Today’s post comes from a guest, Jamie Taylor, Technical Manager at JTRS in the UAE. Jamie recently helped deploy TrilbyTV into a commercial environment, taking advantage of some unique displays. Here’s Jamie with more.
I recently had the opportunity to work on a TrilbyTV implementation with a forward-thinking and open to ideas business based in Dubai. With a fantastic new office refurbishment, they have tried to make it an enjoyable, open, flexible and collaborative working environment for their employees.
They walked me around the building and as I asked them why did they have brightly coloured leads hanging from the ceiling, they explained it was power cabling from the ceiling-mounted cable management trays. This way it allowed them to have a truly flexible space where desks could be moved without worrying about where the nearest floor panel with power might be.
I then noticed the desks as they had small LED screens on the sides, and before I could ask, the manager had pressed the up button, raising the desk to standing height.
I turned to my manager, with the “Can I get one of these for JTRS office look”!
I was then shown two giant cylindrical screens in the main reception area which would be the focal point where guests would enter. My mind wandered to some thoughts Neil from TrilbyTV had shared with me about fancy screens with dull content, I wondered if this would be such a case.
The CEO then shared his visions and I quickly realised it would not. He showed me the conference room booking system, small touchscreen devices on each door so staff could see if the room was booked, Star Trek names for each room such as Escape Pod-1 for the conference room, Mess Hall for the staff room and Captains briefing for the boardroom. We talked about having content always running during business hours, utilising the screens to their maximum, getting internal content created and uploaded, maximising the screen usage, training the staff on how to use the technology at their disposal and doing it all in a fun and creative way.
I wanted to make sure the devices were configured in the easiest way, with the least interaction needed along with ensuring the TrilbyTV system was at the forefront, showing content but allowing users to airplay without any barriers, Jamf MDM was the perfect fit for this vision.
After manually adding the devices to DEP using Apple configurator and then enrolling them, we created some smart groups so each Apple TV became a member upon enrolment.
We then scoped policies to this, including the company wifi connection and airplay permissions which specified only people connected to the same wifi could airplay and a passcode would be displayed each time. This would mean guests would not be able to airplay or cause mischief!
We installed the TrilbyTV app and used the Automatic Download setting on each Apple TV so that the app self-propagated to all Apple TVs and saved us considerable time. When VPP comes in September/October (I guess) we will hopefully transition over to this for an even more streamlined process.
We tried to use some new techniques during our configurations including connecting to the Apple TVs over Quicktime Player on a Mac and then using the Apple TV remote app to get the TrilbyTV Player codes, this meant we didn’t need to keep walking around the building to view the screens and check the setup or test the TrilbyTV content was displaying.
We then added the single app policy meaning the TrilbyTV app opens automatically, even if the Apple TV is unplugged and plugged back in at any point. So there’s no way for people to escape the awesome content pushed by TrilbyTV 🙂
The staff can interrupt the TrilbyTV temporarily to airplay when having client meetings and when they are finished and disconnected TrilbyTV kicks back in again. Happy days for all involved.
We then passed on this knowledge to a few team members meaning they have the confidence and understanding to use the system and help others. A 45-minute TrilbyTV training session later and everyone was onboard and content was playing on screens around the office. In fact, TrilbyTV is so easy they had already managed to get content created and playing on screens prior to my training visit.
A testament to TrilbyTV indeed!
It was a pleasure for me and the JTRS team to work on this project and to work with Takaful Emarat and the great management and team they have there. We’re very happy to see the content playing when we drive down Sheikh Zayed Road and past the office and see those giant cylinders pumping out content created by Takaful.
Jamie Taylor is Technical Manager at JTRS UAE