Customers on the Enterprise Plan can now perform mass provisioning with OptiSigns. It is supported on OptiSigns Android Player, Windows, Linux, Raspberry Pi, and ChromeOS. In case you are running a large deployment of digital signage projects, you will find mass provisioning can save a lot of time and effort. For example, when you use our RPI image or have MDM software to display the OptiSigns player on the devices, you can leverage the mass provisioning feature to set up the device/wifi and get it connected to your account.
The process of performing mass provisioning is simple and straightforward.
- Create a provisioning template in your account.
- (Optional) Generate the device list, if you would like to name your device individually pre-deployment.
- Deploy and run.
Prerequisite:
- The device needs to support using a USB drive or SD card. Or there is a way you can push the configuration file to a specific location in the OS.
- The user using the OS has the privilege to run the installation and access the USB drive or SD card.
If this is the first time you use OptiSigns, you can read here to get a better understanding before deployment.
Otherwise, let's dive in.
1) Create provisioning template
To create a provisioning template, you can either access it from the admin menu or use the link below.
https://app.optisigns.com/app/s/provisioning-templates
Create a new provisioning template by clicking the "Create templates" button. If you want to auto-step up WIFI at provisioning, you will need to create stored wifi first, the steps are covered later.
Then setup the template in the popup.
- Template Name: Name of your template, this is for you to distinguish it when you have multiple provisioning templates.
- Device Name Prefix: This is used to generate the device name during provisioning.
- Device Name Suffix: This is used to generate the device name during provisioning, the default setting will add timestamps as a suffix.
- Folder: The folder you want to have the provisioned devices to be created.
- WIFI: Select from the stored WIFI, which needs to be created first. Only required if you want to set up WIFI during provisioning.
- Time Zone: Specify the time zone of the device.
- Tags: Specify the tags you want to associate with the devices.
- Initial Default Content Type: Used to set the initial content on the device after provisioning.
- Orientation: Set the orientation, landscape is the default.
- Sync Play: Used to set the turn on/off of the sync play feature. For more details on the Sync Play feature, please click here.
- Location: Set the location of the device.
Once the template is created, it will be available under the list of provisioning templates, you can download the config file and it will be used later during deployment. The configuration file's name is "provisioning-template-<Your Template Name>.cfg"
If you would like to set up WIFI at the same time as provisioning, you can click the "Manage Stored Wifi" button, to have the Wifi information provided in the provisioning template.
In the popup, click "Add New WiFi", then enter the WiFi SSID and password. The WiFi will be stored and available to use in the provisioning template.
2) (Optional)Generate device list
If you would like to have the device name preassigned for each device, you can follow this step, otherwise, you can go to step 3 directly.
To pre-assign the device name, you can use the existing preconfigure device feature to create a device list with a pairing code. Go to Screens, then select the preconfigure devices.
In the popup, specify how many screens you want to preconfigure.
Enter a prefix you would like to give to your device and assign an initial content on the screen. The device name will be generated based on the prefix with a sequence number added. This name can be changed later before deployment.
Once done, the page will list all the devices preconfigured with the pairing code. Click "Done", it will generate a CSV file named "preconfigure-devices.csv" and download it to your computer.
Open the CSV file, it will contain the list of the preconfigured devices and the corresponding pairing code. If you would like to change the device name, just go ahead and update the CSV file. Then the file can be used in the next step during deployment if you want to have your screens using the exact pre-assigned name.
3) Deploy and Run
Once you have the provisioning template config file ready, you can proceed to the deployment. If you would like to pre-assign the exact name on the screen, you will need to get the preconfigure device list from step 2 as well.
Next, get an SD card or USB drive, and create a folder named "autoconfig" under the SD card/USB drive root directory. Then place the above-collected config files under the "autoconfig" folder. Now you will have the SD card/USB drive ready to use for provisioning and deployment.
All you need to do at deployment is to plug in the SD card/USB drive on the device, and then launch the OptiSigns player. The player will detect the config file and start the provisioning process. You will receive messages on the screen once the provisioning is complete.
That's it! Now you know how to perform mass provisioning with OptiSigns.
If you have any additional questions, concerns, or any feedback about OptiSigns, feel free to reach out to our support team at support@optisigns.com