Follow a roadmap on a screen or in your calendar

Tidigar Business · Paid

A screen shows one saved view of a Tidigar Business plan: on the office wall, by the reception, or on an intranet page. The view fills its window without the editor's menus and follows the plan as the team edits it. Nobody has to reload it. The same screen can publish a read-only calendar subscription for people who follow dates in their calendar app.

The mobile team below plans its third quarter in Tidigar Business. Its saved view Office screen has one row per activity, grouped and colored by Stream, with Version 5 in stores at the end. Watch how finishing Wallet payments and extending In-app refunds change what the team sees. The demonstration moves quickly; a screen reads the latest view about once a minute.

One address for the wall and a page

Every screen is visible to anyone with its link, without an account. Its address starts with https://embed.tidigar.com/#screen=. Open that address in a full browser window on the wall screen, put it in a frame on an intranet page, or try it in a Microsoft Teams Website tab where that tab is available. Teams support depends on the host; check it with your organisation before relying on it.

To show a screen on a TV, use a TV or a small device with a full web browser and open the link there. With an Apple TV, open the link on a Mac, iPhone or iPad and use AirPlay to show it on the TV; that device has to stay on while the screen is shown.

The viewer reads an updated view about once a minute, plays the screen's story, and lets readers zoom, drag a bar or try an edit. A member signed in to production Tidigar Business sees changes live in a full browser window. Embedded screens always read the published view about once a minute; if a live connection fails, a full window returns to that rhythm. These experiments stay in memory and are never saved to the Business plan. After the reader leaves them alone for a couple of minutes, a newer view replaces them. A story takes a newer view when it restarts.

Make a screen

You need a Tidigar Business plan that you can edit; members who only view the plan cannot manage its screens.

1. Open the plan and select the saved view the screen should show. Save changes to the view first: the screen uses the view as stored.
2. In the Share menu, choose Screens….
3. Turn on Join code on the screen if people in the room should be able to scan their way into the plan.
4. Choose New screen of “Office screen”, the row with the plus. The screen opens on its own page, named after the view. Change the Name to say where it is shown, such as Team room.
5. Under Link, choose Copy link. Open it in the browser that drives the wall screen and make the browser full screen. Open the link opens it in a new tab.
6. For an intranet page, choose Copy code under Embed code for a blog or website and paste it into the page. Where Microsoft Teams offers a Website tab, try the same screen link and check that it works for your team.

You can make several screens of Office screen, for example one with a join code for the team room and another without it for reception. Each has its own link, name and story. A plan can have up to ten screens. Select one under This plan’s screens to change it later.

Follow the screen in your calendar

Let colleagues follow the mobile team's Office screen view in their calendar while you keep planning in Tidigar:

1. Make a screen of the saved Office screen view as above, or open an existing screen under This plan’s screens.
2. Under Calendar subscription, choose Copy calendar link.
3. Give the address to the people who should follow the view. They add it as a calendar subscription in Outlook, Google Calendar or Apple Calendar. Subscribe to the address rather than importing a downloaded ICS file: an import is only a copy at that moment.
4. Change In-app refunds in the original Business plan. Its calendar event keeps its identity when the dates move; subscribers see the new dates after their calendar next fetches the feed. Edits tried in the demonstration above do not publish a subscription.

The subscription shows activities and milestones from the screen's published view as all-day events. An activity occupies its whole start-to-end date range, rather than just its deadline. A milestone occupies one day. Descriptions and other project metadata are left out. Edit the plan in Tidigar; the subscription is read-only. Links on its events open the original plan at the saved view and still require membership.

Anyone with the calendar link can read the published view without a Tidigar account, and the calendar service receives the link and events. Keep the address with the people who should see it. Each screen has its own calendar link; changing dates updates the same events when the calendar next refreshes.

If a filter later removes an activity, it disappears from the next feed. A view with no activities or milestones publishes an empty calendar. Calendar apps decide when to reflect those removals, just as they decide when to fetch changed dates.

