Board Layouts and Zones
Design the arrangement a screen uses: divide the panel into zones, choose what each one pulls from, and apply one layout to a whole group of screens.
Devices & Kiosk > Board Layouts is where you decide how a screen is divided and what fills each part. It is available to owners and admins.
A layout is deliberately not part of a screen’s configuration. It is a separate, named thing, so one design can be applied to many screens and changed in one place.
When you’d use this
- The stock arrangements do not match the panel you hung, in shape or in orientation.
- You want your own announcements in a large box and community submissions in a smaller strip.
- You want a clock across the top, or a sponsor line pinned along the bottom.
- You are selling screen time and need boxes of specific sizes for paid notices.
Anatomy of a layout
| Property | What it controls |
|---|---|
| Name | How the layout appears in your list and in the group view |
| Description | A note for whoever inherits this from you |
| Orientation | Portrait or landscape: match how the panel is physically mounted |
| Header clock | Whether a clock strip runs across the top |
| Theme | The palette the zones inherit unless a zone overrides it |
| Fallback background | What fills a zone when an item has no artwork |
| Zones | One or more rectangles. A layout must have at least one. |
Zones
A zone is placed by percentage: its left edge, top edge, width and height are each a share of the panel. This is why a layout survives being moved to a different screen size: nothing is measured in pixels.
Zones also carry a stacking order, so a caption strip can sit on top of a full-bleed image.
Which band a zone sits in
Every zone declares a band, and the band pins its vertical position:
| Band | Where it sits |
|---|---|
| Header | Pinned to the very top of the panel |
| Content | Anywhere. Content zones may overlap and need not fill the panel. |
| Footer | Pinned so its bottom edge is the bottom of the panel |
A header is an ordinary zone that happens to live in the top band, so it carries every setting a content zone does. That is how you get a clock strip across the top: a header zone whose source is the clock widget. A sponsor line along the bottom is the same idea in the footer band.
What a zone pulls from
The source select offers four choices:
| Source | Contents |
|---|---|
| Notices & campaigns | Both, merged into one rotation |
| Notices only | Approved bulletin-board notices |
| Campaigns only | Active kiosk campaigns |
| A widget | A live element instead of content |
Widget zones offer exactly three: Time & date, What’s coming up (an upcoming-events list) and Raised so far (a donation thermometer).
A zone filters the one playlist the server already merged and ordered. It never re-sorts it, which is why two zones that both carry notices show them in a consistent order.
Narrowing what reaches a zone
| Filter | Choices |
|---|---|
| Origin | Everything · Only what the center posted · Only community submissions |
| Notice type | Community notices · Business listings · Sponsor thank-yous · Event announcements |
| Slot size | Full screen · Half screen · Third · Quarter |
A common lobby arrangement is a large zone limited to what the center posted and a smaller strip for community submissions, so a member’s notice never takes the space your announcements need.
The slot-size filter is how paid screen time behaves correctly. A box that declares a size carries paid notices sold at that size and nothing else; a box with no size set is a community box and carries free notices only. That is why paid airtime is always something you sold deliberately rather than something that spilled onto a board.
Per-zone display settings
| Setting | Effect |
|---|---|
| Hold time | Seconds each item stays before the next |
| Page size | The most items a paged zone shows at once. It is a ceiling, not a grid shape. |
| Crawl | Text scrolls rather than paging. It is a per-box toggle, so one zone can crawl while its neighbors page. |
| Full bleed | Artwork runs to the zone edges with no margin |
| Show zone title | A heading above the zone’s contents |
| Transition | Cross-fade · Slide in from the side · Slide up · Reveal · Cut |
| Background | Same as the board, or one of Deep, Light and warm, Soft, Bloom, Bright or Quiet |
| Theme | Override the layout’s theme for this zone only |
Text is never cut off
Type in a zone scales down to fit the box rather than being clipped, down to a readability floor set for far-field reading. Below that floor it stops shrinking, which is the point at which the Crawl toggle is the right answer rather than a smaller font. Figures such as an amount raised never shrink at all, so a thermometer stays readable from across a lobby.
