How to configure Windows Digital Signage Display?

Digital signage is a versatile solution that enables businesses to display multimedia content on electronic screens. It is widely used for dynamic brand marketing and advertising. But beyond advertising, it also serves multiple purposes. Digital displays can provide instructions to help visitors navigate efficiently in hospitals and subways. In retail environments, they showcase product information and promotions, while in corporate settings, forming an effective medium for sharing company news and updates.

IT admins can now seamlessly deploy customized and dynamic signage content across their Windows devices. This document offers a step-by-step guide to remotely configuring and managing digital signage on these devices.

Set up digital signage display in Windows kiosk mode

To configure Windows digital signage display via Hexnode UEM,

1. Login to your Hexnode portal.
2. Navigate to Policies.
3. Select an existing policy or create a new one by clicking New Policy.
4. Provide a policy name and a suitable description.
5. From Kiosk Lockdown > Windows Kiosk Lockdown, select Digital Signage Display and click Configure.
6. Enter the name of the user account you want to run in digital signage kiosk mode in the Kiosk Account Name field. If you are using the Microsoft account to enable sign in to the kiosk, you can specify the account name in either of the following formats:
   1. For an AD user: domain\samAccountName
   2. For a Microsoft Entra ID user: email address
7. Use the following options to set up the digital signage display content,
   1. Add URL: Choose this option to display the website of your choice. Enter a URL in the respective field in the following format “https://www.hexnode.com/”.
      
      Note:

      
      For specific websites, device and user information can be passed along with the URL to devices. Configure wildcards in the URL using the format: myURL/{wildcard}. The following wildcards are supported:

      • %devicename%
      • %phonenumber%
      • %deviceid%
      • %model%
      • %email%
      • %serialnumber%
      • %name%
      • %assettag%
      • %domain%
      • %devicenotes%
      • %netbiosname%
      • %department%

      For example: myURL/% devicename%/%name%/%serialnumber%.
      

   2. Add File: Choose this option to display a photo, video, or a document of your choice. Choose a file from your system and upload it to the Hexnode content repository or select an already existing file.

Advanced Kiosk Settings

The following advanced settings will provide administrators with some additional options to configure the digital signage display.

1. Fit to Full-Screen: Check this option to stretch the content to fill the entire screen, regardless of its original aspect ratio. Note that videos, images, and PDFs may be cropped if their aspect ratio does not match the device’s display.
2. Loop Video: Enable this option to play video files in a continuous loop.

Associate the policy to target devices

If the policy has not been saved,

1. Navigate to Policy Targets > +Add Devices.
2. Choose the target devices and click OK. Click Save.
3. You can also associate the policy with device groups, users, user groups or domains from the left pane of the “Policy Targets” tab.

If the policy has been saved,

1. Go to “Policies” tab and choose the desired policy.
2. Click on Manage drop-down and select Associate Targets.
3. Choose the target entities and click “Associate”.

What happens at the device end?

Once the policy is successfully associated, the kiosk account on the device enters digital signage mode. The configured URLs, images, or videos will be displayed dynamically on the screen. To exit digital signage, users can log out of the kiosk account by pressing Win + Shift + Del.