On Wednesday, we were joined by two TrilbyTV customers for an honest conversation about what setting up and managing digital signage involves. Our Senior Customer Success Manager, Tom Pickrell chatted with Dominic Oakes, IT Technician at Penwortham Priory Academy, and Alex Bowse, Network Manager at St Ambrose College to find out more about their experience.
If you didn’t catch the webinar, you can watch the recording on-demand. In this short session, we found out what Penwortham Priory’s first year with TrilbyTV looked like before exploring how digital signage has evolved over the last seven years at St Ambrose College.
Getting started with TrilbyTV
We kicked off the webinar with some questions about Dominic’s move to TrilbyTV. He told us that last year, their previous software had become expensive, at over £1000 per screen, and difficult to use. Instead of easy content uploads, he had to follow very strict guidelines for the layout which was time consuming and frustrating.
They wanted a solution that would allow them to grow their digital signage, since students had started to get excited about the screens around the school. Enter TrilbyTV! A big draw was the ability to run the software on a wide range of devices. Dominic said, “you don’t need the latest smart TV to run TrilbyTV, you can just run it from a Firestick. We might have a TV that’s still working but is 10 years old and we can run it from that.” He told us, “It just made sense, the fact that you can just download the APK file and run it on loads of things is great.”
As well as sharing important updates with students and parents and promoting the house system, the TrilbyTV Content Catalogue and Smart Content makes it easy to find content, “we can pinch without doing much work!” Dominic laughed. “We’ve discovered a lot of new international days we didn’t know were a thing, it’s great fun.”
In terms of time to success, Dominic feels the process has been quick, getting to the point of students and staff being involved in signage in less than two months.
“We were able to expand really quickly. It was one of the conditions that we needed to show that it made more of an impact than our previous solution. We’ve managed to grow from two screens to 11,” he said, adding, “literally anywhere there’s a TV in school, we’ve got signage.”
Growing with TrilbyTV
St Ambrose College are now in their seventh year with TrilbyTV. Over time, Alex has developed a process for managing content requests including a ticketing system that staff can submit to and some clear guidelines: “Keep it as simple as possible, not too much text, colourful and large enough for people to see.” The process for students is the same, although they need to go through their teachers first to moderate the content. This means the signage is a real blend of voices from across the school and consists of engaging, eye-catching content.
One of the tools that makes it easy for the school community to create great content is Canva for Education. Alex said, “we signed up for free and advertised it to staff. We’ve had some Canva material come through and even some animation which looked superb.”
Another one of Alex’s time-saving TrilbyTV tactics is to make the most of Schedules. In the morning from 6am until just before 9am, all of the screens are set up to show upcoming events of interest that week such as the World Cup or Thank A Teacher Day. When school starts, each screen goes back to its usual schedule. As a school without bells, they also display the time on screen using Clockie during breaktimes so that teachers know when to blow to whistle.
In terms of maintenance, Alex schedules a weekly hardware check to make sure screens are turned on. TrilbyTV makes this easier because you can see in-app which screens are switched off, without having to check them all in person. The school also recently upgraded their hardware to Firesticks, which automatically update the TrilbyTV app when there are any changes. So, although the team does need to make sure everything’s switched on and working, TrilbyTV makes this as easy as possible.
Guide to effective digital signage in education
Request free guideThe impact of digital signage
Wrapping up, we talked about the impact of TrilbyTV at Penwortham Priory and St Ambrose College. Dominic told us, “since we’ve grown with TrilbyTV, we’ve seen a massive increase in students wanting to be involved whether that’s creating content themselves or sharing ideas about where a TV should go next, or giving feedback on content.” He explained, “ultimately, we’re here to facilitate the students having the best experience they can and signage is a great way to do that.”
Alex agreed and also added that TrilbyTV really helps to make sure communications are seen in school and beyond. On site, he says the school community including students and parents take notice, “because it’s colourful and impactful so people see it.” He’s also able to extend the impact beyond the school gates by using Web Players: “You can weblink so whatever is displayed on TrilbyTV can be displayed on the website.”
Of course, there can sometimes be bumps along the way which is why we pride ourselves on having a knowledgeable, responsive team on hand to help. When Tom asked what Dominic thought about the support provided he said, “within an hour, you’ve got a response, often even quicker than that. For me, it’s been absolutely brilliant, one of the best customer service experiences I’ve had.” Alex agreed, saying “the support has been superb.”
Dominic summed up saying, “it’s been really nice, I wouldn’t change it for anything. As IT professionals know, IT isn’t always very nice to you!”
If you’d like to find out more about easy, impactful digital signage with great support, why not book a demo? There’s no commitment and our team will walk you through the platform and help you choose the right options for your setting. If you’d rather try it for yourself, you can sign up for a free 30-day trial, no card details needed.