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Spotlights

A spotlight puts one colleague on the office screen with a photo, a role and a short text, for example a new team lead, someone who finished a project or a "meet the team" series. You write it once on Spotlights, plan when it runs, and the Spotlight widget on your TV shows it while it is live. Only put colleagues in the spotlight who agreed to be shown on the office screen.

1. What a spotlight is

A spotlight is one person with a name, an optional role or team, an optional short text, an optional photo and a period. Spotlights lists all of them with the newest period first. Each card shows the photo (or the initials), the name, the role, the dates, the text and whether the spotlight is Live, Scheduled or Ended.

Name, role and text are shown exactly as you type them. Formatting and HTML are not interpreted, so keep the text plain.

2. Add a spotlight with a photo

  1. Open Spotlights and press New spotlight. When the list is still empty, the same button sits under "No spotlights yet".
  2. Fill in the Name. It is required and can be up to 80 characters. If your account has employees, you search your team and pick a colleague, and the last choice, Other name, lets you type a name for someone who is not on the team list. Press Change to pick someone else. Without any employees, the name is a plain text field.
  3. Optionally fill in Role or team (optional), up to 80 characters, and Text (optional), up to 280 characters. Line breaks in the text are kept.
  4. Optionally choose a photo with Photo (optional). It must be a PNG, JPEG or WebP file (SVG is not allowed), at most 2 MB and at most 4000 x 4000 pixels. Location and other details stored in the file are removed. If a photo is refused, the reason shows under the photo field and everything else you typed stays.
  5. Set the dates as described in the next section, then press Add spotlight. Press Cancel to close the window without saving.

Without a photo, the TV shows the initials of the name. When you picked an employee and did not add a photo, the TV shows that employee's avatar instead, or their initials if they have none. A photo you add always wins over the avatar. Saving needs JavaScript in the browser.

3. The dates

Start date is required and End date (optional) is not. Both days are included: a spotlight is Live from its start date up to and including its end date. Before the start date it is Scheduled, and the day after the end date it is Ended. With an empty end date, the spotlight has no end and stays live until you edit or delete it. An end date before the start date is refused.

The status on the card is worked out for today in the time zone of your default location. The TV uses the time zone of the location of its dashboard, so around midnight the two can differ for a moment.

4. Edit and remove a spotlight

To change a spotlight, press Edit on its card. The card turns into the same form, filled in with the saved values. Change what you need and press Save changes, or press Cancel to leave it as it was. If the spotlight has a photo, the form shows it as the current photo, with a checkbox Remove the photo, and the photo field is called Replace the photo (optional).

To remove a spotlight, press Delete on its card. OfficeDash asks "Delete this spotlight? This can't be undone." Confirm with Yes, delete or press Cancel.

The buttons New spotlight, Edit and Delete only appear if your account allows you to create, edit or remove spotlights. The account holder can always do all three. When the subscription of the account has ended, saving is refused until it is active again.

5. Where it shows on the TV

A paired TV shows a spotlight only through the Spotlight widget. A new dashboard does not have it on its starter slides, so you add it yourself: open the dashboard on Dashboards, press Add widget on a spot and pick Spotlight. It has no settings. Widgets are explained in Widgets and tile sizes and the editor in Dashboards and the slide editor.

  • The widget fits the tile sizes Full slide, Half-width column, Third-width column, Quarter, Wide tile, Tall tile and Small square. It is not offered on the smaller tiles.
  • Every Spotlight widget on every dashboard of your account shows the same one spotlight. Of all spotlights that are live today at the location of the dashboard, it shows the one with the latest start date. If two start on the same day, the one you created last wins.
  • A spotlight for a hidden employee is not shown on the TV. If the employee is deleted, the spotlight stays on the TV with the name saved in it, without their avatar. For a chosen employee, the TV shows their current name.
  • The large tiles (Full slide, Half-width column and Third-width column) show the heading "In the spotlight" above the name. The Small square shows only the photo and the name. The other tiles also show the role and the text, shortened to a few lines when they are long, so keep the text short.
  • When nothing is live, the widget says "No spotlight today". The next spotlight takes over at midnight at the location, without reloading the TV.

The pages at /tv/<slide> and the public demo at /demo show sample data, not your spotlights.