Announcements Tab

This article describes how to define in-vehicle announcements in your Avail software for use in your fleet vehicles. Announcements can be defined as:

1. Stop announcements that play when a vehicle enters a scheduled stop location
2. External route announcements that play when the door opens and
3. Public safety announcements that vehicle operators may play in the vehicle when the vehicle is stationary.

If you have permission to define announcements, you will have access to the Announcements tab when logged into myAvail, which is shown below:

myAvail defines an announcement as one or more linked audio recordings and sign text that it associates with an ID number, category and a name. The following table describes each category:

Importing Recordings

Before defining announcements, you must import the set of recordings that you will use to create the announcements. You can import WAV files, MP3 files, or WMA files. Generally, properties make these recordings in a studio using a professional voice actor for the best results. Recordings are made in snippets and you piece these together to define a full announcement. In this way, you do not need to record the same thing, e.g. “Main”, for each stop on Main Street, such as Main and 1st, Main and 2nd, etc. Avail recommends making a list of the full announcements that you need and then we can help you break them down to the appropriate snippets for recording.

To import snippet recordings, click the Import Recordings icon , which is located at the top right of the announcements screen. The following window displays:

The Available Recordings is the list of recordings that have already been uploaded. Use the search box to find a recording. Click the Play icon to play a recording.

To upload additional recordings, click Browse. This displays a screen that you can use to locate the audio files stored on your computer. Select the required files and click Open. The selected files are displayed on the left-hand list as shown below:

To complete the upload process, click Upload. After pressing 'Upload', the software displays a countdown bar to show the progress of the upload (illustrated above).

TIP: The upload process includes normalizing and converting your audio files to a WMA format (if necessary). Consequently, you might see the total progress bar stop for several minutes while this conversion process completes.

After the upload is complete, upload additional files or close the window by clicking the Close button in the upper right.

Defining Announcements

Now that you've uploaded the audio files you need, you can create an announcement using them. To define a new announcement, click the Add icon (green plus sign) near the top right of the screen:

Use the following screen that displays to define the announcement: 

Begin by adding the 'Name' of the announcement in the first field (Example: Now approaching 5th and Main), then select the announcement category (Example: stop announcement) and then click the 'Apply Category' button. Next, the software will automatically assign a unique Id for the announcement. Then use the 'Available Recordings' field on the right to locate the audio files you uploaded. In the example above, we searched for "Now approaching".  After you find each file, press the green plus sign to add each one, individually, to the 'Selected Recordings' area. You may drag the audio files up, to rearrange them to ensure they play in the correct order. To play an individual recording, click the Play icon next to the recording. To play the completed announcement, click the Play icon in the Selected Recordings box.

IMPORTANT: Each announcement must have a unique name. As mentioned above, the software will automatically assign a unique Id to the announcement you're creating. This is crucial. All announcement Ids must be unique. Do not recycle announcement Ids.  

If you want to define sign text to display with this recording, click the Add icon in the Sign Text box. This icon adds a line to the Sign Text list. Type in the text for this line. If you enter more than 16 characters, the text scrolls on that line. If you want to display more than 16 characters and want it to page rather than scroll, then add multiple lines. Duration specifies how many seconds the sign will display that line. Order specifies the sequence to display the lines. In the Sign Type field, select the type of sign that you have in your vehicles. You can delete any line by clicking the Delete icon on that line.
When you are done defining the announcement, click the Save icon in the upper-right of the window. You can cancel at any time by clicking the Cancel icon.

TIP: If your property uses standard naming conventions, such as always including an audio snippet for "Now approaching" at the beginning of every stop announcement, or the “Now approaching” text on the sign for every stop, you can define these common elements in the system too. This action also allows you to easily reuse some snippet files, saving time.

Exporting Announcements

To distribute announcements that you created, you must export them so they become available for use in your fleet vehicles. 
Click the Export Announcements icon , located near the top right of the Announcement screen. A popup window displays to confirm the export action. This begins the building of the announcement file/s:

After the system creates the export package, you will see another popup to indicate the export completed successfully:

Troubleshooting Tips:

If you don't see the confirmation message indicating the export was completed, please contact Avail Support via the Customer Portal for technical assistance ( they will move all necessary files to the appropriate locations on the deployment server). In this case, after the export is completed by Avail's technical support team, they will notify you so you know the export is complete, and you can then move on to next steps: using the Deploy features in the Build and Deploy tab to distribute the announcements to the vehicles.

Adding Announcements to Stops

After the announcement is defined in myAvail, you can assign it to a stop using Geo Tools ( Trigger Box application) and then setup the deployment (to schedule the download the file to vehicles) from the Build & Deploy tab.

Next Steps:

• Geographic Tools ( assign announcement to stop)
• Build & Deploy ( set up deployment to fleet vehicles)
• Monitor system use

Export Button

IMPORTANT: This video does not include the export process that is required. Please be sure to export the files by pressing the export button ( noted above). Contact Avail Support if the export does not complete: 

Video Demo