Dashboards have two settings with similar names but very different purposes: Duration and Reload Duration.
These two settings operate independently, so understanding how they interact is key to ensuring your Dashboards display up-to-date information smoothly without interrupting your viewers’ experience.
Duration vs. Reload Duration
Duration: Controls playback timing. This sets how long the Dashboard appears on the screen before advancing to the next item in your Playlist or Collection.
Reload Duration: Controls page freshness. It sets the maximum amoun tof time the Dashboard is allowed to stay open in memory before forcing a full browser reload to pull down updated data.
See this page for instructions on configuring these two settings.
How do these two timers work together?
To prevent jarring visual cuts or interrupted data streams while a Dashboard is playing, reloads only occur at the moment a Duration cycle ends.
When the Reload Duration timer expires, the player marks the page as “stale.” However, it will wait until the current Duration timer expires before performing the actual browser reload.
When Reloads Occur
The actual time between page reloads will always be the Reload Duration, rounded up to the next multiple of your Duration.
Real World Examples
Here are two common scenarios illustrating how the two timers interact:
Scenario A: Short Duration, Short Reload
Duration: 2 minutes
Reload Duration: 5 minutes
What happens: The Dashboard stays on screen for 2 minutes before advancing to the next Playlist or Collection entry. Once the 5 minute reload duration passes, the page is marked stale. After the next time the Dashboard plays through for 2 minutes, the browser reloads the page.
Scenario B: Long Duration, Short Reload
Duration: 45 minutes
Reload Duration: 5 minutes
What happens: The Dashboard stays on screen for 45 minutes before advancing to the next Playlist or Collection entry. Although the page becomes “stale” after 5 minutes, the browser will not reload mid-playback. It waits for the 45 minute duration to finish, meaning the page will only reload every 45 minutes.