Scheduling Playback

The Vū Studio scheduler lets you automate content playback — set assets, scenes, or experiences to play automatically at specific times without anyone needing to be present. Useful for digital signage, recurring events, and overnight content rotations.

Accessing the Schedule

Go to Library → Dashboard → Schedule to view and manage your scheduled playback calendar. The same Scheduled Tasks view is also available on its own page at one.vu.studio/schedule — click the Vū Studio icon to go Home, then open Scheduled Tasks.

The calendar view shows all upcoming scheduled items at a glance. Switch between day, week, and month views.

Creating a Schedule Item

In the Schedule view, click New Schedule or click a time slot on the calendar to open the Schedule Playback window. Fill it in from the top down:

1. Action — a row of four buttons at the top of the window sets what the scheduled event does. Pick one first, because it decides which fields you get underneath:

   Action	What it schedules
   Play	Content — a theme, a folder, or a single asset.
   Wake	Wakes the target players from sleep.
   Sleep	Puts the target players to sleep.
   Reserve	Blocks the time slot without playing anything (see Avoiding Scheduling Conflicts).

2. Event Name — required, and how you will recognize the event on the calendar.

3. Target displays — required for every action. Switch between By Group and Individual, then pick the player group, or tick the individual players.

4. Content — for Play only. Choose Theme, Folder, or Single Asset, then select the specific one.

5. Start Date and Start Time — required. The time list runs in five-minute steps. A start time in the past is rejected.

6. End Date and End Time — optional for Play (select + Add end time to reveal them, and Remove end time to drop them again), and required for Reserve, which has to have a window to block.

7. Wake displays before playing — for Play only. Tick it and the job wakes the target screens first, then casts the content, as one scheduled event.

8. Repeat — tick it to set a recurrence (see Recurrence Options).

A summary of what you have built — Action, Content, Displays, and When — sits above the buttons at the bottom of the window, so you can check the event before committing to it. If anything required is still missing, the window says what it is still waiting for and keeps the submit button disabled.

Select Schedule Task to create the event (on an existing event the button reads Save Changes instead), or Cancel to back out.

At the scheduled time, Vū Studio automatically sends the command to the player. The player must be online and connected for scheduled playback to execute.

Recurrence Options

Option	Description
Once	Plays one time only
Daily	Repeats every day at the same time
Weekly	Repeats on selected days of the week
Custom	Set specific dates and times

How Recurring Schedules Behave

Turn a scheduled item into a repeating one with the Repeat option in the Schedule Playback window, then pick the cadence — and, for a weekly rule, the days of the week it should run on. The time of day is taken from the item's start time and is held for every occurrence in the series.

What to expect once a series is running:

• One entry per occurrence in the calendar. The day view shows a single upcoming entry for each occurrence of a series. Occurrences that already exist as real scheduled items are drawn solid; occurrences further out are drawn as projected entries with a dashed border and a repeat icon, labelled Future occurrence (not yet scheduled). A projected entry is a preview of when the series will next come round — it is never a second copy of an entry that is already there.
• Completed occurrences stay completed. An occurrence that has already run, or is running right now, can no longer be edited — only deleted. Opening a past occurrence to look at it, and editing the series' details, leaves that finished occurrence finished; it is not put back into the queue and it will not fire a second time. Changes take effect from the next occurrence onwards.
• An interrupted series recovers. If an occurrence is interrupted — the dispatch fails, or the run is cut short partway through — the series does not silently stop. The affected occurrence is marked Failed in the list and calendar views with a retry control next to it; retrying re-arms that occurrence, and once it succeeds the series continues generating its next occurrences as normal.
• A failed power or system action no longer stops the series. For a recurring Sleep, Wake, or Exit Playback job, an occurrence that fails is still marked Failed, but the next occurrence is scheduled anyway and the series keeps running. A single bad night no longer costs you every night after it. Recurring content playback behaves differently: a failed occurrence does not schedule the next one until you retry it, because replaying content out of order is not something to do unattended.
• Scheduling conflicts still apply per occurrence. Each newly-created occurrence is checked against everything else booked on the same players. If a future occurrence would collide with another job, that occurrence is flagged rather than double-booking the screen; clear the conflict and retry it to put the series back on track.
• Deleting. Deleting the pending occurrence of a series ends the series while leaving its history intact. Deleting the whole series removes every occurrence, past ones included. The schedule offers both choices when you delete an item that is part of a series; a one-off item still gets the plain confirmation.

