Video Transcript
The Administrator
10m 44s
00:07
Welcome back.
00:09
Q-SYS Administrator provides certain features that can be configured offline without the Core itself
00:14
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.
00:23
You can access the Administrator by selecting the bullhorn icon in the top bar,
00:28
or by going to File Menu > Tools > Show Administrator.
00:35
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.
00:59
There are user-friendly functions in Administrator that allow your venue manager access to
01:05
things without forcing them to get into Q-SYS Designer software.
01:08
You can give them this program,
01:10
and then they can access this screen without getting into the Q-SYS design file itself.
01:15
Much like Core Manager, you’ll see tabs on the left of features you can access.
01:20
You’ll only see a few for now, but if you have any Public Address components like a PA Router in your design,
01:26
you’ll also see several additional tabs for managing your PA system.
01:30
Those tabs will be covered in the Public Address videos you can find in our Quickstarts section,
01:34
so we’re just going to focus on the Commands and Command Schedule tabs for now.
01:39
Let’s start with Commands.
01:41
This tab allows you to create specific actions called commands,
01:45
which you can then automate using the Command Schedule tab.
01:49
Commands can also be activated from page stations.
01:52
To create a command, click the plus icon at the top of the center section:
01:56
there are four types of commands, though you will only be presented with options available to you.
02:01
There are PA Page Commands, PA Play Message Commands,
02:05
Control Change Commands, and Snapshot Load Commands.
02:09
The PA commands will both be covered in the Paging Tutorial with the other public address features,
02:14
so let’s look at the other two.
02:16
A Control Change Command does exactly what it implies: it will change a control of your choice.
02:22
In order to make a control available for this feature, you’ll need to add it to your Named Controls bin.
02:28
Let’s show you how:
02:29
We’ll drag a few controls from an Audio Player in the design into the Named Controls Bin.
02:36
Now, this doesn’t remove the controls from the component,
02:39
it simply makes them accessible for control outside of the Schematic
02:44
by things like the Administrator or third party control systems.
02:48
If you don’t have any controls in this bin,
02:50
then you won’t have the option to add a Control Change Command in the Administrator.
02:55
So let’s save our design to the Core and run it again to gain access to the Administrator,
03:00
and then we’ll add a Control Change Command.
03:02
This settings menu will let us configure our new command.
03:05
You can name the command anything that you want like,
03:09
let’s name this one “Gain to Full” – we’ll use it to put the gain all the way up.
03:15
You can also give it a numeric code of your choice.
03:18
This code is a sequence that can be entered at a page station to remotely launch the command.
03:24
Next, you’ll want to select which Control will be changed.
03:28
We’ll select the Gain, and then select the Value that it will be changed to.
03:33
For a Gain knob like this one, you can also select the Ramp Time,
03:37
which is how many seconds it will take to reach the new value.
03:41
Certain controls don’t require a value or ramp time, because they are one-time actions.
03:47
These are known as triggers.
03:49
For instance, if you target a Pause Button instead,
03:53
you’ll see that it states the control “will be triggered” when the Command is engaged.
03:59
Once you’ve configured your command, select the OK button and you’ll see it added to your Commands list.
04:05
The next type of Command is the Snapshot Load Command.
04:08
Now, a Snapshot Load Command will load a saved Snapshot that you have in one of your Snapshot Banks.
04:15
You’ll learn more about creating Snapshots in our Control Overview section;
04:19
but for now, know that a snapshot can essentially be used
04:23
to change a lot of controls to a predetermined state at the same time.
04:28
In this settings menu,
04:29
simply select the name of your Snapshot Bank – we’ll use the Global one—which Snapshot number you would like to recall,
04:37
and then the ramp time.
04:39
However, be aware that Snapshots cannot activate trigger buttons – since they don’t have a “state” of on or off
04:48
so the Control Change command is critical if you want to schedule things like, say, starting an Audio Player.
04:55
When you have a lot of commands,
04:57
you can arrange them in ascending or descending order by each of these columns,
05:01
you can adjust the column sizes, or edit their settings once again by double-clicking them.
05:07
You might also find it useful to assign them Tags.
05:11
Tags are a convenient way to group associated commands together,
05:15
similar to using hashtags on social media.
05:19
Create a tag by clicking on the Plus icon here, and then give it a name. I’ll call these “Audio Controls”.
05:29
You can then drag this tag onto any command.
