You can then add the full terms of service text in the Terms of service popup content textbox.
If you’re copying and pasting text from another source, be sure to clear formatting with the text editor. This will prevent unreadable or inconsistent text on the external page.
8. Add a Login page error message to provide specific instructions to users who enter an email address incorrectly, or who may not be allowlisted for the page.
9. Check the Enable login code box to prompt users to enter a login code upon entering their email. This is a form of authentication to verify the user has access to the inbox they’re using to login to the experience.
Login codes expire after 30 minutes. If a user’s access code times out, they will simply need to re-enter their email address to generate a new code. Codes are logged in the Reports panel under User Analytics.
10. You may want to Allow usage of multiple devices for an event. By default, Showtime allows a user to only be logged in on one device; if a user attempts to log in on other device (e.g. a mobile phone or tablet), they will be logged out of the former instance.
11. As with any page in the Showtime CMS, click the Save button to record any changes made.