The calendar app decides when to fetch updates. Changes can take hours or longer to appear, even after the screen itself has updated. Deleting the screen stops future access after cache expiry, but does not erase events already downloaded into a calendar. Use another channel for urgent changes.

For concrete plans to adapt, try the conference, client project or content plan. Opening a free example gives you a local copy; save your copy in Tidigar Business (paid) before making a screen or its calendar feed. Subscribers need neither a Tidigar account nor an Apple purchase. Saving a complete plan in an Apple calendar with the Files and calendars purchase is a separate workflow; see Files and calendars.

Scan the join code

With Join code on the screen turned on, a QR code appears in the bottom right corner. The Tidigar logo sits in its centre. On a wide screen it usually sits in the free space below the plan; a very tall plan may run under it.

Scanning the code opens the plan itself at the screen's saved view. Members sign in on their phones and edit the plan while the screen follows their changes. Anyone else is asked to sign in, or told that their account has no access and whom to ask. Scanning does not grant access to the plan.

Windows and frames smaller than 640 × 480 pixels leave the code out. Turning it on or off reaches screens at their next reading, about a minute later. If Hide Tidigar.com is on, the code still shows, without the logo.

Open in Tidigar on the screen also opens the plan at that view. Members reach the shared plan. Signed-out readers can choose Open a copy beside sign-in, and an account without access can choose it from the access message. The copy is kept locally and changes to it do not change the shared plan. The join code offers no copy.

Tell a story on the screen

On the screen's page, the Story field lets you play the view step by step, in the syntax of the animated story example. Choose Save story after editing it. The story plays both in a full window and on embedded screens. A story supplied by the page around an embed takes its place there.

Let an agent write the story

An agent connected to the organisation can list a plan's screens, make one of a saved view, write its story with the plan's own titles and dates, and give you its link. Ask it, for example, to tell the quarter on the team room screen. It asks before making a screen, since anyone with the link sees that view. To change what a screen shows, the agent changes the saved view itself and keeps it; deleting the view ends its screens.

A link an agent has read keeps working until the screen is deleted, also after the agent's access ends. An owner who wants a person to make every new screen turns off Let agents make screens under the organisation's settings. Agents can then still rename screens and change their stories, but not make one or read its link.

Stop showing a screen

Open Screens…, select the screen under This plan’s screens, choose Delete screen and confirm. Its link stops working. Within about two minutes, windows and pages showing it say This plan is no longer shared. Deleting one screen leaves other screens of the same view running.

A deleted screen cannot be brought back. Make a new one and replace the old address wherever it was used.

Details to know before sharing

• The token is the key. The long code after #screen= gives anyone holding it access to the view. Share it only where the view should be seen. If it reaches the wrong place, delete that screen and make another. The token stays after #, the part of the address the browser never sends to a server.
• Only the saved view is shared. Its filters and search select the activities readers see. Descriptions and the plan's other saved views are left out. Unsaved changes to the view do not reach the screen.
• Every editor can copy the link. Members who edit the plan can open Screens… on any device and copy a screen's link or embed code. A screen keeps its link until it is deleted.
• Ended screens stay ended. A screen also ends if its saved view is deleted, the plan moves to the trash or out of Business, or the organisation turns read-only after its subscription lapses or is deleted.
• Plans kept in the organisation. An organisation that keeps its plans within the organisation cannot make screens; Screens… is unavailable. Turning that setting on also ends its existing screens. Turning it off permits new screens; ended links stay ended.
• A connection can fail. If a screen cannot load on opening, it says so and tries again a minute later. Once it shows a view, it keeps that view until it can read a newer one.
• Use secure pages. A screen cannot load over plain HTTP outside localhost. Use HTTPS for pages that embed it.
• Other deployments. Tidigar Server also offers screens and serves their links from its own address. Staging links use the staging reader. The live member connection described above is available only in a full window on production Tidigar Business.
• Business is paid. Screens are part of Tidigar Business, Tidigar's paid service for shared plans. Reading a screen needs no account.

To prepare views worth showing, see Organize a roadmap into phases and filtered views and Three custom timelines of the same roadmap.