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Administration Guide
This guide covers the administrative tasks that support a Pulse Signage deployment: managing accounts and installing fonts. Administrative changes can affect many users or designs, so confirm the target before saving or deleting anything.
Accounts and Access
Your account determines which parts of the web application are available to you. Administrators can invite users, create or edit accounts, assign roles, reset passwords, and remove accounts that are no longer needed.
Inviting a User
Use the invitation workflow when the person should create their own account:
- Enter the recipient's email address and display name.
- Select the roles the person should receive after accepting the invitation.
- Send the invitation.
- Ask the recipient to follow the invitation message and complete account setup.
Assign the smallest role set that allows the person to do their work. Review the selected roles before sending because the invitation applies them when the account is accepted. If there are no roles available, create a suitable role before sending the invitation.
Managing Existing Users
The users page shows usernames, display names, roles, and account status. Use it to:
- Edit a user's name or assigned roles.
- Reset a password when the user cannot sign in.
- Delete an account that is no longer needed.
- Search the user list when the deployment has many accounts.
The current administrator account is protected from actions that would remove or accidentally disable the account being used. When access changes, the web application remains the authority; you do not need to create separate users on each player.
If you cannot see a feature or action described in the user guides, ask an administrator to check your account rather than assuming the feature is unavailable.
Fonts
Managed fonts are uploaded once to the deployment and can then be enabled for the editor and players. They are separate from slide media and are intended for font-family choices in text and data regions.
Adding a Font
The Fonts page accepts WOFF2, WOFF, TTF, and OTF files. Provide the family name used by the design, choose the font file, and upload it. Use a name that clearly identifies the family and weight when several variants are installed.
After uploading a font:
- Confirm it appears in the managed-font list.
- Enable it if it is disabled.
- Select it in a text, RSS, timetable, weather, or other text-rendering region.
- Preview the slide at the target canvas size.
- Check a connected player after font synchronization.
Disable a font when it should no longer be offered without deleting it. A font that is still in use cannot be deleted until the templates or slides no longer depend on it. Removing a font can change line wrapping and the height of text, so check affected content after any font change.
System Settings
System Settings controls defaults, integrations, upload policies, security behavior, and diagnostics for the deployment. Change these values deliberately because a single setting can affect new content, multiple data sources, or every player.
Application Defaults
Application defaults provide starting values for new content and player behavior, including:
- Default slide duration.
- Whether slides fade between one another by default.
- Whether unavailable RTMP streams are skipped.
- Default announcement icon and duration.
- Default RSS and API refresh intervals.
Defaults help keep new content consistent. They do not necessarily rewrite values that were already set on an existing slide, playlist, announcement, or source. Check the affected feature after saving a default change.
Media Uploads
Media upload settings control the maximum image, video, and rich-text image sizes, along with the allowed image and video MIME types. Keep these limits large enough for the intended displays but small enough to avoid unnecessary storage and synchronization time.
Changing allowed types or size limits affects future uploads and may not change files that are already referenced. Test an upload after changing the policy, then check a player can synchronize the resulting file.
Icon Suggestions
Icon Suggestions controls which announcement icons appear first in the icon picker. Select up to 48 suggestions and reorder them so the icons used most often are easy to find. This changes the picker order, not the icon already saved on an existing announcement.
Weather Providers
Weather Providers stores shared credentials for the configured weather services. A provider may work without an API key or may require one before it can be selected for a weather location. Configure the provider here before creating locations that depend on it, and avoid placing provider credentials in source names, slide content, or public documentation.
Security and Sessions
Security and Sessions contains deployment-wide controls for authentication and session behavior. Review these settings when changing login policy, session lifetime, or security controls. Test the change with a non-administrator account where possible so an overly restrictive setting does not prevent normal users from working.
Email Delivery and Templates
Email Delivery configures SMTP for messages such as password recovery and account verification. Check the SMTP host, port, security mode, and enabled state before relying on invitations or recovery emails.
Email Templates controls the messages sent by the application. Keep the wording clear and verify links and sender details after changing a template. Send a test invitation or recovery message when the deployment's email settings change.
Audit Logging and Diagnostics
Audit Logging controls the recording of authentication, security, and session events. Diagnostics provide information useful when investigating application behavior or background work. Limit diagnostic changes to the period needed for investigation and review the resulting activity afterward.
Background Tasks
Background Tasks shows queued work that runs in the web process. Tasks can be queued, running, completed, failed, or canceled. The list includes the task name, category, timestamps, source, and any error message.
Use the task search and status filters to find work for a particular source or operation. A failed task's error message is the first place to look when a refresh, synchronization, cleanup, or notification did not complete. Finished tasks can be cleared after they have been reviewed; clearing the list does not undo the work that completed.
When a task remains queued, check whether the web process is running and whether earlier work is blocking the queue. When a task fails repeatedly, fix the underlying source, credential, file, or service problem before running the operation again.
Scheduled Tasks
Scheduled Tasks shows recurring work such as source refreshes, player synchronization, and cleanup. For each task, review its interval, next run, last run, last result, and source when available.
Use Run now when an administrator needs an immediate refresh or synchronization rather than waiting for the next scheduled run. Check the last result after it completes. A failed scheduled run can leave the source or player state unchanged even though the recurring task remains registered.
Scheduled tasks are service operations, not content settings. Change a source's own update interval when the source should refresh at a different cadence; use the scheduled-task page to inspect or manually trigger the registered operation.
Audit Log
The Audit Log records authentication, security, session, and other important administrative events. Filter by category or event type, search by event, actor, or target, and review the time, source address, user agent, and recorded changes.
Use the audit log to answer questions such as:
- Who changed a user, setting, source, or player-related value?
- When did a login, session, or security event occur?
- Which value changed, and what was it before the change?
- Did an unexpected update come from the web application or another source?
Export filtered results when they need to be retained for an investigation or shared with an administrator. Treat exported logs as sensitive operational information because they can contain account and network details.
Administrative Checks
Before making a broad change:
- Check which slides, templates, users, sources, players, or defaults will be affected.
- Confirm the replacement content or account has been tested.
- Review the audit log before and after sensitive changes.
- Review task status when a synchronization change takes longer than expected.
See the Local Control guide for player-specific offline controls.