Scheduled Scenes and Multi-Player Groups

When a scheduled item that plays a scene triggers, the scene is sent to every assigned player that is online at that moment, not just the player you happened to be connected to when you created the schedule. Each target player receives the scene and draws its layers on its own displays, and none of them needs to be restarted, reconnected, or manually woken for the scheduled scene to appear.

Players that are offline when the schedule triggers can't receive it — a scheduled item does not queue up and deliver late. If a display was dark for a scheduled scene, check that the player was online at the trigger time rather than re-saving the schedule.

Display Power and Playback Actions

The scheduler can do more than play content — it can also send power and playback commands to connected displays at a set time, so screens can power down, wake, and stop playback on their own. Choose one of these actions instead of selecting media:

Action	What it does
Sleep	Puts the target players to sleep at the scheduled time
Wake	Wakes the target players from sleep
Exit Playback	Stops all content currently playing on the target players

Sleep and Wake are the two you can pick in the Action row. Exit Playback exists as a scheduled action and existing Exit Playback events keep running and stay editable, but it is not one of the four buttons in the current Schedule Playback window.

Schedule these the same way you schedule content: in the Schedule Playback window, select Sleep or Wake in the Action row at the top, name the event, choose the target displays, and set the time and any recurrence. Power actions carry no content — they only need a player target. A common pattern is to schedule a Sleep action for after hours and a Wake action shortly before opening, so displays are dark overnight and ready for the day without anyone touching them. Sleep and Wake are two independent jobs; a Sleep action does not automatically schedule its own Wake.

If a Sleep or Wake Doesn't Reach Every Display

A scheduled power action is sent to each of its target players separately, and the schedule treats a partial delivery as a failure rather than averaging it out. If any targeted player misses the command, the occurrence is marked Failed and the error names the players that did not receive it — so a wall left awake overnight is reported to you rather than disappearing behind a job that looks like it succeeded.

Two things happen automatically before it gets that far:

• A lost or slow send is retried. A brief network fault between Vū Studio and your players no longer costs you the occurrence.
• Players are commanded in parallel. One slow player does not delay the rest, so a large group is not left half-asleep because the job ran out of time partway down the list.

A player that is simply switched off or offline is not counted as a miss — the command is published to it successfully and there is nothing listening. What this reports is a genuine delivery fault. If an occurrence keeps failing for the same players, check those players' connection state on the Display Dashboard first — see Player Offline Status.

Sleep Applies to a Whole Media Server

Sleep is a per-player command, not a per-display one. A scheduled Sleep action puts every display driven by the targeted Vū Media Server to sleep, not only the display you happened to be looking at when you created the schedule. The same is true of Wake, which brings all of that media server's displays back together.

This is what you want for the usual end-of-day case — one scheduled Sleep darkens the whole wall rather than leaving stray displays lit — but it does mean you cannot schedule one display on a multi-display media server to sleep while its siblings keep playing. If you need part of a wall to go dark and the rest to carry on, schedule an Exit Playback action or new content for those displays instead of a Sleep.

Sleeping displays stay connected. A player in Sleep Mode still reports in, still accepts commands, and shows a distinct Sleep Mode indicator on the Display Dashboard rather than reading as offline — see Connection Indicators on Display Nodes.

Waking a Screen as Part of Scheduled Playback

You no longer need a separate Wake job in front of a content schedule. When you schedule content, the Schedule Playback window offers a Wake displays before playing option; tick it and the scheduled action wakes the target screens first and then casts the content, as a single scheduled job.

To use it:

1. Create or edit a scheduled item with the Action set to Play.
2. Choose the content, the time, and the target displays as usual.
3. Tick Wake displays before playing.
4. Select Schedule Task (or Save Changes when editing).

Notes and limits:

• The option applies to the Play action only. The power actions don't offer it, because Wake already is the action.
• The wake is sent to the same players the content is going to, immediately before the cast, so a display left asleep from the night before doesn't sit dark under freshly scheduled content.
• It is harmless on a screen that is already awake, so you can tick it on any recurring content job as insurance rather than reasoning about what state the wall was left in.
• It wakes the screen; it does not bring an offline player back. A player that is powered down or off the network still can't receive scheduled content — see Player Offline Status.

