Requirements before you begin
A Data Feed configured in your Data Feed Manager, if you intend to trigger based on live data
In this article, we will outline how to create a Trigger Playlist — a Playlist that automatically activates across every Player in a Group when its conditions are met, interrupting regular programming until those conditions are no longer true.
What is a Trigger Playlist?
A Trigger Playlist behaves differently from an ordinary Playlist. Rather than being scheduled onto the timeline, it sits ready and waiting — and activates automatically, on every Player within its Group, the moment its Trigger conditions evaluate true. Once those conditions are no longer met, the Trigger Playlist deactivates and your regular programming resumes automatically.
Creating a Trigger Playlist
In the Playlists panel, you'll now see two tabs - Default, which relates to regular playlists which can be dragged and dropped onto the timeline, and Triggers, which houses all of your Trigger Playlists.
From the Playlists panel, click the Triggers tab
Click + Playlists to create a new Trigger Playlist, and give it a name
Add your content to it, exactly as you would an ordinary Playlist
Setting Validity and Trigger conditions
Open your Trigger Playlist's properties and select the Playback rules tab
Validity
Under Validity, click + Add to set the period during which this Trigger Playlist is eligible to activate at all
Configure a Start and End date, and use the Week/Mon–Sun checkboxes to restrict which days it applies to
This works identically to Validity on an ordinary Playlist — see our article on Adding Validity to your Playlists for more detail.
Trigger conditions
Under Trigger conditions, use the Data Feed Manager button to configure a feed if you haven't already
Select your data feed from the dropdown
Build your condition using Data feed / Data column / Records / Operator / Data
Click + Add condition to add further conditions to the same rule, or + Add group to build a separate set of conditions
This is the same condition-building interface used in Conditional Formatting — see our article on Configuring Conditional Formatting on your Data Feed if you'd like more detail on how conditions, operators, and groups work.
Please Note
Unlike an ordinary Playlist, a Trigger Playlist is never manually placed onto your Schedule timeline. Its Trigger conditions are what determine when it plays — there's nothing further to schedule once this section is configured.
Once complete, your Trigger Playlist will trigger across all media players within your Group when the chosen conditions are met. For more granular control, see the following section.
Isolating content to specific Players
Since a Trigger Playlist activates across an entire Group, you'll need Tags if you want different content within it to display only on certain Players.
Step 1: Tag your Players
Open the Player's Properties and select the Attributes tab
Under Tags, select or create a tag (e.g.
#3) and click + Add
Step 2: Set Active tags on your content
Open the properties of the media item within your Trigger Playlist, and select the Playback rules tab
Under Active tags, choose Include or Exclude
Set your Tag mode (e.g. Partial match)
Use Select tag and click + Add to choose which Player tag(s) this content should match
Please Note
This same content's Playback rules tab also has its own Validity and Conditional playback sections, which behave exactly as they do elsewhere — a Validity Schedule set here controls when this specific piece of content is eligible to appear, separately from the Trigger Playlist's own overall Validity.
Summary
With Trigger conditions controlling when an entire Trigger Playlist activates, and Tags controlling which specific Players show which specific content within it, you're able to build automated, data-driven interruptions that reach exactly the Players you intend — without ever needing to manually schedule a thing.