05:33
You can also add a tag by highlighting one or more commands first and then creating a new tag;
05:39
we’ll name this one “Snapshot”.
05:43
Each command can have multiple tags,
05:45
and you can quickly filter your list to find commands associated with a specific function.
05:51
Next let’s go to the Command Schedule tab,
05:53
to schedule these commands to occur at a predetermined time or day. This is known as an Event.
06:00
To create an Event, simply double-click in a blank area.
06:03
First we’ll give the Event a name, like “Staff Meeting... Ok, fine, “Party,”.
06:13
Then select the Command that you have created – we’ll use the Gain to Full.
06:18
By default, all Events start enabled, but you could select No to disable this event,
06:24
allowing you to engage it again later without deleting it entirely.
06:28
You must also decide how often your event occurs, whether that be a one-time event,
06:34
you can select Once and then specify the date and time, and then you’re done.
06:39
If you select Daily then it will happen every day at a specific time;
06:44
if you select Weekly then you can choose which day of the week it will occur on;
06:48
and if you select Monthly then you can choose which day of the month it will occur on.
06:53
Note that if you select Monthly,
06:55
then select the 29th, 30th, or 31st, it will only occur on months that have those dates.
07:03
For certain events, you might want the command to Loop, which is different than a reoccurring Event.
07:09
A Loop means the Command will be triggered multiple times within the same Event,
07:14
at an interval of your choosing.
07:16
For instance, two minutes before showtime, you might want to send a command to your lighting console
07:22
that dips the lights momentarily to signal to the audience that it's time to to take their seats.
07:26
You can repeat this every thirty seconds until the show is scheduled to begin.
07:31
And once the loop has terminated, then the event is complete.
07:35
If you’re playing something like a short announcement from an audio player component,
07:40
be sure to use this Loop command rather than the Loop button in the Audio Player.
07:45
If an Audio Player is set to Loop it will keep playing endlessly until something tells it to stop,
07:50
whereas the Loop controls here in Administrator let you be very specific
07:54
about how many times you want to launch the command,
07:57
and allows for time to pass in between those intervals.
08:01
You can also expose these advanced settings,
08:03
which allow you to decide when this Event begins going into effect, and also the ending date if you’d like.
08:10
If you want it to occur every other day, or every three weeks, etc., you can adjust this field here.
08:17
Once you’re satisfied with your Event,
08:19
select the OK button and your event will populate in your calendar view.
08:24
There it is: every two days, it’s a party!
08:28
You can also swap this Calendar View from monthly to weekly, or daily, or back to monthly.
08:35
If you don’t like the Calendar View, you can choose the List View to just see the upcoming events.
08:41
Or you can do away with the calendar entirely and switch to “Show Events” mode
08:46
which simply lists all of your events as single items, regardless of how often they repeat.
08:52
Using Commands in conjunction with the Command Schedule feature
08:55
can help you automate your system in a variety of ways.
08:59
For instance, you could create a global Snapshot of your design in a safe, neutral state,
09:04
and then build a Command that fires a snapshot,
09:08
and use the Scheduler to recall that Command every day at 8:00am in the morning.
09:13
That way, no matter who has adjusted the system the night before,
09:17
your design will start off every day exactly the way you want it.
09:21
You may have noticed a warning bar at the top of the screen.
09:24
Be sure to select “Update” to apply any changes you have made in the Administrator
09:29
to your current design in order to activate them.
09:32
Last but not least, there’s another User category in Administrator,
09:37
that is separate from the User profiles and PINs you established in Core Manager.
09:41
These Users are specific to three areas:
09:45
PA system users (which you can learn about in our Public Address training videos),
09:50
External Control Protocol users (which you can learn about in our External Control Protocol training videos),
09:58
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).
10:05
Creating Users for any of these types of access is pretty self-explanatory:
10:10
you just press the Plus button to create a User, then give that user a name and PIN.
10:19
If you want to restrict a user from having access to one of these protocols,
10:23
then be sure to disable the Guest account’s ability to use those protocols first,
10:28
and then you can restrict them from your custom users as well.
10:32
So now you should have a clear understanding of how to operate each of the areas of the Administrator
10:37
and are ready to take the assessment.
10:39
Thanks for watching, and we’ll see you next time.
Lesson Description
The Administrator
10m 44s
Build and schedule specific events and commands using the Administrator tool
Links and Downloads
The Administrator
10m 44s