Can WireReady Automation import the schedule from VT?
A: YES!
Both our original DOS system and our new Windows system can import logs from every traffic system out there. A configuration file in your wireready tells us where the commercial names and air times are found on the file coming out of the traffic system.
We also support importing from music scheduling systems and the same rules apply. Please note - WireReady can automatically merge traffic and music schedules even when they come from different vendors. There is no need to work with a 3rd party power linking program to merge your schedules before they are sucked in by the Wireready system (however, if you use a merge/linking program, we can import from that as well).
More information:
Interfacing traffic and an automation system provides for the possibility of several things...
IMPORTING:
Some stations manually enter every single spot in their automation system every day. While some stations don't mind, if you run several hundred spots a day, having to manually enter all those file names every day is quite a chore.
When a station has a computerized traffic and billing system, automation systems can "import" the log from the traffic system - freeing you from manually having to type all those names again in the automation system.
This is called "importing the traffic log."
Both our original DOS system and our new Windows system can import logs from every traffic system out there. A configuration file in your wireready tells us where the commercial names and air times are found on the file coming out of the traffic system. Once this setting is done, importing works this way:
From the studio computer (or your production computer if it's setup to do this), you open up the automation log in WireReady you wish to modify. For example, if today is Monday and you are scheduling Tuesday, you open your Tuesday log. In the old days, you had the chore of manually scrolling every break, inserting every new spot from your audio library. But now you can "import the log." You hit the Import Traffic Log choice. You type the name/path of the file that your traffic system made - and all those cuts change in a matter of seconds. Then we pop a screen called a confirmation report that confirms with you that the log was successfully imported. We also give you some summary error reports warning you if any of the cuts requested by your traffic system don't exist (because your production person forgot to make them) or if they are out of date (because your production person forgot to update them). We also provide a break summary as a quick pointer to any break in your schedule
which is too long or too short. It's still possible at this point to manually insert or delete a couple cuts if your traffic person didn't put everything in the traffic system.
CONFIRMATION LOG (affadavit):
Both WireReady DOS and Windows systems have for years, made daily confirmation reports in a subdirectory called CONFIRM on your computer. Each day, for affadavit purposes, we log everything played from automation with its name, date and time. The Windows system logs from other screens (liveassist) as well, and the windows system provides additional error information if something wasn't played.
Most stations pull this log and use it to "affadavit" their billings so know that everything they billed indeed played on their station.
AUTORECONCILIATION (autorecon, or auto-affadaviting):
(Only our windows based system supports reconciliation and we only auto-reconcile with a limited number of traffic systems like Visual Traffic (VT). Please call if you are interested in this feature).
Autoreconcilation is the process a few traffic systems do to save you the time of manually reviewing our confirmation log to ensure that every cut aired as scheduled.
In the similar way that we read a file FROM the traffic system, the traffic system can read a file FROM your WireReady to automatically "check off" the orders that played as scheduled, and bring to your attention anything that didn't play as scheduled or anything that played but wasn't put in the traffic system in the first place. Autoreconciliation is one of those things that can take quite a bit to setup - but once setup, it saves your traffic person a lot of time. Setup involves issues like setting up WireReady or the Traffic system to ignore items which play, but for which you don't bill (because you don't want your traffic system generating alarms every day when it sees we played things it doesn't know about). This is an example of where automatic reconciliation can be a time maker, rather than a time saver. Whether or not your station does auto-reconcilliation depends typically on the price per spot you charge and other considerations. For example, major markets bill hundreds of dollars per spot, and may have very specific agency restrictions, or they may be a publicly traded company under the rules of Sorbanes Oxley. In these cases, the traffic person may have to account for every single item played on the air whether or not it was billed or ordered by a client. In smaller markets, you may not be subject to such issues.
With this said, WireReady's windows system can be set to alter the normal format of our confirmation file so that it can be read by traffic systems. For example we currently support the format required by Visual Traffic. We are now working on supporting other traffic system formats. Please call if you would like more information about our support for other traffic systems.
Other considerations:
If your station is already using WireReady and has not imported traffic or music in the past, you may have to make some minor changes to your automation logs in our system so they are ready to "accept" the imported log from your traffic system.
You will notice a command called SCHEDULED TRAFFIC BREAK (there is also one for music break/sweeps). Every place in your log which you currently just put PLAY commands, you must precede each commercial break with a SCHEDULED BREAK line that has the approximate start time of the break and the length of the break. This is the basis for how we are able to read your traffic log and figure out where to stick all the commercials.
Each time you import a traffic log, we first delete all the old spots from the previous day/week that are visible on the automation log and then we replace them with all the cut names we find from your traffic system log that have the applicable air times.
This is also how we import songs from a music scheduler system - using the Music Sweep commands.
If you ever want permanent items like liners at the end of the breaks that you don't want to have to put in your traffic/billing system - you can keep those by putting a LABEL or SKIP command before them. In this fashion, when you import, we won't delete the last item under the scheduled break or music sweep line.
There are a few major differences between our DOS and WINDOWS system:
Our Windows system has some extra options:
AUTOFILL EXACT
For mandatory breaks with satellite or for other reasons, our windows system can autofill breaks when your traffic system hasn't sold enough spots.
RESET END TIME
The windows system can leave the balance time (the time that all audio files end in the log) alone and not reset the time to the start of the scheduled break time. With satellite, it is good when the scheduled break time resets the displayed END time so you can see exactly when the commercials will finish playing. But if you are music on hard drive or program on hard drive station, you prefer to see the time the commercials end BASED on the time that the audio file before the break ended - in this case, you don't want the time in the scheduled break line to change the displayed start time of the first commercial in the break.
OVERLAPPING
The windows system takes into account overlapping when figuring out when things will end and for auto-filling.
DATE/TIME RESTRICTIONS/ROTATIONS
The DOS system only lets you put a start/stop date in your audio files. Our WINDOWS system lets you put start and end times associated with the dates, but more importantly - you can select the days of the week and the hours of the day that cuts are valid and allowed to play. In this fashion, if an advertiser has 20 ads in their flight but only wants certain ads playing on certain days and certain hours, our windows version will let you bill all those ads as a single file name/number in the traffic system. If you build a rotation, the automation system will figure out which variant of the ad to play for each daypart throughout their flight. For stations who don't want to store all these specifics on the invoices themselves, the windows version saves a lot of time building orders in your traffic system.
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