National Weather Alert Integration
The National Weather Alert can be a useful tool for both clients and staff. REACH’s cloud-based digital signage software seamlessly integrates with national weather alerts and will ensure the safety of those using your facility. This article will walk you through the process of implementing this feature step-by-step, so feel free to reference this at any time.
Below you will find our two options available for displaying alerts. A full-screen takeover works similarly to our emergency alerts and will take up the whole screen. The RSS feed will display scrolling text typically found at the bottom of your display.
Full-Screen Takeover
RSS Feed
Regardless of the option you choose, the National Weather Alert will be prompted whenever there is “moderate” type severity in the weather. Moderate is considered “a possible threat to life or property.” For instance, weather “warnings” and “watches” would fall under this category.
Users can pick from “State,” “County” or “Zone” for their weather region. Since “State” is the broadest of regions, you would be more likely to receive alerts selecting this option than you would a smaller one. Keep this in mind when deciding what would work best for your business.
From there, click the URL https://alerts.weather.gov/. This will allow you to grab the correct feed. As you scroll, you will see a list of states, zones, and counties.
To choose the “State” option, simply click the RSS feed icon next to the desired state under the “ATOM” column.
RSS Feed Set UP
Begin by selecting the ticker application within the layout editor. Click the “Ticker Settings” tab and change the feed type to a URL. Then switch the node type to “Title” and the parsing sugar to “National Weather Service Feeds.”
From here, copy the RSS feed URL.
Then paste the URL into the “feed URL” field back in your ticker settings.
To select “County,” click the county list next to your desired region and then click the RSS icon under the “ATOM” column.
Similar to before, copy the RSS feed URL and paste it in the “Feed URL” field of the ticker settings.
Finally, add a “Zone” by clicking the “Zone List” link next to your desired region. Then click the RSS icon under the “ATOM” column.
Copy the RSS feed URL and paste it in the Feed URL field of your ticker settings.
From there, users can select a ticker template and stylize as you would with any RSS feed. Please keep in mind the weather alert will ONLY show when a national weather alert is active. Because of this, there will be nothing to preview.
Emergency Alert Takeover Set Up
The national weather alert feature is set up through the player application, like an emergency alert. If a facility has an emergency alert enabled on the player, the alert will always override the regularly scheduled content.
To set up the national weather alert as a full-screen takeover, please submit a support ticket and include the following information:
- “State,” “County,” or “Zone” to use for the alert. Please refer to https://alerts.weather.gov/ for options.
- The Facility and Player names to assign the alert to.
- Optional: Color preference if the default “red” is not desired.