The Administrator
Video Transcript
00:07
Welcome back.
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Q-SYS Administrator provides certain features that can be configured offline without the Core itself
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which are often critical to build during the commissioning stage of your system.
00:18
Specifically – scheduling events, and the management of your paging system.
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You can access the Administrator by selecting the bullhorn icon in the top bar,
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or by going to File Menu > Tools > Show Administrator.
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There’s actually a third way to access Administrator – when you install your Q-SYS Designer software,
00:40
you probably noticed that there are two other installation files that came with it: UCI Viewer, and Administrator.
00:48
The UCI Viewer is the program that allows someone to access a UCI on the network
00:53
without having access to your design file, and the Administrator follows the same idea.
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There are user-friendly functions in Administrator that allow your venue manager access to
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things without forcing them to get into Q-SYS Designer software.
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You can give them this program,
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and then they can access this screen without getting into the Q-SYS design file itself.
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Much like Core Manager, you’ll see tabs on the left of features you can access.
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You’ll only see a few for now, but if you have any Public Address components like a PA Router in your design,
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you’ll also see several additional tabs for managing your PA system.
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Those tabs will be covered in the Public Address videos you can find in our Quickstarts section,
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so we’re just going to focus on the Commands and Command Schedule tabs for now.
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Let’s start with Commands.
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This tab allows you to create specific actions called commands,
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which you can then automate using the Command Schedule tab.
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Commands can also be activated from page stations.
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To create a command, click the plus icon at the top of the center section:
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there are four types of commands, though you will only be presented with options available to you.
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There are PA Page Commands, PA Play Message Commands,
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Control Change Commands, and Snapshot Load Commands.
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The PA commands will both be covered in the Paging Tutorial with the other public address features,
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so let’s look at the other two.
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A Control Change Command does exactly what it implies: it will change a control of your choice.
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In order to make a control available for this feature, you’ll need to add it to your Named Controls bin.
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Let’s show you how:
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We’ll drag a few controls from an Audio Player in the design into the Named Controls Bin.
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Now, this doesn’t remove the controls from the component,
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it simply makes them accessible for control outside of the Schematic
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by things like the Administrator or third party control systems.
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If you don’t have any controls in this bin,
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then you won’t have the option to add a Control Change Command in the Administrator.
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So let’s save our design to the Core and run it again to gain access to the Administrator,
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and then we’ll add a Control Change Command.
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This settings menu will let us configure our new command.
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You can name the command anything that you want like,
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let’s name this one “Gain to Full” – we’ll use it to put the gain all the way up.
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You can also give it a numeric code of your choice.
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This code is a sequence that can be entered at a page station to remotely launch the command.
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Next, you’ll want to select which Control will be changed.
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We’ll select the Gain, and then select the Value that it will be changed to.
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For a Gain knob like this one, you can also select the Ramp Time,
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which is how many seconds it will take to reach the new value.
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Certain controls don’t require a value or ramp time, because they are one-time actions.
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These are known as triggers.
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For instance, if you target a Pause Button instead,
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you’ll see that it states the control “will be triggered” when the Command is engaged.
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Once you’ve configured your command, select the OK button and you’ll see it added to your Commands list.
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The next type of Command is the Snapshot Load Command.
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Now, a Snapshot Load Command will load a saved Snapshot that you have in one of your Snapshot Banks.
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You’ll learn more about creating Snapshots in our Control Overview section;
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but for now, know that a snapshot can essentially be used
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to change a lot of controls to a predetermined state at the same time.
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In this settings menu,
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simply select the name of your Snapshot Bank – we’ll use the Global one—which Snapshot number you would like to recall,
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and then the ramp time.
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However, be aware that Snapshots cannot activate trigger buttons – since they don’t have a “state” of on or off
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so the Control Change command is critical if you want to schedule things like, say, starting an Audio Player.
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When you have a lot of commands,
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you can arrange them in ascending or descending order by each of these columns,
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you can adjust the column sizes, or edit their settings once again by double-clicking them.
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You might also find it useful to assign them Tags.