If a box is still too tight after both, the box is too small for the content; change the proportions rather than the copy.
Templates
Your list shows two kinds of row together: layouts your organization created, and templates Muin ships. The row tells you which is which: a template offers Use this template, your own offers Edit.
Use this template clones it. From that moment you are editing your own copy, and nothing you do affects the original or anyone else’s. Editing a Muin template directly is refused deliberately: the editor offers Make a copy instead.
The library covers the arrangements a lobby actually needs: four base presets (Single notice, Notice grid, Featured + strip, Announcement crawl), then Combined board, Campaign wall, Businesses & community, Lobby agenda, Poster wall, Two portraits, Three portraits, a set of paid-slot boards (Ads, full screen, two half screens, three thirds, four quarters), and two demonstration boards (Style gallery, Motion showcase) for showing the range to a committee.
Edits save per zone as you make them rather than as one big save of the whole board, so a long session of tuning does not end in one all-or-nothing write.
Applying a layout to many screens at once
Tag your screens, and the tag becomes a group.
- Open the group view from Board Layouts.
- Each group shows its tag, how many screens carry it, and which layouts those screens are currently on.
- Choose a layout and apply it to the group.
- Muin tells you how many screen configurations it changed.
A group listing more than one layout is a group that disagrees with itself: usually because a screen was changed individually after the group was set up. A group listing none is on the simple per-screen arrangement rather than a designed layout.
Deleting a layout
Deleting a layout does not blank a screen that was showing that layout on its own. Such a screen falls back to the simple arrangement set on its own configuration, so the board keeps showing content while you build the replacement.
A screen running a rotation is the exception. Rotation membership is held separately from a screen’s single-layout choice and is not released when a layout is deleted, so a rotation whose boards have all been deleted has nothing left to show. Muin raises “Every board in this screen’s rotation has been deleted” while you are editing, rather than letting you find out from the wall: add a board back, or clear the rotation and pick one.
Tips
- Name layouts after the place, not the design: “Main lobby portrait” survives a redesign; “Three column with crawl” does not.
- Start from the closest template rather than an empty layout. Cloning gives you working zone proportions to adjust.
- Match orientation before anything else. Every proportion you tune in the wrong orientation is work you will redo.
- Preview at the real distance. Body text that reads on your monitor may not read from across a lobby; a shorter hold time makes that worse, not better.
Common Issues
| Symptom | Cause |
|---|---|
| Save is refused | A layout needs at least one zone |
| A zone cannot be deleted | It is the last zone in the layout |
| Edit is unavailable on a row | It is a Muin template. Use Use this template, or Make a copy in the editor, to get an editable copy |
| A zone is empty on the screen | Nothing matching that zone’s source, origin, notice-type or slot-size filter is placed on this screen |
| A paid notice is not appearing | Its slot size does not match any box’s slot size on this board |
| A zone’s text is tiny rather than scrolling | It shrank to fit, which is the first behavior. Turn Crawl on for that box if you would rather it scrolled at full size |
| The group applied to fewer screens than expected | Only screens carrying the tag are changed |
| A header zone will not move down the panel | A header is pinned to the top by design, and a footer to the bottom. Use a content zone instead |
What it affects
- Every screen on this layout changes together, including screens you applied it to through a tag.
- Nothing about the notices themselves. A layout decides where content appears, never whether it is approved or placed.
- Which paid notices can run on a board, because a box’s slot size is what makes a sold size airable.
- A rotation’s membership is separate from a screen’s single-layout choice, so deleting a layout that a rotation uses does not release it.
Related Features
- Digital Signage: the whole picture
- Bulletin Board: the notices a zone shows
- Devices: tagging screens
Next step
Once the board looks right, go back to Digital Signage to place content on the screen and choose who is told when the screen stops checking in.
Need Help?
Contact support with the layout name and the tag you applied it to.