Permissions Dialog

The next article in the run up to 1.4 stable release will take a look at the improvements made to the permissions model in Xibo. There has been long running confusion over the permissions in Xibo and hopefully this will now be addressed. We have improved the permissions model in 1 key way – allowed users and administrators to set view, edit and delete permissions on:

• Library Media
• Layouts
• Regions in Layouts
• Media on Region Timelines
• DataSets
• Display Groups
• Displays

All of these items have the permissions set in the same way, via a simple to use dialog showing groups and users. In addition to this all permissions are validated with each form load, or save button clicked so you can guarentee “real time” modifications to the permissions on items.

Here are some key facts about the new system:

• The Highest permission is used (if a user belongs to 2 groups, one has edit permissions and the other doesn’t – the user will have edit permissions)
• Permissions are tested with each transaction
• Permissions on an item can only be changed by the owner or a super administrator (for displays and display groups that have no owner, this is super admin only)

These permissions are then reflected in all tables, forms, lists and on the layout designer.

Summary

We hope that these improved permissions will make it easier to manage Xibo, particularly in environments where there are many users accessing the system. As always, all comments and suggestions are welcome and appreciated over on Launchpad Answers.

Up until now user passwords and user management in general has not always been clear in Xibo – we have tried to improve the situation with 3 new features/improvements:

• Users can change their passwords without having access to the user administration page
• Administrators can set a regular expression to test password complexity
• Administrators can override users passwords in a more intuitive way

Hopefully this will clear up some confusion with users having access to the user admin page and ensure better security through more complex passwords (at the administrators discretion)

Settings for the Password Policy on the Permissions Tab

Password Complexity

When designing this feature we wanted the utmost flexibility given to the administrator to test passwords in which ever way they chose. Therefore we have introduced a new setting in the “Permissions” tab called USER_PASSWORD_POLICY (will be translated into the local language before release).

An administrator can put any valid regular expression in this box, which will cause all users password change requests (and new users) to be tested against this expression.

It is also important for the user to know what the policy actually is – therefore we have introduced another setting called USER_PASSWORD_ERROR which will be presented to the user when they enter a password that does not validate against the regular expression.

Users can change their password by clicking on their username

Changing Passwords

A user can now change their password by clicking on their user name in the top right corner of the admin interface. They will be presented with a form requiring them to enter their existing password, a new password and a retyped new password – all fields are required.

An administrator can now easily override / reset a users existing password by editing the the from the user admin screen and ticking the box to “override”.

Summary

We hope that these enhancements will make it easier for administrators and users alike and make Xibo more flexible and secure! Comments and Feedback are always welcome over on Launchpad Answers.

The first one we are going to look at is the new DataSets feature.

Overview

DataSets are a new Xibo feature to design and display tabular data, formatted nicely, in a region on a layout.

Examples of where this could be used are:

• A drinks menu at a bar
• Tee times at a golf club
• Meeting room bookings

DataSets have been designed to be versatile and reusable and therefore come in two parts:

• The Data (DataSet)
• The Display (DataSet View)

This means that you can define a data set as a number of columns, add rows and then create “views” of this data on your layouts.

Creating a DataSet

Form to add a new DataSet

DataSets are accessed using the “DataSets” link in the “Management” drop down menu, navigating here will bring you to a very familiar Xibo “table” view of all the data sets you have permission to access. You can add a new dataset by giving it a name and an optional description, you can also edit existing ones and add data.

DataSets also come under the standard permissions options that are available throughout Xibo. The creator of a dataset (or an admin) is able to set the permissions for the DataSet on a user group, or on a user by user basis. Only users with Edit permissions will be able to add/edit data and reorganise the data structure, only users with a view permission will be able to use the DataSet in their layouts.

Set the columns you want

The first thing to do is Add a new DataSet using the Add button (found near the filter form), after doing so the columns of the DataSet can be defined to describe the structure of the data.

Defining the structure of the data

Data Columns are used to define the structure of the data, each column can have a number of settings to achieve this, these are:

• Heading (the column heading to appear when you enter data
• List Content (enter a comma separated list of values in here to display in the drop down list)
• Column Order (the order to place the column)

There isn’t a theoretical limit to the number of columns Xibo can support – although a smaller DataSet is often easier to enter and display than an overly large one. Columns may be extended in the future to have support for different data types – currently only strings are supported.

Note: Columns can be added and removed after data has been entered. The ordering and list content of columns can also be changed after data has been collected.

View and edit the data saved in a DataSet

Adding Data

Once all the required columns have been added, the DataSet is ready to have data recorded against it. This is done using the “View Data” task on the DataSet table view. This view will contain all of the columns that were added in the previous step and allow you to go through each one and enter data. In future we will look to extend this to support an import from CSV file and perhaps a link to 3rd party databases.

There is no “save” button on this interface, Xibo will automatically save your changes after each data entry.

Note: If all the rows are taken, more rows can be added to the data set by clicking the “Add Rows” button.

The DataSet is ready to be used on a layout!

Using the DataSet

Configuring the DataSet View on a Layout

Once a DataSet has been defined anyone with “View” permissions can use the DataSet on layouts. They are added by selecting the “DataSet” button from a region Timeline, which presents a drop down list of all DataSets available to the user as well as the usual duration field for entering the duration in seconds that the DataSet should be shown.

Once added, the edit dialog will automatically appear allowing the user to pick their options for the DataSet View.