Folder Playback

You can schedule an entire folder to play rather than a single asset. When a folder is scheduled:

• Assets in the folder play in order
• Playback loops through the folder for the scheduled duration
• New assets added to the folder are automatically included in future scheduled runs

This is particularly useful for digital signage — drop new content into the folder and it appears in the rotation automatically.

Schedulable System Actions

See Display Power and Playback Actions for scheduling Sleep, Wake, and Exit Playback on your players.

Team Visibility

On a Team plan, the schedule is shared across the whole team. All team members can see scheduled playback events created by other members, so everyone works from a single view of the team's schedule rather than only seeing the jobs they created themselves. Both personal and team scheduled tasks appear together in the schedule view.

Visibility is shared, but editing is still controlled: an existing scheduled job can be edited or deleted by the team member who created it or by a team admin. This lets a team coordinate shared displays — for example, a studio or briefing center used by several people — without everyone stepping on each other's schedules.

Theme Scheduling

You can schedule themes directly from the Display Dashboard. Theme scheduling is managed from a modal on the dashboard, and the dashboard's control bar shows a notification of the next scheduled theme event. See Themes → for details on creating and loading themes.

Managing Scheduled Items

From the calendar, click any scheduled item to:

• Edit — change content, time, or recurrence. Editing is available only for items that haven't started yet. Once an occurrence has already run or is currently playing, it can no longer be edited — you can still delete it.
• Skip next occurrence — skip just the next instance without deleting the schedule
• Delete — remove the schedule entirely

When creating or editing a schedule, the start time must be in the future — you can't set a scheduled time that has already passed.

Clearing Completed Jobs

Finished jobs stay in the schedule so you can see what ran and what failed. Once you no longer need that history, you can select several finished jobs at once and remove them in one step instead of deleting them one by one.

Bulk clearing works in the schedule's list view — on the Scheduled Tasks page at one.vu.studio/schedule (Home → Schedule in the left sidebar), or in the schedule view opened from the Display Dashboard. Switch the view toggle next to the + Schedule button to the list icon; the calendar view does not offer selection.

1. In the list, each job marked Completed or Failed has a checkbox. Tick the jobs you want to remove.
   • To select a run of jobs, tick one, then hold Shift and tick another — every finished job between them is selected.
   • To select every finished job in the current list, tick Select all completed/failed above the list. The list's scope filter applies, so only the finished jobs currently shown are selected.
2. The toolbar shows how many jobs are selected (for example, 3 selected). Select Clear to drop the selection without deleting anything.
3. Select Purge selected. A confirmation asks "Permanently delete 3 selected scheduled tasks? This cannot be undone."
4. Confirm to remove the jobs, or cancel to keep them.

What you can and can't clear:

• Only Completed and Failed jobs can be selected. Jobs that are still scheduled or currently Running never get a checkbox, so a bulk purge can't cancel anything that is pending or in progress. To stop an upcoming job, delete it on its own — see Managing Scheduled Items.
• You can only select jobs you are allowed to manage: your own jobs, and — if you are an owner or admin of the team — the team's jobs.
• Purging is permanent. There is no undo.
• If a job changed after you selected it (for example, someone retried a failed job so it is scheduled again), it is left in place and a message says how many tasks couldn't be removed.

Timezone

The scheduler uses the timezone set in your Vū Studio account. If your player is in a different timezone from your account, check Settings → Timezone to make sure everything lines up correctly.

Recurring Schedules and Daylight Saving

A recurring schedule holds its local time of day across a daylight saving change. A series set to run at 8:00 AM keeps running at 8:00 AM after the clocks move, in both directions — it does not drift an hour earlier or later for the rest of the season, and you don't have to edit the series twice a year to correct it.

This applies to every repeating cadence — daily, weekly on chosen days, and monthly — and to device actions as well as content, so a nightly Sleep and a morning Wake stay pinned to the opening and closing times you actually keep.

Two things to keep in mind:

• The local time that is held is the one belonging to the schedule's timezone. If your account timezone and a player's physical location disagree, the schedule follows the account setting — line them up in Settings → Timezone before relying on a recurring series.
• On the day a clock change happens, one occurrence is naturally an hour closer to, or further from, the previous one in absolute time. That is the correct outcome of holding local time, not a missed or duplicated run.

