About the Home screen

Summary

The Home screen is the perfect place for app users to find dynamic content and real-time updates in the workspace, thanks in particular to the Home feed and Quick links, and the Live session.

Home feed Similar to a social media feed, the Home feed stimulates conversation and interaction among users and is constantly updated, so there's always a reason for app users to visit it. As such, it's the most visible space in the app and the ideal place for any important one-time messages that can be sent on behalf of the app or key speakers. A post can also be pinned to the top of the screen, as you can see in the example below. Quick links Quick links are accessible via a carousel at the top of the Home screen. App users can easily scroll through the links and use them to access specific pages or resources. They're a great complement to the app menu or navigation items, as they can be frequently adjusted in order to give more visibility to content that is relevant to users at specific times during the event.

Live session (in quick links)
The Live session shortcut, located in the quick links carousel, displays the in-progress agenda session directly in the Home screen, and provides easy access to it. 

Home screen banner

A banner at the top of the screen can also be added to further brand your home screen. Recommended size is 2000 x 1000px (2:1 ratio) - JPG or PNG - for all platforms.

For more information on using the Home screen, read our Getting the most out of the Home screen article.

Configuration 

To configure the Home screen in your workspace, go to the Design category in the main menu, and select Home. The below window opens, where you can configure:

• The displayed banner.
• The quick links.
• The feeds to exclude from the Home feed.
• A pinned post.

Displayed banner

Here you can upload a banner and add it to the Home screen, or select an existing banner that is already uploaded to the workspace. The recommended size and format for the banner is 2000 x 1000px (2:1 ratio) - JPG or PNG - for all platforms.

Quick links

The quick links on the Home screen provide app users with easy access to relevant in-app or external content, directly from the Home screen.

The items (or links) in the carousel can be configured using the drop down menu. Simply select the content type, and then the actual content to link to.

New (short link) items can be created in order to be selected from the drop down. More information is available on this in the Adding quick links to the home page carrousel.

We recommend that you add no more than 5 items to the quick links. Please also keep in mind that a Live session item, linked to the app user's in-progress session, is added by default to the Quick links carousel.

Live session (in the quick links)

The Live session item is displayed in the quick links carousel on the Home screen. It acts as a direct link to the current live session that is on the app user's agenda.

This can be configured using the Session list drop-down menu, where you can create and/or select a custom session list (that can be targeted) in order to specify exactly what sessions will show as the live session for your app users.

More information on using custom session lists is available in the Sessions article.

By default, if nothing is selected in the Session list drop-down list, the Live session displayed in the carousel will be the first session on the app user's agenda on that day. For an event with multiple sessions occurring at the same time, the system will display the live session that the user has registered to or has bookmarked. If the participant has not registered to or bookmarked a session and there are multiple live sessions taking place at the same time, the system will display the first session alphabetically based on the session names.

Notes: The live session needs to have started less than 2 hours before the current time, and needs to finish in less than 2 hours to be displayed in the Live session link.

Also, the live session icon is always set using the asset available in Files > Icons > live_session

This icon can be changed, but the new file used will have to be uploaded here, replacing the old one, and have the same fp_ext_id: "live_session".

Home feed

Each workspace or app has a Home feed that, by default, combines (aggregates) all the posts from all the existing feeds in the workspace, to make them visible all in one place to the app user.

You can choose to exclude certain feeds (and their posts) from the Home feed, by selecting them on the Feeds to exclude dropdown list.

Note: When feeds are combined into the Home feed, Backstage users can still create launchers (that can be added to the app menu or quick links) for individual feeds to allow app users to access those feeds individually.

Any additional configuration or options for the Home feed and its posts need to be set directly via the individual feeds themselves. For more information on configuring feeds please refer to Managing Feeds and Posts article.

Home feed interaction

From an app user's perspective, the Home feed works like any other feed. Please note however that when an app user posts in the Home feed, they will need to select the individual feed that they are posting to. The post will then appear in the Home feed, and the specific feed that the user posted to will also be displayed in the post header. For example: User to Feed name. All the usual like and share interactions are available in the Home feed. App users can perform searches in the Home screen. The search function in the home screen searches through the app agenda, speakers, users and feed posts.

Home feed technical notes

• If the Home feed is configured to display posts from multiple feeds, then the posts
  will always be displayed in chronological order.
  
• Search works on app user and speaker names, sessions titles and locations.
• Search is only available online.