Table of contents

Every playlist needs at least one screen to play on. The most direct way to do that is to assign screens one at a time - but that doesn't scale well once you're managing dozens or hundreds of screens, and it means revisiting every playlist whenever your screen network changes.

Publishing by property solves this by targeting screens based on a shared characteristic instead of their identity. Define a property like Location or Department, assign a value to each screen, then publish a playlist to "every screen where Location = London" instead of picking those screens out by hand. Any screen that matches today receives the playlist immediately, and any screen you pair later with the same property value starts receiving it automatically - no playlist edits required.

You'll need at least one screen paired to your account before a property-based playlist can actually publish (you don't need one to define properties or build the playlist itself). If you haven't paired a screen yet, check our hardware setup guides, or start a free 14-day trial to explore the CMS first.

It's also worth knowing how properties differ from Labels, since both live on a screen's settings and it's easy to reach for the wrong one:

Custom properties are structured - you define a fixed set of options up front (for example, Location: New York, London, Tokyo), and each screen can hold exactly one value per property. This structure is what makes properties usable for publishing: Fugo can reliably answer "which screens have Location = London" because every screen's value comes from the same fixed list.

Labels are free-form tags a screen can carry any number of at once, with no fixed list behind them. They're great for quick, informal, overlapping notes, but you can't publish a playlist by label - only by property.

If you already have a property set up with the values you need, skip ahead to Step 2. Otherwise, you can create one from either of two places - they open the same "Add custom property" dialog, so use whichever is more convenient in the moment.

Go to Screens, open the Properties dropdown in the toolbar, and select Add Property. This is the best route when you're setting properties up for the first time, since the property immediately appears as an assignable column across your whole screen table.

While building a playlist's Screens step (covered in Step 3 below), the By Property tab shows an Add property button whenever no properties exist yet. This is handy if you're already mid-way through publishing and realize you need a property you haven't created.

Either way, the dialog asks for two things:

The name for this property as it will appear throughout Fugo - for example, Location, Department, or Screen Purpose. Property names must be unique; Fugo blocks you from saving a second property with a name that already exists (case-insensitive) so you don't end up with two properties that mean the same thing.

The fixed list of values screens can be assigned for this property - for example, a Location property might have options for each of your office cities. Type a value and click the + button (or press Enter) to add it; you need at least one option before you can save. Duplicate options (again, case-insensitive) are blocked with an inline error, and you can edit or delete any option after adding it using the pencil and trash icons next to it.

Click Create property once you've added a label and at least one option. The property is now available to assign to screens and to target in playlists.

A property only does something once screens actually carry a value for it. You have three ways to assign values, useful in different situations:

Open a screen, go to its Settings, and find the Properties card. Every property you've created appears here as a dropdown, defaulting to None; pick the value that applies to this screen. This is the simplest option when you're setting up a handful of screens or fixing up one screen's configuration.

Once a property exists as a column in your Screens table (added via the Properties toolbar dropdown described in Step 1), you can set its value inline for each screen directly in the table. This is the fastest way to assign or audit a property's values across a large number of screens at once, since you can see every screen's current value side by side.

When you pair a new screen, the setup wizard that follows includes an optional step for adding labels or properties. You can assign values right away or skip the step and come back to the screen's settings later - nothing about pairing requires it.

Open the playlist you want to publish by property (or create a new one) and go to its Screens step. You'll see two tabs: By Screen and By Property. Select By Property.

Click Add property condition to open a searchable dropdown of your properties, and choose the one you want to target with. A card for that property appears, listing every one of its values as a clickable chip - click one or more values to select them. The left-hand panel updates live with a running count ("X screens match") and a breakdown of matching screens grouped by which property value they carry, which you can expand to see each screen individually.

You can add more than one property condition to build more specific targeting - for example, Location = London AND Department = Sales. Each additional condition is joined with an AND badge, and conditions you're not ready to use yet (added but with no values selected) are simply ignored rather than blocking anything.

If a property card is getting in the way while you're still configuring others, click its eye icon to hide it from the left-hand preview panel without removing it - useful when you're building up several conditions at once and want to check them one at a time.

Once you're happy with your targeting, continue through Schedule and Preview as usual, then Save and Publish.

Property targeting follows one consistent rule: within a single property, matching is OR (a screen matches if its value is any one of the ones you selected); across different properties, matching is AND (a screen must satisfy every condition you've added). So Location = London and Location = Manchester matches screens in either city, while adding Department = Sales on top narrows that down to Sales screens in London or Manchester specifically.

A playlist needs at least one property condition with at least one value selected (or at least one manually assigned screen) before it can be published - an empty condition, or a property added but never given a value, doesn't count.

By Screen and By Property aren't an either/or choice for a given playlist - they're additive. Any screens you assign manually under By Screen stay assigned even while you're working in the By Property tab, and the playlist ultimately reaches the full combined set: every manually assigned screen, plus every screen matching your property conditions.

If a screen happens to satisfy both - it's manually assigned and matches your property conditions - it's shown once in the property match list with a small cursor icon marking it as "also selected manually," so you always know why a given screen is receiving the playlist.

Because property-based playlists depend on properties and values that live independently of any one playlist, it's worth understanding what happens when you change them later.

Renaming a property, or renaming one of its values, updates everywhere it's used automatically - every screen carrying that value, and every playlist condition referencing it, is kept in sync with no extra steps and no interruption to what's currently publishing.

Deleting a property, or removing one of its values, is different: if that property or value is currently assigned to any screens or used in any playlist's targeting, Fugo warns you first, naming exactly which playlists rely on it, before you can confirm. This is worth pausing on - deleting a property removes it from every screen carrying it, and any playlist that depended entirely on that property for its targeting will have nothing left to publish to.

If you ever need to double check what's driving a screen's content, open that screen's own settings - it lists every playlist currently targeting it, including whether that's from a direct assignment, a legacy group, or a matching property.

If you run into any issues or have questions about publishing by property, our support team is here to help. Use the chat bubble in the bottom right corner of the CMS, or reach out to us at support@fugo.ai.