Page Rotations

About 11 min read

A page rotation shows several pages on a kiosk screen one after another, each for a set time. For example, a wall display first shows the plant summary, then the pump station, then the energy analyzer, and starts again. Rotations are defined on the Settings > Page Rotations screen; the kiosk screen is opened with the rotation's kiosk address.

A rotation runs only in kiosk mode. For kiosk mode and panel PC setup, see Page Viewer and Panel PC and Kiosk.

Access

The Page Rotations menu item is visible to the same users as the page editor: users with the Editor role and SystemAdmin; the license must also allow page design.

No separate permission is needed to run a rotation on a kiosk screen; every signed-in user can use it. The rotation shows only the pages the kiosk account is allowed to open and skips the others (see Page Management and Access).

Rotation list

The Settings > Page Rotations screen lists the defined rotations. The list can be searched and sorted by its columns.

Column	Meaning
Name	Name of the rotation. It is also used in the kiosk address.
Description	Optional description.
Enabled	A disabled rotation does not run on kiosk screens.
Pages	Number of pages in the rotation.
Alarm Behavior	What the rotation does on an unacknowledged alarm (see Alarm behavior).
First Page	First page of the rotation; the kiosk address starts with this page.

The buttons at the end of the row: Edit opens the edit window, Kiosk Address shows the rotation's address (see Kiosk address), and Delete deletes the rotation after a confirmation. Kiosk screens that use a deleted rotation stop rotating.

Adding and editing a rotation

1. On the Settings > Page Rotations screen, click Add Rotation. To change an existing rotation, use the Edit button in its row.
2. In the Add Page Rotation (or Edit Page Rotation) window, enter the rotation settings.
3. In the Pages section, add the pages with Add Page and put them in order.
4. Click Save.

Rotation settings

Field	Description
Name	Required, at most 100 characters. Must be unique, ignoring upper and lower case.
Enabled	If cleared, the rotation does not run on kiosk screens. A new rotation is enabled.
Description	Optional, at most 500 characters.
Default Duration (s)	How long pages without their own duration stay on screen. 10–3600 seconds; default 30.
Pause on Interaction (s)	How long the rotation waits after a touch or key press. 0–600 seconds; default 60. With 0 the rotation does not wait on input.
Default Transition	Animation used when entering pages that have no transition of their own: None, Fade, Slide left, Slide up or Zoom. Default Fade. See Page transitions.
Transition Duration (ms)	Total length of the animation when one page changes to the next. 200–3000 milliseconds; default 600. It applies to the transitions of all pages.
Alarm Behavior	No effect, Pause the rotation or Go to the alarm page and stay. See Alarm behavior.
Alarm Page	Visible and required only when Go to the alarm page and stay is selected. The page opened when an alarm arrives; it does not have to be one of the rotation pages.

Pages

A rotation contains at least 1 and at most 50 pages. The pages are shown in list order; after the last page the rotation returns to the first. Each row has these fields:

Field	Description
Page	Page to show. Folders are not listed.
Duration (s)	How long this page stays on screen, 10–3600 seconds. If left empty, Default Duration (s) is used; while the field is empty, the default value is shown dimmed.
Transition	Animation used when entering this page. If left empty, Default Transition is used; while the field is empty, the rotation default is shown, for example Default (Fade).
Tag prefix	Optional, at most 100 characters. The page opens with this prefix, so the same page can be shown separately for different devices (see Tag prefix).

Change the order with the Move Up and Move Down buttons; Remove Page removes the row. The same page can be added to a rotation more than once, for example with different tag prefixes or to show an important page more often.

If the name, durations, transitions or pages are not valid when you save, the window stays open and an explanation appears below the field.

Page transitions

When the rotation moves from one page to the next, it shows a short animation. First the page on screen leaves; the new page enters after it has loaded and been drawn. This way the new page never appears half-drawn or at the wrong size.

Transition	Appearance
None	The page changes without animation.
Fade	The page on screen fades out, and the new page fades in.
Slide left	The page on screen slides out to the left, and the new page slides in from the right.
Slide up	The page on screen slides out upwards, and the new page slides in from the bottom.
Zoom	The page on screen grows slightly as it fades out, and the new page grows from slightly smaller as it fades in.

• Which transition is used: When a page is entered, the Transition in that page's row is used; if the row has no transition, Default Transition is used. This way most pages of a rotation can share one transition while some pages open with a different one. The alarm page opened by Go to the alarm page and stay is entered with Default Transition.
• Duration: Transition Duration (ms) is the total of the exit and entry animations. The time the page needs to load comes on top of it. The page's on-screen duration starts after the entry animation has finished.
• Parts of the screen that stay in place: Only the page moves. The duration bar on the bottom edge, the connection strips and the rotation status stay where they are.
• Loading indicator: While the rotation changes pages, the loading indicator over the page does not flash at every transition; it appears only if the page takes longer than 1.5 seconds to load. When the kiosk screen is first opened and for pages opened through the links on screen, the indicator appears at once as usual.
• Reduced motion: If the operating system's reduce-motion setting is on at the panel PC (for example, Animation effects turned off in Windows), a short fade of at most 200 milliseconds is used instead of slides and zoom. Pages set to None still change without animation.
• When there is no animation: If the page in the kiosk address is one of the rotation pages, no animation is shown when the screen first opens. The page is not moved while it is being printed.
• Pausing during a transition: If the screen is touched or a window opens while the exit animation runs, the rotation does not move to the new page; the page on screen comes back, and the next page opens when the pause ends. A page that cannot be opened or does not load within 90 seconds does not leave the screen hidden; the page is still skipped and the next page opens.

