Future Moves in Myriad Schedule Pro

Modified on Fri, 3 Oct at 12:22 PM

Prerequisites:

Myriad Playout v6.8.1 or higher.
Myriad Schedule Pro v6.8.1 or higher.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction
Setting Up Future Moves
Future Moves Report
Important considerations when using Future Moves to move items into very small categories.

Introduction

Future Moves is Myriad Schedule Pro feature that allows you to add or remove attributes from a Media Item at a future date, or after a certain number of times the item is scheduled.

Let's say Taylor Swift releases a new track that you want to play very regularly in the first week of release, but then rest the song for a week before moving it to the Pop category to be included in general rotations.

The sequence might be:

Add Song to A-List Category > After 7 days move Song to Held > After another 7 days, move the Song to the Pop Category.

Without Future Moves, you would need to perform each of these steps manually, but Future Moves allows you to add these planned changes to the Song when you first add it to the system, and each step will be executed automatically when the criteria is met.

Setting Up Future Moves

In this example, we will setup our Taylor Swift Song to follow the sequence above.

Start by importing the Song into the Media Wall.
Once imported, open the Edit Window and switch to the Categorisation Tab.
In this example, we want start the song in the A List category so set that as the Primary Category.
Save the Media Item using the Save button on the ribbon.
Next click on the Future Moves button on the Home Ribbon.
This will open the Future Moves window for the Media Item. If there are any Future Moves defined already, they will be listed and can be edited as required. In this example there are no Future Moves planned for this Media Item.
To add the first move, click on the Add Future Move button on the top right of the window.
Firstly, give the Future Move a suitable Description and select the Station you want the move to be performed in.
Next select either a specific Date for the move to happen or a number of Times Scheduled to trigger the move. In this case we want to trigger the move 7 days from today.
Next we select the Attributes we want to remove from the Media Item. In this case it would be the A List Category. Click on the Attributes Selector button on the Attributes to Remove section.
Select the attribute to be removed, in this case A List Category from the Attributes Selector window.
The selected attribute will be added to the Attributes to Remove section. Please note that you can select any Song Attribute (not just Category) and can combine multiple attributes to be removes. In the example below, we are removing the A List Category and Friday Night Party Tag.
If we wanted to Add any Attributes in this move, we would use the Attributes To Add section in the same manor. In this example, we want to prevent the Song from scheduling so we would leave this section empty.
Finally, click on OK to save the Future Move.
You will now see the Future Move listed in the window.
So far, the Song will start in the A List Category and will stay there for 7 days. After 7 days have passed, the Future Move will execute and remove all Categorisation from the Media Item so it will no longer schedule.
Now we need to add a second Future Move to move the Song into the Pop Category after another 7 days.
To do this, click on the Add Future Moves button.
Repeat the steps above to give the move a suitable Description, select the Station and set the date of the move for the correct date.
In this example, we do not need to remove any Attributes as we know the Song is not in a Category at the moment. If we added in a Remove Attribute for an attribute the Song doesn't have then the move is ignored.
We do want to Add an Attribute to the Song. In this example we want to add the Pop Category to the Song. Click on the Attribute Selector button in the Add Attribute section.
Select the Pop Category using the Attribute Selector window, and click ok.
Pop Category will now be listed in the Attributes to add section.
Finally, click on the OK button to save the Future Move.
The sequence is now complete and will be executed automatically by Myriad Schedule Pro. You can close the Future Moves window.
The Future Moves button on the Edit Window Home Ribbon will now be highlighted blue to show this items has Future Moves set. You can click on the button to view and edit.

Future Moves Report

You can view a list of all planned Future Moves using the Future Moves Report accessible via the Reports Menu.

You can select whether to display all Future Moves all just the pending moves that have not happened yet.

The results are then displayed. You can double click on them to edit if required.

Important considerations when using Future Moves to move items into very small categories.

There is an important factor to consider when creating Future Moves that will move an item to a relatively small category.

Consider the scenario where you have added a Future Move to move an item from your A-List into the B-List at the start of Tuesday next week. Lets assume you set Myriad to Schedule Monday and Tuesday. Myriad will schedule the Monday and Tuesday of next week laying down the schedule template and then start to schedule the A-List. It will schedule that song throughout the Monday in the positions requested by the a list as normal. When it starts to schedule the Tuesday morning for the a list it will enact the future move and correctly move the item into the B-List, meaning that that song will correctly not be scheduled into any A-List positions on Tuesday.

Once the A-List has finished scheduling, Myriad will move on to scheduling the B-List starting with the first positions on Monday morning - of course this song is now IN the B-List, so could potentially be placed in B-List positions on the Monday even though you might not have expected it.

In larger categories, this is less likely to happen because it will be some time before the item comes around.

Strategies for dealing with this scenario include only scheduling one day at a time if you know you have Future Moves in place, or ensuring that you have suitable separation rules in your B-List to make sure that it will prevent the item from playing on the Monday because of course it is already occupying positions courtesy of its previous membership of the A-List.

There is a related scenario when you are using a Future Move based on number of Plays. Consider the same scenario as before but this time the song reaches the requested number of Plays to trigger it's move to the B-List around midday on the Monday. When this happens it will be moved to the B-List and will therefore no longer schedule during any A-List positions for the remainder of Monday or the Tuesday. However when Myriad starts to schedule the B-List starting with Monday midnight, we return to the situation where the item is now in the B-List category so could come up to be scheduled in those first few hours of the day. Mitigation scenarios are the same as above of ensuring that you have suitable separation rules in place or making sure avoid moving items directly to smaller categories.