For this week’s RCS Live, we were joined by GSelector Product Manager, John Bonou, to review some of the new features available right now in GSelector 5.1. We covered the new Custom Song/Link Window, which offers unique programming workflows, additional Jobs, like Data Exchange and Generate Schedule, Multi Song Changer Mass Audio Analysis and more. To inspire you to become a Beta user, we even teased upcoming GSelector 5.2 features.
Starting with the Custom Song/Link Window, you can check out our previous RCS Live video in which we extensively covered how to construct your own custom window here. Otherwise. for today’s session, John reviewed some of the user examples behind the new GSelector 5.1 Custom Song/Link Window feature. For example, right click on a specific field to make it mandatory, so if a user doesn’t include the mandatory field, GSelector will prompt the user, not allowing them to save the new Song/Link until the mandatory field is filled. Then John offered the solution where multiple users can work on their specific tasks, outlined by the Custom Song/Link Window. Starting with the Production Director, they can have one “Production” layout, which includes simple metadata fields, both optional and exclusively mandatory fields. After adding the new element, the Program Director can sign into GSelector, opening their own “Program Director” layout that includes additional modules, like the History window or advanced schedule fields, like Category Change History. While the Program Director continues to work on their scheduling metadata, this particular station includes a third user whose job is to import research scores into GSelector for the Program Director. The programming research user would log in with their credentials, opening their own “Research” layout that includes nothing but the research attributes and history, allowing them to add research to help assist the Program Director track a song’s progress and make any additional scheduling adjustments.
Another great new feature: Multi Song Changer Mass Audio Analysis. Found under the Library | Multi Song Changer and Audio Analysis, this technique expands on the Audio Analysis feature that allows users who have access to their song’s audio, to analyze their song. GSelector will automatically import scheduling fields like BPMs, Energy, Tempo, Textures and more. Now, with the introduction of GSelector 5.1, users can highlight multiple songs and use the Multi Song Changer tab to analyze multiple songs. If you’re using Audio Analysis, this is going to be a huge time saver.
Up next, we reviewed GSelector’s Jobs. As a refresher, in previous versions, RCS introduced the concept of GSelector Jobs. These are automated tasks that can be schedule on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. With each new GSelector version, we’re continuing to introduce new and modern Jobs. For example, in GSelector 5.1, programmers now have the option to schedule multiple automatic Data Exchanges. This is a significant enhancement since as part of the Data Exchange process, RCS maintains your most recent GSelector backup in the Cloud for additional redundancy. So not only can users schedule a Data Exchange backup to occur multiple times a week (like once after music changes day and another Friday afternoon), but then you’re also taking multiple cloud backups that can always be recovered in case of a disaster.
While we were covering GSelector’s Job, John also hinted at the significance of the Generate Schedule Job. Since redundancy is such an important part of the radio process, users can actually plan ahead and outline a Generate Schedule Job to occur once a day, making sure that the next available day has been properly scheduled. If you schedule an existing day that already has been finalized, it’s normal GSelector behavior to ignore any previously scheduled positions and only schedule unscheduled positions. As in, you won’t lose completed work and GSelector will only schedule missing elements. On the random chance you forget to schedule a log, GSelector Job’s has your back. Define a reoccurring daily Generate Schedule job at the end of the workday, and that way you know you’ll always have a completed log for the next day. Or remember, the Generate Schedule Job also includes the “Export Schedule” option, so if you’re using Flat File Assignments, you can always trigger GSelector to automatically export your logs at the end of the day as another redundancy step.
Finally, we had a couple user driven questions, which will potentially lead to a couple enhancement requests. This is the beauty of RCS Lives as we put you in front of our RCS Product Managers so that users can offer real life scenarios and pick our expert’s brain, leading to a potential solution. One of these questions also lead us to tease a couple GSelector 5.2 enhancements, which although we can’t discuss today, you can still get your hands on by becoming an RCS Beta user. Simply reach out to your local RCS contract to become part of the Beta program.
Other important housekeeping items – don’t forget that RCS is hiring. You can view all the open positions here. Email marketing@rcsworks.com with your station photos to be featured in our #StudioSpotlight and if you missed a previous RCS Live, we have a full list of videos in our RCS Live Archive or check out the Blog for a full video write up. If you learn better in person, then sign up for a free “RCS Academy On the Road” session as we’re going to be attending multiple radio conferences throughout the year. Bring you GSelector database and we’ll discuss scheduling techniques using your database and metadata. Users can schedule a time now by emailing: marketing@rcsworks.com.