Inform Media is our Digital Signage & Audio-Visual platform and Content Management System (CMS) which allows centralised control of thousands of screens from one simple interface.

Inform Media was one of the first digital signage systems in Europe, initially developed over 25 years ago and now in its eighth major version, benefiting from our wealth of experience in bringing communications to staff- and public-facing screens.

Inform Media drives content on thousands of screens world-wide, from advertising displays to internal staff comms systems to interactive customer information touchscreens. Our solution fits seamlessly into a wide range of industries:

• Transportation
• Banking
• Defence
• Retail
• Education
• Local Authority
• Hotel & Leisure
• Construction

Our unique approach to product development provides the benefit of a mature, fully featured off-the-shelf solution with a flexibility for customisation and bespoke software development that most vendors cannot provide. We work in partnership with our customers to tailor a solution that precisely fits their individual requirements while maintaining a solid, stable platform and exceptional customer support.

Media Management

Our cloud-based web portal allows your users to easily manage and control multimedia content as well as on-brand messaging (Inform Messaging) from a simple, secure interface. Users can upload images and videos, assign content to playlists, and schedule the display of the media to individual screens and groups of displays.

Media files can be profiled and organised with tags and folders, with validity windows ensuring the content management system remains tidy and easy to use. Expired content can be easily restored when needed.

Our simple, drag & drop interface allows items to be added to playlists and re-ordered as necessary. Items in playlists can be given start & end dates allowing campaigns to be scheduled in advance and expire without manual intervention.

Our two-step update routine allows a quality gate to be inserted, allowing authorised staff to preview and approve playlists before being published to screens if required.

The platform offers native support for:

• HD video (WMV, MPG, MP4)
• Images (BMP, JPG, PNG)
• Live data such as RSS feeds or web pages
• Social media widgets
• Rich HTML applications

Inform Messaging

Our Inform Messaging module, originally developed in partnership with Network Rail, enables back-office and front-line staff to communicate operational information quickly and efficiently to staff and customers. With Inform Messaging, high-quality communications can be distributed to individual screens or across your entire Digital Signage network in 3 simple steps.

The system has been designed to display messaging in pre-approved brand colours, styles & fonts etc. while still providing enough flexibility to ensure staff can get their message across. Built-in spellchecker and language filters ensure a professional tone is always maintained; critical for public-facing screens.

Messages dynamically slot into playlists based on their priority, allowing urgent messages to take over the screen completely until they expire. Staff set the priority level based on their knowledge of the business:

LOW: treated as a normal playlist item

MED: supersedes playlist items

HIGH: supersedes all playlist items and lower priority messages

Players & Hardware

Inform Media is fully integrated into our supporting suite of visual communications products or is available as an all-in-one player unit which connects to any modern screen.

Our player & screen management module allows estates to be scaled up in line with the growth of your business and your needs. Multiple organisational structures can be created to ensure content can be targeted to individual screens or groups, or be shown estate-wide, and our simple permissions system ensures users only see the parts of the interface that are relevant to them.

Inform Media allows granular control of your media distribution and messaging, screens can be grouped together or targeted independently as required. For example:

Global content goes to entire estate

Region goes to all screens within a geographic area

Sites goes to screens within a sub-set of the above area

Screen goes to only the selected screen(s)

The system’s flexibility allows organisational structure to be adapted and improved easily by users with the appropriate permissions.

Players check for new publishes on a configurable timer and only download content relevant to themselves to avoid over-using bandwidth.

Touchscreens & Interactive apps

The Inform solution incorporates not only passive content management but also enables interactive abilities. With supporting hardware, any screen can become an interactive information point, enabling staff and customers to touch the screen and navigate a themed, customisable menu system. Images, videos, PDFs, websites, and other rich multimedia can be added to the Inform Menu system for interaction by users of the screen. Our interactive platform is also compatible with our Wayfinding product and accessible communication products.

User management

There is no limit to how many users may be added into the system and no licensing implication. Users authenticate via e-mail address and password, with password security rules enforced (length, complexity, etc.) and multi-factor authentication built in.

Users may be assigned to roles with inherited, or manual permissions – this allows as many roles as necessary to be defined, with different roles having access to different areas of the system. For example:

Junior user Can upload media and schedule approved media

Standard user Can approve media and send messages

Super-user Can do everything including managing user roles

L.B. Foster provide a range of training options from remote web conferences to on-site sessions. Our friendly, UK-based helpdesk are always happy to answer queries and point users in the right direction.

Capability

L.B. Foster develop, test, and support all software from our UK offices. Our experienced teams ensure the continual quality of our software products and successful delivery of solutions into your environment. Bespoke integrations and new rich content can be added based on your exact requirements.

View our case studies