Send a message to the room
Two different things share this name: putting words on the screens in front of you, and texting people who are somewhere else. Both are here.
On the screens, right now
From the director view you can put a message on the screens without touching the running order or the clock. It appears over whatever is showing and stays until you clear it.
Every room gets the same four, because they matter everywhere: WRAP IT UP, 30 SECONDS, FIRE ALARM — EVACUATE, TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES. After that the presets are your room's own — a gym gets SWITCH PARTNERS and WATER BREAK, a reception gets SPEECHES IN 5 and CAKE CUTTING.
Choosing who sees it
| Target | Reaches | Use it for |
|---|---|---|
| Everyone | Every screen in the building | Evacuation, technical problems, doors. |
| Big screen only | The audience display | Anything the room should read. |
| Up-next screen only | The display where people wait, if your room has one | WRAP IT UP, 30 SECONDS — the ones meant for the person on, not the crowd. |
The one that matters
FIRE ALARM — EVACUATE is on every room's preset list and it is one tap from the director view. Know where it is before you need it. Practise finding it once, in daylight, with nobody in the building.
Texting people who are not in the room
Separate thing entirely: SMS to your members, guests or ticket holders. Class cancelled, doors moved, seats left. It runs on pre-paid credits and it is covered on its own page, because the consent rules around it are not optional.
The short version: NextSet will not text somebody who has not agreed to be texted, and it fails closed — if consent is missing or unclear, the message does not go. That protects you more than it protects us.
Practical
- Clear a message when it stops being true. A stale message on a screen erodes all of them.
- Short. A screen across a room is read in about a second and a half — five words is a message, twenty is wallpaper.
- Presets over typing. Typing during a live event is how the wrong thing ends up on the wall in front of two hundred people.