Design a board

A board is a screen you design in the dashboard rather than upload: a canteen menu, a room timetable, a welcome message, a set of reminders. You build it in the browser, drop it into any gallery, and it plays in the rotation like a photo.

Boards live in one library. Put the same board in five galleries, edit it once, and every screen showing it catches up on its next refresh.

Turn the Boards app on

1. Open Settings in your dashboard and go to Apps.
2. Turn on Boards.

Switching it off later hides the library and stops placed boards drawing on screens. Nothing is deleted, so turning it back on puts every board back where it was.

Build your first board

1. Choose Boards in the sidebar, then New board.
2. Fill in the three sections down the side of the editor: Details, Content and Style.
3. Choose Add board.

Details

The heading is the big line, and there's room for a sentence under it. A school might use "St Aidan's Primary" and "Welcome to our school." A meeting room might use the room's name.

Content

Pick the shape that suits what you're showing. There are four:

• Text. A sentence or two under the heading. Good for a welcome, a message, or an announcement.
• Menu. Items and prices, with leader dots running between them. Built for canteens and cafes.
• Times. A run of times with what's on and where. Built for timetables, agendas and run sheets.
• Chips. Short reminders as pills. Good for "Hats on", "Library closed Friday", "Buses leave 3.15".

Chips are laid out as two columns of two, so four is the maximum. A fifth is dropped rather than drawn, because a board that overflows on a wall is worse than one showing four of five things.

Style

Choose one of the colour meshes, or Use your own photo for a board built on one of your own images.

You don't choose the text colour. Billboard picks white or black for you based on the background, so the words stay readable whatever you land on. The editor tells you which one a given mesh will use.

Put a board in a gallery

1. Open the gallery and choose Add content.
2. Choose Add a board and pick one from your library.

It joins the running order like any other item. Drag it to reorder it, or remove it, exactly as you would a photo. Removing a board from a gallery leaves it in your library for other galleries to use.

Good to know

• Edit once, everywhere. Boards are shared, not copied. Changing a price on a canteen board updates every screen showing that board.
• It shrinks to fit. Long headings and crowded menus are scaled down rather than run off the edge. If you ever see something clipped or overflowing on a wall, that's a bug worth reporting.
• Boards work in portrait. Turn a screen on its side and the layout follows, type included. See Screens turned on their side.
• Your logo sits on boards too. See Put your logo on screen.