Setting up rotating carts

Rotating carts (sometimes referred to as 'rotators' or 'rotates') allow you to embed several child carts within a parent cart. 

This becomes useful if you wish to schedule a single cart in your music scheduling software for a weather bulletin but have PlayoutONE play a different cart depending on the time. For example, we may have five weather carts within the weather rotate that play out during breakfast, mid-mornings, afternoons, drivetime and evenings. 

🔁 Setting up parent rotators

1. Create a new cart within PlayoutONE by clicking the + from the Media Finder.
2. Give the cart a UID or choose Auto-ID to get the next available UID in the database.
3. Give the cart a Title.
4. Click the Rotate Tab.
5. Tick the Enable checkbox. This enables the cart as a rotator.
6. Click on Add UID to Rotate.
7. In the Media Finder window that will open, select the UIDs you wish to add to the rotator. Then, click Select.
8. If you wish to apply rules to the rotator then click the Rules box. Rules can be configured so that items belonging to certain types or categories are not picked when resolving rotates.
9. When finished click Save.

🔀 Setting up child carts

1. Go into each child cart.
2. Click the Daypart & Run Dates Tab and click the Enable DayParting check box.
3. We can then draw on the grid where we want the cart to be picked by the Parent Rotate Cart that we set up above.
4. When finished click Save and repeat on all carts.

In the Media Finder, we can then find the Weather Rotate cart. Rotate carts are shown with an R icon next to them.

We can then drag the weather rotate cart straight into the log or tell our external music scheduler to schedule the cart.

🔄 Resolving and unresolving

We use the term 'resolve' when a parent rotator is turned into a child cart. 

We use the term 'unresolve' when a child cart is turned back into a parent cart. 

Resolving and unresolving can be achieved by either:

1. Upon log import

When the log imports through Auto Importer you can check the option 'Resolve Rotates'. This setting lives under the 'Options' tab within the Auto Importer profile. This instructs Auto Importer to resolve any Parent Rotators that are scheduled in the Music or Traffic log, at the time of import.

2. X hours ahead

Within the 'Log' tab in PlayoutONE settings, you can alter the value of how many hours ahead of schedule rotators are resolved. By default, this setting is set to two hours. Therefore, if we are currently in the midday hour, rotates for 2pm will be resolved. As we move into the 1pm hour, the rotators for 3pm will be resolved. This allows changes made to Parent Rotators to appear quicker in PlayoutONE Pro.

3. Future hour

If you need to resolve or unresolve rotates that appear in a future hour (because you need to record links for that hour or reference resolved rotates) then you can right-click on the log in PlayoutONE Pro or WebVT and choose, 'Rotates' > 'Resolve all rotates for this hour' or 'Unresolve all rotates for this hour'

4. Specific time

If you need to resolve or unresolve a specific rotator for a specific period then in PlayoutONE Pro, right-click on the log and choose 'Resolve / Unresolve specific rotates'.

This can be very useful if you need to update your rotator with new child carts, but have the 'Resolve at the time of log import in Auto Importer' option selected.

You can unresolve specific parent rotators for a specific period. Once unresolved, you can then make the changes to the parent rotator and then use the same option to resolve the rotator for the same period.