Digital signage is the practice of showing up-to-date content on screens - TVs in reception areas, meeting rooms, kitchens, and corridors - so key information is visible without anyone needing to ask. It’s typically used for:
A modern signage platform should be easy to manage, secure, and usable beyond TVs (e.g. embedded into SharePoint/Teams), so the same content can reach people whether they’re walking past a screen or browsing the intranet.
If signage relies on USB sticks, PowerPoint exports, or someone manually “keeping a browser open”, it usually leads to:
A proper signage solution keeps everything centralized, repeatable, and consistent.
ScreenCloud gives you two key building blocks for signage content: Playlists and Channels. If you pick the wrong one early, your signage becomes hard to scale, hard to update, and inconsistent across screens.
A simple way to think about it:
* Playlists are where you organize content into a reusable set (in a defined order).
* Channels are where you schedule and publish content to screens (and keep it consistent).
ScreenCloud even runs a webinar specifically to help clarify when/how to use each - you can find it on [Channels and Playlists: Best Practices](https://screencloud.com/webinars/productivity/channels-and-playlists-best-practices)
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## ❌ The Pain
When content is added directly into Channels (e.g. individual product slides, individual pages, individual apps), it usually leads to:
* Duplicate content across multiple Channels
* Painful updates (you must fix the same thing in many places)
* Inconsistent messaging between locations / screen groups
* Fragile setups when ownership changes (“who maintains this Channel again?”)
### ✅ Best Practice
Use Playlists as your “unit of ownership”, and Channels as your “broadcast surface”
In ScreenCloud Channels, the media picker lets you add different content types – including Playlists, media, links, and apps – into a Channel.
That means you can structure things cleanly:
* Playlists: reusable building blocks (owned by a team or topic)
* Channels: where those building blocks are assembled + scheduled
To do that:
1. Create one Playlist per product (or topic / “content module”)
2. Add the product content to the Playlist (not the Channel)
3. Build Channels by combining Playlists
4. When a product changes, update the Playlist once and all Channels that use it will inherit the change
## How to create a Playlist and Channel
<imageEmbed alt="ScreenCloud Playlist" size="large" showBorder={false} figurePrefix="good" figure="Good Example - Creating a new Playlist" src="/uploads/rules/screencloud-channels-playlists/screencloud-playlist.png" />
#### ➕ [Playlist](https://help.screencloud.com/en/articles/10120006-screencloud-studio-playlists)
1. In ScreenCloud | left bar | Playlists | New Playlist
2. Standardize Playlist naming (so it's easier to understand later) e.g. 01-{{ProductName}} (04-SSW\.Rules)
3. Add the content to your playlist e.g. Page Scroll, Dashboard, PowerBI
4. Publish
This will create a new playlist with your content.
<imageEmbed alt="ScreenCloud Channel" size="large" showBorder={false} figurePrefix="good" figure="Good Example - Creating a new Channel" src="/uploads/rules/screencloud-channels-playlists/screencloud-channel.png" />
#### ➕ [Channel](https://help.screencloud.com/en/articles/10110358-channels-setup-guide-scheduling-content-using-layouts-and-adding-music-to-your-screens)
1. In ScreenCloud | left bar | Channels | New Channel
2. Add the Playlists you just created to your channel
3. Publish
4. Add/assign/embed the channel somewhere to start showing it to your audience