devices

There are two types of plugin devices available in the Announcements plugin.

Announcements Device
The Announcements device is the main device type. This device is used to construct the individual announcement strings that will be used for announcements.

The settings and controls for the Announcement device are broken into three sections:

• Examples
  These are handy reminders of the various constructions used to create complex announcements. More information on these constructions is provided on the Tutorials Page.

• Announcements
  The Announcement creator is where most of the magic happens. This set of tools is used to create, test, save, edit and delete your various announcements.

There are four field in the Announcements creator:

• Announcements
  This is the list of announcements that have been created for this Announcements device. If the field is blank, there are no announcements associated with this device.

• Name
  The name of the announcement will appear in the Name field. This field is also used to create a name for a new announcement. Just about any name is allowed, but it is important that each announcement name be unique (per device).

• Announcement
  The announcement string will appear in the Announcement field. This field is also used to create a new announcement.

• Refresh Interval
  The refresh interval will appear in the Refresh Interval field. This field is also used to set the refresh interval for a new announcement. This interval will override the refresh frequency setting set in the Plugin Configuration.

• Substitution Generator
  The substitution generator is a handy tool that can be used to quickly create Indigo substitutions for use in your announcement string. This is a temporary tool--meaning that it is used to create the substitution string so that you can copy and paste it into your announcement. However, any susbstitution that you create using the tool will disappear when you close the dialog box.

Salutations Device
The Salutations Device type is used to create strings that are "time-aware" -- in other words, these announcements will be different depending on the time of day. There are two salutations:

• Intro
  Intros are meant to be used at the beginning of a complex announcement. For example, you may wish to start a particular announcement with "Good morning." or "Good evening."

• Outro
  Outros are meant to be used at the end of a complex announcement.
  For example, you may wish to end a particular announcement with "Have a good morning." or "Have a good evening."

  The time values are meant to denote the beginning of a period. For example, in the sample dialog below, beginning at 05:00 local, the plugin will use the Morning announcement Intro and Outro. This will continue until the local time is equal to or after 12:00 local, at which time the next block of salutations will be used.

  Once established, you can reference Salutations values like you would any other device state. For example, %%d:12345678:intro%%.