Alarm behavior

The Alarm Behavior setting decides what the rotation does when a new unacknowledged alarm arrives on the kiosk screen:

Option	Behavior
No effect	Alarms do not affect the rotation.
Pause the rotation	The rotation stops on the page on screen. When no unacknowledged alarm is left, it continues with the remaining time.
Go to the alarm page and stay	The Alarm Page opens and the rotation waits there. When no unacknowledged alarm is left, it continues a few seconds later with the page after the one shown before the alarm. If the kiosk account cannot open the alarm page, the rotation behaves like Pause the rotation.

The rotation stops only when a new alarm arrives; alarms that were already unacknowledged when the rotation started do not stop it.

Kiosk address

The Kiosk Address button in the rotation's row of the list shows the rotation's address. The address has this form:

https://<server>/#/overview/<First page>?kiosk=1&rotation=<Rotation name>

In the window, Copy Address copies the address to the clipboard. If the browser does not allow copying to the clipboard (for example on addresses without HTTPS), the warning "The browser did not allow copying to the clipboard; select the address and copy it by hand." appears; select the address in the box and copy it by hand. For a disabled rotation, the window shows the note "This rotation is disabled; kiosk screens do not rotate until it is enabled." A rotation without pages has no kiosk address.

Open the address in the panel PC's browser or give it to the kiosk script (see Page rotation). Keep in mind:

• The address starts with the address the Page Rotations screen was opened with. If you opened the screen on the server with https://localhost, replace localhost with the server's address on client panels.
• The address contains the rotation name and the name of the first page. If you rename the rotation, update the address on the kiosk screens as well. Updating the address is also recommended when you change or rename the first page.
• Without ?kiosk=1, the rotation value has no effect; the page opens in the normal viewer.

While a rotation runs

• If the page in the kiosk address is one of the rotation pages, the rotation continues from that page; otherwise the first page opens after a few seconds.
• The duration of each page starts after the page has loaded and its entry animation has finished (see Page transitions). Changing pages does not grow the browser history.
• If an operator moves to another page through the links on screen, that page is shown for the default duration, then the rotation continues.
• Pages the kiosk account cannot open are skipped. A page that cannot be opened or does not load within 90 seconds is also skipped, and the next page opens.
• If the server connection is lost, the rotation waits on the page on screen and continues when the connection is back; a page that cannot be opened during the outage is not skipped.
• Changes to the rotation reach the kiosk screen within five minutes at the latest, or when the server connection is re-established. If the server cannot be reached, the kiosk continues with the rotation it loaded last.
• When a new version is installed on the server, the kiosk screen reloads and the rotation continues from the page in the address.

Pausing

In the following cases the rotation pauses; the remaining time of the page is kept and counting continues where it stopped when the pause ends:

• The screen was touched, the mouse was used or a key was pressed (for Pause on Interaction (s)), a text field is being edited, or the virtual keyboard is open.
• A window is open on the page: a modal window, a drop-down list, a pop-up or a confirmation question.
• The rotation waits because of the alarm behavior (see Alarm behavior).
• The server connection is lost, the page is loading or the page is being printed.

This way the page does not change while an operator uses the screen or while a write confirmation is open.

Rotation status

While the rotation runs, a thin bar on the bottom edge of the screen shows the remaining time of the page. At the bottom right, next to the connection strip, the rotation status appears when needed. The bar and the status text do not block touch input and are not printed.

Status text	Meaning
Rotation paused: unacknowledged alarm	The rotation waits because of the alarm behavior. Acknowledge the alarms.
Rotation paused: screen in use	The screen was touched recently or a field is being edited.
Rotation paused: open window	A window, list or confirmation question is open on the page.
Page rotation not found or disabled: …	There is no enabled rotation with the name in the address. Check the rotation name and the Enabled box.
Page rotation has no page you can open: …	The rotation has no pages, or the kiosk account cannot open any of its pages.
Rotation pages could not be opened, rotation stopped: …	None of the rotation pages could be opened. The rotation is tried again at the next refresh or when the server connection is re-established.
Page rotation could not be loaded, retrying: …	The rotation could not be fetched from the server; the kiosk tries again.

The status text ends with the rotation name.

Backup

Page rotations are included in the configuration backup. Because rotations depend on pages, pages are also restored when rotations are restored (see Backup and Restore). Backups taken with 2.10.0 contain no page rotations; they can also be restored on 2.10.1 and later versions.

The default transition, the transition duration and the page transitions are backed up with the rotation. When 2.10.1 backups without transition settings are restored, the rotations get Fade and 600 ms, and the pages use the rotation's default transition.