Tags and Command Schedule

Welcome back, in this section we’re going to learn about the Command Scheduler tab in the Administrator window.

But first we have a few final things we need to look at as far as organizing your Commands.

The last thing you can do in the Commands tab is assign Tags.

Tags are a convenient way to group associated commands together.

You can create a new tag by clicking the Plus icon here,

and type in whatever tag you would like to use – I’ll call these “Audio Controls.

You can then drag this label onto a command to tag it.

And you’ll see that tag appear right here in the Tags column.

You can use the same tag as many times as you’d like.

You can also add a tag by having one or more commands highlighted and then creating a tag

we’ll make this one “Snapshot – you can label them whatever you like.

The tag will automatically be added to the selected commands.

Commands can have as many tags as you like, as you can see here.

Once you have tagged commands, you can then use the filter icon to sort your list

so that you can easily find commands associated with a specific function. Let’s use this Filter icon

let’s only find the Snapshot tags, or only find the Audio Controls tag. See?

Alright, the second Administrator tab is the Command Schedule.

Here you can schedule commands to be triggered at a predetermined time by creating an Event.

In the calendar interface you can see all of your upcoming events.

I don’t have any events right now, I’m very unpopular. You can choose between Week View or Month View,

by selecting the “31 or “7 day options, and you can browse forward and backwards in months

or weeks by using these two arrows here. If you double-click on a blank area in the calendar

then you will create a new Event which you can edit using this box. Simply give the Event a name,

like “Party, and select a Command that you have created – we’ll use the Gain to Full.

By default all Events start enabled, but you could select No to disable this event,

allowing you to enable it again later without deleting it entirely.

All that is left is to decide how often your event occurs.

If it is a one-time event you can select Once and then specify the date and time, and then you’re done.

If you select Daily then it will happen every day at a specified time,

if you select Weekly then you can choose which days of the week it will occur on,

and if you select Monthly then you can choose which day of the month it will occur on.

Note that if you select the 29th, 30th, or 31st, it will only occur on months that have those dates.

Some commands, such as playing an audio file, you may wish to loop.

If you select this option you can choose the time at which the message will cease to be looped,

and how often it will be played during that time.

If you’re playing from an audio player component, be sure to use this Loop command

rather than the Loop button on the audio player, as this would keep the message looping indefinitely.

Finally, if you have scheduled your event to occur daily,

weekly, or monthly, then you can use the Advanced Settings.

Here you can choose when the event will stop repeating,

either by selecting a maximum number of occurrences or a date to stop on

– we’ll have this one go for a few months - you can also modify this “every

field to have your event occur every three months or every two months, or let’s make it every two days.

Once you’re satisfied with your Event, select the OK button

and you will see your event populate in your calendar view. There it is: every two days, it’s a party.

Using Commands in conjunction with the Command Schedule feature

can help you automate your system in a variety of ways.

For instance, you could create a global Snapshot of your design in a safe, neutral state,

you could create a Command of that snapshot, and then use the Scheduler to recall that

Command every day at 8:00am in the morning. That way, no matter who has adjusted the system

the night before, every day your design will start off exactly the way you want it.

So let’s take a quick break right here,

and in the next section we’ll look at the Users and User Control Interface tabs.

Continue on whenever you’re ready.