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Tags are a convenient way to group associated commands together,
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similar to using hashtags on social media.
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Create a tag by clicking on the Plus icon here, and then give it a name. I’ll call these “Audio Controls”.
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You can then drag this tag onto any command.
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You can also add a tag by highlighting one or more commands first and then creating a new tag;
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we’ll name this one “Snapshot”.
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Each command can have multiple tags,
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and you can quickly filter your list to find commands associated with a specific function.
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Next let’s go to the Command Schedule tab,
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to schedule these commands to occur at a predetermined time or day. This is known as an Event.
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To create an Event, simply double-click in a blank area.
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First we’ll give the Event a name, like “Staff Meeting... Ok, fine, “Party,”.
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Then select the Command that you have created – we’ll use the Gain to Full.
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By default, all Events start enabled, but you could select No to disable this event,
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allowing you to engage it again later without deleting it entirely.
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You must also decide how often your event occurs, whether that be a one-time event,
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you can select Once and then specify the date and time, and then you’re done.
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If you select Daily then it will happen every day at a specific time;
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if you select Weekly then you can choose which day of the week it will occur on;
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and if you select Monthly then you can choose which day of the month it will occur on.
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Note that if you select Monthly,
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then select the 29th, 30th, or 31st, it will only occur on months that have those dates.
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For certain events, you might want the command to Loop, which is different than a reoccurring Event.
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A Loop means the Command will be triggered multiple times within the same Event,
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at an interval of your choosing.
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For instance, two minutes before showtime, you might want to send a command to your lighting console
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that dips the lights momentarily to signal to the audience that it's time to to take their seats.
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You can repeat this every thirty seconds until the show is scheduled to begin.
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And once the loop has terminated, then the event is complete.
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If you’re playing something like a short announcement from an audio player component,
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be sure to use this Loop command rather than the Loop button in the Audio Player.
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If an Audio Player is set to Loop it will keep playing endlessly until something tells it to stop,
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whereas the Loop controls here in Administrator let you be very specific
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about how many times you want to launch the command,
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and allows for time to pass in between those intervals.
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You can also expose these advanced settings,
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which allow you to decide when this Event begins going into effect, and also the ending date if you’d like.
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If you want it to occur every other day, or every three weeks, etc., you can adjust this field here.
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Once you’re satisfied with your Event,
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select the OK button and your event will populate in your calendar view.
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There it is: every two days, it’s a party!
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You can also swap this Calendar View from monthly to weekly, or daily, or back to monthly.
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If you don’t like the Calendar View, you can choose the List View to just see the upcoming events.
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Or you can do away with the calendar entirely and switch to “Show Events” mode
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which simply lists all of your events as single items, regardless of how often they repeat.
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Using Commands in conjunction with the Command Schedule feature
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can help you automate your system in a variety of ways.
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For instance, you could create a global Snapshot of your design in a safe, neutral state,
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and then build a Command that fires a snapshot,
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and use the Scheduler to recall that Command every day at 8:00am in the morning.
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That way, no matter who has adjusted the system the night before,
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your design will start off every day exactly the way you want it.
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You may have noticed a warning bar at the top of the screen.
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Be sure to select “Update” to apply any changes you have made in the Administrator
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to your current design in order to activate them.
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Last but not least, there’s another User category in Administrator,
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that is separate from the User profiles and PINs you established in Core Manager.
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These Users are specific to three areas:
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PA system users (which you can learn about in our Public Address training videos),
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External Control Protocol users (which you can learn about in our External Control Protocol training videos),
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and Audio File Management (which would be used if you are using an FTP client or something similar to manage the Core’s audio files).
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Creating Users for any of these types of access is pretty self-explanatory:
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you just press the Plus button to create a User, then give that user a name and PIN.
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If you want to restrict a user from having access to one of these protocols,
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then be sure to disable the Guest account’s ability to use those protocols first,
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and then you can restrict them from your custom users as well.
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So now you should have a clear understanding of how to operate each of the areas of the Administrator
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and are ready to take the assessment.
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Thanks for watching, and we’ll see you next time.