A Queue Management System (QMS) is great to streamline the waiting area of an organization. Think about bakeries, help desks, sales counters etc. You can display information, advertising, and promotions on television screens with videos and presentations. Use our CounterPoint or DataPoint to display a number of top of the videos and presentations. When a customer was handled, then the number is incremented, and the holder of that new number can approach the desk.
Let’s work with DataPoint. Set up a new data connection to a text file. Other data sources can be used like XML files, databases, Excel files etc.Â
In the screenshot below, you will see that we have set up a connection to a text file. The text file was selected, the first row contains the field names and important, the data refresh rate was set to every second for fast number updates on your screen.
With DataPoint technology you can now run the slideshow and update text file from a second computer. DataPoint will look for changes and update the number in real-time on the screen.
Here in the list of connections, you can see the text file connection and verify its current content. You will see the name of the column and the current value of the counter. Â
Let’s use a simple presentation that we want to use on a television screen. The text box in the middle, with currently number 31, is the text box that we want to use to host the queue number.
With DataPoint we will link this textbox to the text file and the column. So whenever the value in the text file is changed (by whatever triggers the update in the file), this textbox should be displaying that latest value.
Let’s dive into the notification settings. Click to open the Misc tab.Â
Check the option Use notification sound and click the Browse button to navigate and search for a .WAV audio file.
Click the Test button to hear the audio file. This audio file will be played whenever there is new data detected while the slideshow is running.
Now we arrived in the part of the voice queue numbers. First, we need to install our DataPoint Voice Queue Numbers setup. This setup will add the voice queue number WAV files from 0 to 99 to your setup. This is a separate and optional set of files that we didn’t include in the normal DataPoint setup to save space.Â
Click the Download DataPoint Voice Queue Numbers to download and run the setup. You only need to do this once on every computer where you want to use the voice queue numbers. You can download this free setup here.Â
Simply check the option Use voice queue numbers to enable this feature.
Run the slideshow and change the queue number value of the text file and save it. DataPoint will poll the text file (every 1 second as you have set its data refresh rate) and update the number of the textbox on the slide.Â
Together with the textbox change, it will first play the notification sound like a TADA or a notification sound on an aircraft before an announcement, to get people’s attention. And then the number is announced with a voice audio number. So when you have the value 37 in the text file, the textbox will be updated to 37, you will have the notify.WAV audio file following by a male voice saying thirty-seven.
The reason why you have to use this feature is probably that you want to get more attention and better streamline your waiting queue. But there is another benefit. Deaf people can see the value on the screen. They will not hear the audio files, but they will just have to watch the screen. Blind people, on the contrary, will not see the queue number on the screen. They will be notified by the audio files. And all others (non-blind and non-deaf) benefit twice and can’t blame it on your queuing system when they are not following the queue.