Tips

• Test your scheduled items by setting them to run in the next few minutes before setting the final time
• Use player groups to schedule the same content across multiple displays simultaneously
• Combine scheduling with Experiences for fully automated briefing center programs
• Leave a buffer between scheduled items — back-to-back scheduling with zero gap can occasionally cause the first item to not finish cleanly

Avoiding Scheduling Conflicts

Vū Studio prevents two scheduled playback sessions from running on the same players or player groups at the same time. If you try to schedule an event that overlaps an existing one on the same target, the scheduler blocks the conflicting time slot, so overlapping schedules can no longer collide on the same screen.

You can also reserve a screen without assigning any content. In the Schedule Playback window, select Reserve in the Action row at the top — the window then explains what a reservation does ("Block playback on the selected players — no scheduled content runs during this time window") and asks only for a name, the target displays, and the window itself. There is no content to choose.

A reservation must have an End Date and End Time; unlike a Play event, the end of the window is what the reservation is for, so the window won't let you save without it.

This is useful when a studio or display is being used in person and you want to make sure no automated playback starts on it during that window. A reserved slot counts as a conflict for that time, so other events can't be scheduled over it. Nothing is ever sent to the player — a reservation exists purely to hold the slot.

To also control who can put content on the displays during the reservation, turn on the reservation's cast restriction — see Restricting Who Can Cast During a Reservation below.

Restricting Who Can Cast During a Reservation

A plain reservation only holds the time slot so nothing new can be scheduled over it. When you need the displays kept for specific people — a briefing, a rehearsal, a demo — you can also restrict who can cast to them for the length of the reservation. While the reservation is running:

• Scheduled content that would play on the reserved displays is held off, including occurrences of repeating schedules that fall inside the window.
• Only the people you list, plus you and the display's admin, can cast to or change what is on those displays. Everyone else is blocked.

When the reservation's end time passes, the restriction ends by itself. Nobody has to remember to switch anything back.

Setting Up a Restricted Reservation

1. Open the Schedule Playback window: go to one.vu.studio/schedule (Home → Schedule in the left sidebar) and select + Schedule, or open the schedule from the Display Dashboard.
2. In the Action row at the top, select Reserve.
3. Enter an Event Name and choose the Target displays.
4. Tick Restrict who can cast. The option reads "Scheduled content is blocked during this window, and only the people below can put anything on these displays."
5. In Allowed emails, type an email address and press Enter or type a comma to add it. Each address becomes a chip; select the × on a chip to remove it. You can invite anyone by email, including people who don't have a Vū Studio account yet — the address is matched when they sign in.
6. If you are working in a team profile, you can also tick Everyone on team name to allow every member of that team.
7. Set the Start Date, Start Time, End Date, and End Time. A reservation always needs an end.
8. Select Schedule Task (or Save Changes when editing an existing reservation).

With Restrict who can cast turned on, you must allow at least one person. If the email list is empty and the team option isn't ticked, the window shows "Add at least one email, or allow the whole team, or turn the restriction off." and keeps the submit button disabled. You don't need to add yourself: the window notes "You and the display's admin can always cast, whatever is set here."

An email that isn't valid is rejected with a "Not a valid email" message next to the field.

Who Can Cast During the Reservation

Person	Can cast during the window?
The person who created the reservation	Always
Anyone whose email is in Allowed emails	Yes
Members of the team, when Everyone on team name is ticked	Yes
The display's admin	Yes, on the displays they administer
Anyone else	No

Vū Studio staff are not exempt from a reservation.

When someone who isn't allowed tries to cast to a reserved display, nothing is sent and an error message tells them why, for example: "Lobby briefing" has this display reserved until 3:00 PM.

Ending a Restricted Reservation Early

The reservation's creator, a team owner or admin (for a team reservation), and the admin of any display the reservation targets can delete the reservation at any time — the display admin can do this even if someone else created it. Deleting the reservation lifts the restriction straight away. See Managing Scheduled Items.

What to Know About Restricted Reservations

• Content already playing is left alone. The restriction stops new casts and scheduled content from starting. It does not clear the displays when the window opens.
• Held-off scheduled content doesn't play late. A scheduled item that was due during the window is skipped, not queued. A repeating series continues with its next occurrence after the window.
• Only the reserved displays are affected. If a scheduled item targets several displays and only some of them are reserved, the item still plays on the displays that aren't reserved.
• A reservation without the restriction behaves as before. It blocks overlapping scheduling and nothing else.
• For a standing limit on who can use a display, use Session Mode. A restricted reservation is for a set window of time.