The On Call 2000 Playlist Utility also includes practically endless possibilities for in-store announcement applications. The time and date stamping function (discussed in the message on- hold application sample) allows the user to pinpoint certain days, while the interval timer lets you set the interval between messages. In addition, background music is easily switched on or off within the application. If background music is going to be running through your On Call 2000 Digital Message Player, it will fade out before an announcement plays, and fade back gently afterwards.

As with the message on-hold application, once the in-store announcements have been produced, it is best to give them obvious names for easy programming.

In the following scenario, our client is a pharmacy which is using an in-store announcement program to draw customers attention to specials which are happening in different departments over a 2 week period. They have requested that the messages play at five minute intervals, except on Saturdays, their busiest day of the week, when they want to increase the frequency of their messages by setting the interval at 2 minutes.

We have produced five messages for our client: "CAMERAS", "COSMETIC", "PHOTOLAB", "PHARMACY", and "SNACKS".

Figure 2a demonstrates how set the playlist for all the days except Saturday during their 2 week promotion (June 1st through June 15th). We create a new schedule for this promotion and set the dates and select the days of the week we want the messages to play.

Figure 2a

In Figure 2b selecting the message and then entering the interval for each. In addition we choose to enable the background music because the store plays music over their P.A. system.

Figure 2b

In Figure 2c we create the playlist for Saturdays. We first select the dates, then the days on which we want the messages to play.

Figure 2c

Finally, in Figure 2d, we select a shorter interval for our messages and enable the background music.

Figure 2d