Importing A News Bulletin Automatically

In this guide, we're going to show you how to set up a typical hourly news import. This can then be adapted for other scenarios such as Weather, Sport and Travel News.

Background

For this example, our News is being sent to us via a shared Dropbox folder. 

  • We'd like to copy that file from Dropbox every hour and Import it into PlayoutONE on UID 1111 (our News Cart). 
  • We'd also like to see within the Artist field the Date/Time the news file imported so we can see visually in the PlayoutONE log the last time the News Imported.

PlayoutONE

First of all, we need to create our empty cart in PlayoutONE on UID 1111. To do this we are going to create a new UID in the Media Finder. 

  • We are going to set the UID to 1111.
  • We are going to set the Type to News (We created this new Type within the Type Manager first)
  • We are going to set the Title to News Bulletin

Auto Importer

Next, we need to set up a new Import Profile in Auto Importer. The table below shows the settings we have altered. The rest of the default settings have been left as they are when you create a new Import Profile in Auto Importer.

Setting Tab Value
Import Name Import Details News Import
Import Method Import Details Specific UID
Import Folder Import Details C:\PlayoutONE\Import NEws
Preserve Title Options Checked
Preserve Type Options Checked
Normalise Options Checked
Detect If Audio Fades Options Checked
Set Extro Options Checked
Set Artist To Overrides %DATE_US% (%TIME_12%)
Extro Override -25

FileCopy

Finally, we need to setup a FileCopy Job to copy the news bulletin every hour to our Auto Import profile. We'd also like to rename the News file from news.mp3 to 1111.mp3. The table below shows the settings we have altered. The rest of the default settings have been left as they are when you create a new Import Profile in Auto Importer.

Setting Tab Value
Description Details News
Source Source File
Mode Source Single File
File Source C:\Dropbox\NewsShared\news.mp3
Enable (New Filename) Rename Checked
Filename (New Filename) Rename 1111.mp3
Auto Importer (Details) Destination Selected
Destination (Details) Destination News
Start Time Schedule 12:55 am
All (Days) Schedule Checked
Every (Frequency) Schedule 1 Hour

Finally, we can verify we've set up everything correctly by selecting the new FileCopy Job we've created and clicking Run. 

  • We should see that FileCopy copies the file from Dropbox to Auto Importer whilst renaming the file from news.mp3 to 1111.mp3
  • Auto Importer should begin importing the file.
  • PlayoutONE should then show a file called News on UID 1111 with the Date/Time it imported in the Artist field.

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