CODA concepts

Here are the absolute basics of the CODA model. Don't worry, we'll get through this dry stuff pretty quickly, but it's worth making sure you understand this:

  • CODA systems belong to organisations. An organisation might be a company, a family, a museum or a school, for example.
  • Users also belong to organisations. A user may be a member of several organisations at once, and each organisation may have many users. Users can control the CODA systems of any organisations of which they are a member.
  • Organisations have one or more sites. A site is a location, such as an office in a particular town.
  • Organisations own and manage content sources. Content can come from anywhere on the internet, and on the CODA website you specify where it can be found. Alternatively, you can upload content to the CODA servers, from where it can be retrieved by any CODA systems in your organisation. It can be of many different types including, for example, images, movies, web pages, PDF files, RSS feeds, webcams or static information pages. We refer to these generically as 'sources'.
  • Content sources can be grouped into playlists. A playlist is like a slideshow, a sequence of different sources, each of which appears for a specified duration. Playlists can contain a mixture of different source types. A playlist is also considered to be a source, so playlists can contain other playlists!
  • A source can be in more than one playlist. If you've created a source which reads the RSS feed of headlines from a particular newspaper, for example, you can include it in a playlist called 'Global news' as well as one called 'National news'.
  • Displays are told to show a particular source by assigning that source to the display. The most common example is to assign a playlist to a display. The same source can be on multiple displays, or you can have a different source assigned to each and every display.
  • A screen schedule lets you define what should be shown on a display and when, using a calendar-type view. You can assign a schedule to a display, which saves you having to change things manually on a regular basis.
  • A screen layout lets you put several sources on the screen at once by dividing the display into two or more areas. You can have a slideshow in the top part of the screen and a news ticker below it.