Visitor Info Systems

Printer-friendly version

In 2007, a new building was inaugurated at Roche Pharma AG in Grenzach, Germany. The office facilities in the new building featured numerous meeting rooms and its own conference area with video conference rooms and three connectable meeting rooms of various sizes. The media technology installations in the conference area are managed using an audio, video, and media control network, which includes an electronic visitor information and control system integrated with three conference rooms in a neighbouring building.
 
It was the responsibility of the IT department of Roche Pharma to provide media technology for the company’s conference area, with planning activities beginning in 2006. The project involved conventional presentation technology for the meeting and conference rooms, a telephone conference room and an information system for visitors or conference attendees. Given the breadth of installations required, Roche decided to collaborate with an outside partner. After conducting a needs assessment survey among employees who would later use the technology, Roche requested bids for the media technology contract.
 
The winner of the bid was Datavision GmbH from Düsseldorf, Germany, who was contracted to implement the media technology installations in cooperation with TasteOne Medientechnik GmbH from Leverkusen. Munich-based friendlyway AG received the contract for the visitor information system.
 
Enter the Matrix
 
The presentation technology is networked in a matrix based on the Crestron Quickmedia System. This applies to both signal distribution and controls. The advantage of this matrix structure is that it is possible to output any signal source on any display or projector in the network. For example, during an event, a live camera image can also be displayed on the monitors of the information system.
 
Conversely, any content generated by the friendlyway server can be displayed on any output device in the Quickmedia matrix. Images can be displayed on a total of 22 displays and nine projectors. In addition to conventional media players (TV tuners, DVDs) and the video conference system, signal sources also include the friendlyway visitor information system.
 
The system informs conference participants about room occupancy, schedules, and the person responsible for the reservation. All displays in the visitor information system are controlled by a friendlyway digital signage system. In terms of hardware, the system consists of one server and five client machines installed in the central utility room in Building 200. The 46” TFT display in the atrium and an additional display in the lobby of Building 200 are connected to display systems. In addition, two previously existing monitors in the visitor lobby (Building 44) were integrated into the system. In Building 59, electronic door signs have been installed at each of three conference rooms and are connected to the friendlyway server via the company network.
 
How it Works
 
Users book a conference room in Microsoft Outlook, which is used throughout the company and is based on an Exchange Server backend system. In Outlook, the room is managed as a resource and can be reserved when the meeting is scheduled. When this is done, the Exchange server receives a database entry containing information such as the room number, start and end times of the meeting, and the person reserving the room. Any date conflicts are prevented by Outlook’s scheduling function.
 
The data is transferred to the friendlyway system via separate software running on the friendlyway server. This software accesses Roche Pharma’s Exchange server via Outlook WebAccess, while obtaining the necessary data for the visitor information system from the scheduling function. The software then transmits this data to the friendlyway server software, which enters the data in an HTML template. These templates are preconfigured and structured in accordance with the customer’s requirements and the group’s corporate design guidelines.
 
Two things happen with this HTML template. The content can be displayed directly on an HTML-compatible output device, such as a friendlyway player. For example, the information displays in the lobby and the atrium of Building 200 are controlled this way. The media players that control these displays are not installed directly in the display, as is the case with many digital signage installations. Instead, they are installed in the building’s utility room. This approach is based on the architecture of the signal routing via the Quickmedia Matrix, which enables the information in the friendlyway system to be displayed on all output devices connected to the matrix instead of just the output devices of the visitor information system.
 
The electronic door signs do not run on PC hardware and cannot display HTML pages directly. They have a network connection, image memory, and electronics for displaying the stored image data. In terms of their architecture, they are more like electronic picture frames.
 
In order to display the HTML pages generated by the friendlyway server on these door displays, additional software was integrated that converts the HTML pages allocated to the electronic door displays and sends them to the networked door sign displays via the group-wide LAN. The door displays show the information or bitmap file until they receive new information from the network. Therefore, the server system responsible for data conversion and transmission updates the content approximately once a minute with information provided by the server.
 
Roche Pharma AG now has a tool that is integrated into the overall concept for the conference area and allows for optimum use of media technology resources. The system is highly user-friendly, thanks to the flexible architecture of the friendlyway software, which not only enables easy content maintenance for users, bur also allows for automatic data transfer and generation of pages from the group-wide resource administration system.