Introduction

Enabling the Enhanced Scheduling feature in Myriad Schedule changes the way that Myriad Schedules new content into the log to enable several powerful additional features:

• Selective category scheduling: You can choose to only schedule some categories at a time, for example, you might want to pre-schedule longer periods of your log ahead of time with the major categories scheduled, but then only schedule your A and B List categories shortly before the hours are due to air.
• Category scheduling Pass Order: Myriad Schedule Plus users can change the order that categories are scheduled in so you can schedule more important categories before scheduling the remainder of your categories.
• Song and Link Decks: These are a powerful way of ensuring even rotation of songs and links in their respective categories, and helps prevent 'easy' to schedule songs from coming round too often - for example, songs from 'one-hit-wonder' artists.
• Deck Shuffles: You can manually 'shuffle' the entire contents of a deck to completely randomise and refresh the rotation of your songs. This is ideal for smaller categories where users might start to notice those same songs coming round in the same order. Myriad Schedule Plus users can also automate this to carry out automatic shuffles just prior to key hours being scheduled - for example, you might shuffle your a-list every other day at 5 am so that the order is 'fresh' going into your breakfast show.
• Deck Kicks: Myriad Schedule Plus users can "kick" items in the deck by a set number of places just before scheduling a specified hour. This is very useful if the number of items in your deck is broadly a multiple of how often that deck is called in your clocks. For example, if you have 12 items in a category, and you call that category once every 4 hours, then each song will play in the same hour every 3 days. By scheduling in a 'kick' of 2 or 3 places, that will rotate the deck to move the next play by a few hours.
• Changing Station Rules during an hour: Myriad Playout v6.5 adds in the ability to change Station Rules during an hour. For example, you might have a special feature during part of your hour that needs more relaxed rules for 3 songs in a row - like allowing more than 2 "group" gender songs in a row. To do this, you can insert a Station Rules item in the Clock prior to the feature changing the active rules to the new Station Rules set, then 3 song items later, insert another Station Rules to go back to the normal station rules.
• Virtual Category Scheduling: Introduced in Myriad Schedule v6.5, this extremely powerful Schedule Plus feature allows you to dynamically build a virtual category using multiple different source categories, and filter them by any Attribute in the system allowing you to build specialist shows or stations incredibly easily.

Enhanced scheduling is enabled in Database Settings and applies to the entire database, so the Enhanced Mode is then used for all Stations:

Important Changes

• Simple Clocks can be used in Enhanced mode but work slightly differently with regards to the hour duration needed. This is because in non-enhanced mode, Simple clocks choose which category to use for a log position and then immediately select the item to place in that position before moving on to the next position so that the entire hour is always scheduled in a single pass, so it knows to stop when it has reached the duration goal. In Enhanced mode, because the actual song choices don't happen until later passes, it's possible that the resulting template that is created from the Simple Clock might result in a very slight underrun or overrun. Of course, this will be corrected when the hour plays out if it's in AutoFade mode anyway. 
• The "Fill this hour" options are removed from top level Stations to ensure that Decks rotation is honoured, as this works best if hours are scheduled in chronological order. The Fill this hour option IS still shown in the Log for Child Stations so that users can easily copy in hours from the Parent Station.

Category Decks

When Enhanced mode is turned on, there are additional Song Deck and Link Deck options shown on the Station Menu as well as in the action bar on the left hand side of Myriad Schedule.

The Deck Viewers allow you to easily see which items are in which categories, as well as making it easy to change items to new categories by dragging from one deck to another. You can also add an item to the new category (as well as leaving it in the original category) by holding down the "ctrl" key when dropping the item into the Category Deck window.  You can also easily shuffle all the items in the deck from the button at the top.

Note: The Deck Viewers only show items that are marked as "Allow Myriad Schedule to use this item when scheduling" because only these items are added in to the decks to go into rotation. You can use the Media Library or Media Report to see all of the items in a Category regardless of whether they are in the deck or not.

Automatic Shuffle/Kicks

Myriad Schedule Plus users can also setup automatic Kicks and Shuffles from the button so it will automatically shuffle/kick items in the deck when it first schedules items for that hour. For example, you might shuffle your A-List deck at 3 am each morning to ensure that the order doesn't become too repetitive. 

Note: you can only setup automatic shuffles/kicks for the first 250 categories.

Selective Category Scheduling

From the Schedule Log window you can then select which categories should be scheduled and which should be skipped. This allows you to schedule some categories now, but leave others until a later date. For example, you might schedule almost all categories for the week ahead with the exception of your A-List so that presenters can start to prepare or voice track their shows.  Then, a few days later, schedule the A-List in so that any changes to your playlist will be represented.

Important note: Selective Category Scheduling only applies to Advanced Clocks. Simple Clocks are always scheduled in a single pass with all items filled in order.

Note: If you set the "default" pass order to skip some categories, and are using the automatic "Schedule Ahead" feature, then the default pass order will be honoured when future hours are being automatically scheduled and those categories will be skipped. As part of your normal operations process, you will need to make sure you scheduled those remaining categories yourself before the hour goes to air. The sole exception to this is if the hour is entirely removed and Myriad does an emergency schedule to create the hour just prior to playback. In this scenario, Myriad will schedule ALL categories.

Category Pass Order

If you have the optional Myriad Schedule Plus feature, you can also change the order that categories are scheduled in, so that your most important categories can be scheduled first, so that those songs will not be prevented from playing due to rule clashes with less important categories.

Auto-filling Underrunning hours

Regardless of whether Enhanced Mode is turned on or not, when Myriad Playout is playing an hour and that hour is underrunning (in AutoFade mode) Myriad always automatically uses "sort by most rested" mode when choosing the additional items to add to the end of the hour, so that it doesn't alter the deck positions of items for future hours.  

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