HQ has two chain-wide broadcast tools: Announcements, for text updates to every franchisee, and Signage, for pushing a TV playlist to every shop's display picker at once. This article is specifically about the HQ-side, org-wide push capability — a single shop's own TV pairing and local playlist is covered separately in Shop signage — TV displays and lobby boards; this is the franchisor side of that same feature, not a duplicate of it.
Announcements
HQ dashboard → Announcements → New announcement. Write a headline and a body (markdown supported), optionally schedule it for later, and optionally pin it to the top. There's one audience: "All franchisees" — every shop in the org.
- Scheduling — leave the date blank to publish immediately, or set a future date/time. Scheduled posts show up on this HQ page right away (so you can still edit or cancel them) but stay hidden from franchisees, tagged "Not yet visible to franchisees," until the scheduled time passes.
- Read receipts — each published announcement shows a read count and the percentage of the org's shops that have read it. The page's stats strip totals this up: Pinned count, Published count (with a scheduled count if any are pending), average read rate across all posts, and total reads.
- Editing and deleting — you can edit a published announcement's title, body, or schedule at any time, and pin/unpin it. Deleting removes it for every franchisee along with its read receipts — that action is irreversible.
Franchisees read announcements on their own HQ Connect page — that's the matching read-side surface for whatever HQ posts here.
Signage
HQ dashboard → Signage — "Brand-wide TV reels." You build a playlist once, using the same slide editor as a single shop's own signage (image, video, web page, and the rest of the slide-type library), and once published it shows up in every shop's own display picker. Shops can pick it for one of their displays — they can't edit its slides.
- Draft vs. Published — a new playlist starts as DRAFT and is invisible to shops. Click Publish to all shops when it's ready; that flips it to PUBLISHED and every shop can now select it. You can move a published playlist back to Draft, or Duplicate it into a fresh draft copy to iterate without touching the live version.
- Adoption — the playlist list shows an adoption count next to each one (e.g. "3/5") — how many shops currently have that playlist active on at least one display right now, so you can tell whether a reel you pushed is actually being used or just sitting unpicked.
- Preview — "Preview as shop" opens the exact player view a shop's TV would show, before you publish.
Frequently asked questions
Q: Who sees an HQ announcement?
A: Every shop in the org, on their own HQ Connect page, once it's published — or once a scheduled announcement's send time passes.
Q: Can I schedule an announcement to go out later?
A: Yes. Set a future date and time and it stays hidden from franchisees (marked "Not yet visible to franchisees" on HQ's own page) until that moment.
Q: Can a franchisee edit an HQ signage playlist?
A: No. Shops can select a published HQ playlist for one of their own displays, but only HQ can edit its slides — shops don't get write access to it.
Q: How do I know if shops are actually using an HQ signage playlist I published?
A: The Signage page shows an adoption count next to each playlist — how many shops currently have it active on at least one display right now.
Q: What happens to a signage playlist while it's still a Draft?
A: It stays completely invisible to every shop until you click "Publish to all shops" — shops never see draft HQ playlists in their picker.
Q: Is this the same feature as a single shop's own TV signage setup?
A: No. This covers HQ authoring and pushing playlists org-wide; a shop's own local signage — pairing a TV and building its own playlist — is a separate feature covered in its own article.