Managing your Aiir Mobile App

The Mobile Apps section in Aiir lets you manage your Aiir iOS and Android apps.

We've got a separate guide for if you're setting up a new mobile app or moving an existing app from another provider to Aiir.

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Apps and Stations

The first thing you'll see when you open the Mobile Apps section of Aiir is a list of the mobile apps in your organisation.

New mobile apps can only be set up by our team as there is a cost for each app, so contact us if you'd like to discuss creating a new app.

Apps contain one or more stations. Stations can be created in the Stations section of Aiir.

Once a station is assigned to an app, only people who have been given access to that station will be able to edit that app's properties.

If more than one station is assigned to an app, then anyone who has access to at least one of the stations will be able to edit the app.

An app's properties include its name, the choice of stations, and whether notifications are enabled.

Everything else belongs to each station, including the theme, navigation, streams, home screen and interaction options.

To edit any of those, head to the Stations page within Mobile Apps where you'll find a list of stations.

If a station has been added to more than one mobile app, its properties apply to all the apps it appears in.

Customising a station

All of the following sections can be managed by going to the Mobile Apps section in Aiir, select Stations at the top and then select the station you wish to edit.
You'll need to have been given access to a station by an Administrator in your organisation.

Theme

The Theme section lets you choose the colour scheme for the station's screens in the app.

It's also where you select the logo that appears at the top of the home screen. The logo must be in PNG format with a transparent background, so that the background colour can show through.

Streams

A stream URL must be entered for high and low quality. If you only have one stream then you'll need to enter that URL in both boxes.

Test your stream URL in your web browser first. It it doesn't play there, it won't work in your app either.

The app will use the low quality stream by default as this is likely to be the most reliable experience for most people. The high quality stream will be used if the device is on a wi-fi connection, or if the person has opted to always use the high quality stream from the Settings screen.

Supported stream formats include MP3, AAC and AAC+. AAC+ is considered the most cost effective as it is capable of producing a higher quality stream at a lower bitrate than MP3. 

The navigation part of the apps can be edited at any time, and each item can be scheduled to appear and disappear.

You can add links to the mobile pages provided as part of the app, or any web page.

We provide a set of suitable icons, although it is possible to add any icon you wish. 

The home screen

The home screen of our mobile apps is split into two sections. At the top is a square which shows what is currently on air when listening to the live station stream, such as cover art or a picture of the programme.

Underneath is the 'home feed'. This is an editorial space where you can link to any content you wish.

The home feed consists of a stack of 'blocks'. Each block contains one or more items which link through to webpages or other screens in your app.

The simplest way to add links to the home screen is by adding a block and selecting the 'Links' type. You'll then be able to add individual items to the block.

Interactions

This is where to add the methods which you'd like to allow listeners to contact the station.

When you add items here, they'll appear in a menu in the app which is accessible by tapping a 'speech bubble' icon which appears in the top-right corner of most screens.

There are three types of interaction which are exclusively available to customers who have Studio Inbox - record an audio message, send a picture, and direct message.

Messages sent using these will be available to show in Studio Inbox workspaces if you add them to a column. It is currently not possible to respond directly to these messages.

Updating your app

Some changes to mobile apps require them to be re-submitted to the respective app stores, which involves manual admin work by our team and a wait for Apple and Google to approve the updates.

Most changes don't require this. You can update the properties of stations, such as logos, colour schemes, streams, navigation items and interactions without having to submit an update to the stores for your app.

However if you wish to change app store metadata (name, description, keywords), the splash screen, icon artwork, or screenshots then you'll need to prepare an update.

From the list of apps, select "Prepare update..." alongside the app you wish to update. You'll be guided through what can be updated.

You can work on an update and save your progress, should you wish to come back and complete it later.

Once you have finished all the updates you'd like to make, you can submit the information to us for processing. At this stage, you can still make further changes, until our team start working on the app. Once this happens, you can no longer make changes to the information you submitted for the update, until we have submitted it to the app stores and it has been reviewed and approved by Apple and Google.

Now playing data

Our mobile apps are most effective when a station is sending data from their playout system to Aiir.

You can set this up by going to Stations in the main menu.

Advertising

Our mobile apps are capable of showing a pre-roll ad when the app is first opened, or when switching station.

Each screen can also show a banner ad at the bottom of the screen, just above the white bar which shows what is playing.

All of these ads can be managed in the Advertising section of Aiir.

Switching stations

If you add more than one station to your app, you can allow listeners to switch between stations.

To set this up, you'll first need to add the stations you'd like to be available in the app. From the Mobile Apps section select the app, then head to the Add or Remove Stations page.

You'll need to add a splash screen image to each station you add to the app. This appears briefly when switching stations as the app loads new information.

The number of stations which can be added to an app is limited, and set by our team. Contact us to discuss raising the limit.

In some cases it is appropriate for the app to ask the user which station they would like to listen to when they first open the app. The option to enable this is currently only available to our support team, so contact us if you would like to use this in your app.

Once you've added the stations to the app, head to the Stations section, select a station, go to the Navigation page and add a new item - the Station Select page. Repeat this step for each station.

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