MusicMaster Blog

By Jesus Rodriguez

In this blog post we will take a journey like a storybook does to meet the Rule Wizard who is always available to help us in a time of need. We often get calls asking why certain rules are not functioning properly. Are my rules to tight? May be to loose? Do I have the right times set for my rules? I just did a new database what rules should I use? I inherited a database but I don’t know if the person before me had the correct rules? Can you help us because we made huge changes to the database and now it’s acting weird? (more…)

By Aaron Taylor

We often will get calls or emails in our support department from a user who indicates they’ve attempted to schedule a day part, full day or longer time period and nothing ended up scheduling. Here are the most common culprits, and areas to review in your databases that usually will point to this occurrence. (more…)

By Marianne Burkett

The majority of calls I receive during any given week, tend to pertain to poor rotations or too many unscheduled positions after running the automatic scheduler.  Typically, the results are due to rules that don’t really fit the categories, coding or categories with excessively high minimum rest settings.  You may also have rules that conflict with one another.

What should you do?   Of course, you can always call me or your Music Scheduling Consultant to help shed some light on your problems, but if you’d like to roll up your sleeves… here are the steps I personally take each and every time someone calls me for help. (more…)

by Paul Ziino

The Scheduling Recap Report (Dataset/Schedule/Recap Report) is a great tool for determining which unbreakable rules are causing unscheduled positions in your log as well as which breakable rules are being violated. (more…)

By Marianne Burkett

When was the last time you took a critical look at your database or databases?  You may be so busy at work, that the thought of a review seems like the last thing you’d like to do.  With MusicMaster there are some easy steps you can take to keep your data “honest”.  The truth has no agenda, but it certainly is revealing! (more…)

by Marianne Burkett

This article is about properly caring for your database.

Today we take a look at three different scenarios where clients run into trouble. (more…)

Here is a handy daily “report card” for your MusicMaster database.

The Recap Report is a graphic display of how the program did in relation to the rules that you have set up.

There are three types of Recap Reports you can view: Rule Stats, Goal Stats and Category Stats.

Here is a brief description of each:

Rule Stats
This display gives you detailed information on each rule that was tested.

Goal Stats
This report is activated when you use Optimum Goal Scheduling. You can sort by any of the column headers that you have.

When using Optimum Goals Scheduling, you’ll see one entry for each category where that Goal is used.

Category Stats
This graph gives you information on how far into the search depth the scheduler had to go to find the songs it scheduled

There are other options to view the Thinking file, Print the Recap Report, or Copy it to a clip board or Word document (as an example).

You can view this report immediately after a scheduling run via DATASET-SCHEDULE-RECAP REPORT. You can also make this report open each time following an Automatic Scheduling run by selecting RUN RECAP REPORT AFTER SCHEDULING on the OPTIONS tab of the Automatic Scheduler.

by Marianne Burkett

From time to time, most people go to their Primary Care Doctor for a physical exam, take the car in for servicing or have their home HVAC inspected – just to be sure there isn’t a problem lurking. In the same vein, it’s also wise to take a critical look at your MusicMaster database every so often. (more…)

By Marianne Burkett

MusicMaster has a fantastic feature called Automatic Reconciliation. Once we set it up for you – it will look at your Automation System logs and reconcile that information back into your MusicMaster logs. This is an especially helpful feature if your announcers have the freedom to drop, juggle or change out the songs they play – or if you over schedule your hours in MusicMaster. Occasionally, I’ll get a call from a client who says – “We don’t play this song anymore, but after we run reconciliation – it adds it to the log”. (more…)

By Drew Bennett

When you abandon old clocks for new ones, a lot of times the old clocks get left in the database and never used again. (more…)