On this form the user can specify:

• Duration: The duration in seconds
• Update Interval: The duration in minutes the data should be cached on the client
• Lower Row Limit: The row number to start displaying the data
• Upper Row Limit: The row number to end displaying the data
• Order: The Ordering of the data (column name ASC|DESC)
• Filter: A filter option to filter the data with (Column Name=Value, Column Name=Value)
• Show Table Headings: Whether to show the column headings in the table
• Columns Selected: The columns to display (drag or double click to move between lists)
• Columns Available: The columns available to select (drag or double click to move between lists)
• Stylesheet: A CSS Stylesheet to render with the table

The resulting view will be showing the region preview window and displayed on the client.

Note: Once the DataSet view is configured it will automatically respond to edits made on the data – and it multiple views on the same DataSet can be created.

Summary

We hope this new feature will be useful for anyone wanting to display tabular data and will offer a vast improvement over manually creating a table view in the text editor. We also hope that in the future we can extend this feature to offer some simple chart generation on the client.

Comments and feedback are always welcome!

Bradley Morris is a freelance web application developer based in the North East of England and is responsible for the new WordPress template. Paul van Dun is a graphics designer and developer from The Netherlands and is responsible for the new logo and network architecture images. Many thanks to both of them for making this redesign possible.

We are all very excited by the new look and hope that it will generate more exposure for the project bringing us closer to our goal of making Digital Signage easy and affordable for everyone.

Our main aim for 2012 is to bring about shorter release cycles – meaning instead of getting 1 massive release a year with lots of features, we should put out a number of smaller releases, each containing a few features.

So what can you expect?

“Marketing”
To someone that has not used/seen the software before, Xibo doesn’t look inspiring, the website is lacking in key areas, documentation is lacking and marketing is lacking – however we feel that in terms of features, stability and completeness Xibo competes well with a lot of digital signage platforms.

2012 should see a turn around in Xibo’s image. There should be:
- An improved website
- Better introductory material (“marketing” material)
- More frequent updates of the website news (and a push to get these out on Twitter / Facebook)
- More frequent releases and a focus on design
- Improved “User Manual” and associated documentation
- Feature “Spotlights” to better engage people on the new things we are putting in

Server Improvements
The 1.3 series server should shortly be released as 1.4 rc1 and become the next stable release. Beyond this we will be looking to get the following addressed in 1.5:
- Templating using Smarty
- Campaigns
- Reusable region timelines
- Complete the Xibo API (and documentation)

Client Improvements
A focus on improvements to stability and library management:
- Improved file downloading in the .NET client (threaded downloads, pause/resume, status updates, information screen)
- Improved library management (detect unused files and delete them)
- Schedule accuracy improvements in the Python client (complete control of when layouts expire)
- Stability improvements in both clients

As always, if you have anything you especially want in Xibo, please do feel free to add it in the “Blueprints” section of Xibo. We do a regular review of all these blueprints – they really do get included!

If you feel you can help with any of the above, please do get in touch.

Best wishes.

Given that a year has past, we thought it was appropriate to being asking again…

The Xibo site was put together as a temporary measure over 3 years ago and was always designed to be a functional home until Xibo gained a reputation and warrented a better site. We thought that time had come a year ago and we definitely do now… to cut a long story short – the current site does not showcase Xibo well at all!

What we are looking for is:
- A word press theme for the xibo.org.uk site
- A theme to match for the Xibo Wiki
- A theme for our Xibo directory or preferably a word press plug in that will do the job

We are open to any ideas, although there is one point we are very keen on… the Xibo logo should remain the same. We feel that the logo has achieved a certain amount of brand identity, and therefore don’t want to lose it.

Any offers, questions or suggestions will be well received on info@xibo.org.uk.

Many thanks!

Note: This is a development preview release of Xibo. This release is working towards the release of Xibo 1.4.0, the next stable line of Xibo. This should NOT BE USED IN PRODUCTION.

For a complete list of changes and instructions for trying out this preview, please refer to the release notes.

The release notes are available on our Wiki here: http://wiki.xibo.org.uk/wiki/Release_Notes:1.3.2 and you can download this release from our Launchpad project page here: https://launchpad.net/xibo/1.3/1.3.2.

There is no update to the Python client for Linux, the version released with 1.3.0 will run against 1.3.2 server. All the details for getting and running the client are available in the wiki here: http://wiki.xibo.org.uk/wiki/Install_Guide_Python_Client

Note: This is a development preview release of Xibo. This release is working towards the release of Xibo 1.4.0, the next stable line of Xibo. This should NOT BE USED IN PRODUCTION.

For a complete list of changes and instructions for trying out this preview, please refer to the release notes.

The release notes are available on our Wiki here: http://wiki.xibo.org.uk/wiki/Release_Notes:1.3.1 and you can download this release from our Launchpad project page here: https://launchpad.net/xibo/1.3/1.3.1.

Also released is the updated preview of the Python client for Linux. All the details for getting and running the client are available in the wiki here: http://wiki.xibo.org.uk/wiki/Install_Guide_Python_Client

Note: This is a development preview release of Xibo. This release is working towards the release of Xibo 1.4.0, the next stable line of Xibo. This should NOT BE USED IN PRODUCTION.

For a complete list of changes and instructions for trying out this preview, please refer to the release notes.

The release notes are available on our Wiki here: http://wiki.xibo.org.uk/wiki/Release_Notes:1.3.0 and you can download this release from our Launchpad project page here: https://launchpad.net/xibo/1.3/1.3.0.

Also released is the updated preview of the Python client for Linux. All the details for getting and running the client are available in the wiki here: http://wiki.xibo.org.uk/wiki/Install_Guide_Python_Client