Live closures and emergency wayfinding on every screen
With DigiMaps live operations, your team closes a place, posts a notice or starts an emergency broadcast in Studio. Kiosks, phones and signage screens pick it up within seconds, without a new map release. Emergency guidance supplements, never replaces, your approved signage, alarms and procedures.
- Routes to the nearest exits, drawn from approved exit data
- Lifts crossed out: this example message says not to use them
Change what visitors see without touching the map.
Live content sits on top of the published map. Your team posts it in Studio, every screen receives it within seconds, and it ends on schedule or with one click. The map release stays exactly as it was.
| Live item | What visitors see | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Closure | The place shows “Temporarily closed”. Routes avoid it, and anyone already on the way is re-routed and told why. | Level 1 restrooms closed for cleaning for 20 minutes |
| A service moved | Searching for the old place leads to the new one. | Pharmacy counter moved to the east entrance for a week |
| Notice | A banner at Information, Warning or Urgent level, on every screen or only in the zones and kiosks you pick. | “Lift B out of service until 14:00”, east wing only |
| Emergency broadcast | A full-screen takeover in every venue language, with a “Show me the way out” button. | Evacuate the building, Shelter in place, or Alarm (follow staff) |
| Event | An entry in What’s on with a picture, a place and Take me there. Recurring events repeat on their own. | Flu vaccinations in Outpatients, every weekday this month |
| Information page | Short plain-text pages on the kiosk, in the order you set. | Visiting hours and ward rules |
Lift B goes out of service at 09:41. The next route uses Lift A.
The whole closure on a fictional hospital, from the editor’s switch to the visitor at the kiosk. Kiosks that lose the network keep routing from their cached map and catch up when it returns.
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01 09:41
Content editor · Studio
Lift B goes out of service
The editor switches on a closure for Lift B in Live and sets it to end at 14:00. Nobody touches the map.
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02 09:41
Live channel
Every screen gets it
Every kiosk, phone and signage screen gets the change within seconds. No map republish.
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03 09:42
Kiosk · Ground floor
A visitor mid-route is sent to Lift A
Directions recalculate around the closed lift, and the kiosk tells the visitor why instead of quietly drawing a different line.
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04 13:52
Content editor · Studio
Back in service, one click
The lift is signed off early. The editor ends the closure and routes use Lift B again. Both actions are in the audit log.
Times are illustrative. Wayvale General Hospital is a fictional demo venue.
Notices for one wing or every screen, on a schedule.
Notices carry their own importance, audience and screens. Post one for the east wing until 14:00, or a repeating maintenance window every Sunday morning.
Notice settings
- Importance
- Information, Warning or Urgent
- Audience
- Public, or staff only
- Where
- Every screen, or chosen zones and kiosks
- When
- Start, end and repeating windows, in the venue’s time zone
- Templates
- Planned maintenance, Lift out of service
- Translations
- Draft wording from a template must be ticked as checked before it goes live
One action puts the same message on every screen, in every language.
An evacuation on a fictional hospital, from the admin’s confirmation to a visitor’s way out. The same takeover is used for Shelter in place and Alarm, with their own wording.
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01 10:02
Workspace admin · Studio
An admin starts the emergency
Pick a template (Evacuate the building, Shelter in place or Alarm), check which screens it reaches, then confirm.
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02 10:02
Every screen
Every screen switches, in every venue language
The takeover covers the attract screen and signage, with English and Arabic side by side. A visitor can shrink it to a bar to use the map. It opens again for the next visitor.
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03 10:03
Kiosk · Outpatients
“Show me the way out”
One tap routes the visitor to the nearest reachable exit.
Needs approved exit data on the map. If no exit can be reached, the kiosk says plainly that no route can be shown.
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04 10:31
Workspace admin · Studio
Only an operator can end it
End emergency in Studio and every screen returns to normal. Kiosks hold back their idle reloads until then.
Digital guidance supplements, never replaces, your alarms, exit signs, staff and procedures.
Times are illustrative. Wayvale General Hospital is a fictional demo venue.
What emergency mode does
- Shows the message in every venue language, side by side
- Appears even while the map is loading, or if it failed to load
- Lets a visitor shrink it to a bar to use the map, then reopens for the next visitor
- Holds back kiosk idle reloads until an operator ends it
- Sends an
emergency.broadcastwebhook to your systems
What it does not do
- Replace alarms, PA announcements, exit signs or staff. It supplements them.
- Invent exits that are not in your approved exit data
- Hand signage screens over to the map when touched. They keep showing the message.
- Count as a certified life-safety or evacuation system
- Set your emergency procedure or run your drills. Those stay with your safety team.
“Show me the way out” is only as good as your exit data.
The button routes a visitor to the nearest reachable emergency exit, fire exit, exit, assembly point or entrance. If none can be reached, the kiosk says plainly that no route can be shown instead of guessing.
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Start from your approved egress drawings
When we import your plans, missing exits are recorded as missing. DigiMaps does not draw an exit to fill a gap.
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Include the accessible exits
Nearest-exit routing has an accessible option, so it can look for a way out without stairs. It can only use the step-free exits your data records.
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Use the stricter profile in hospitals
The hospital life-safety profile will not publish a map unless every point has two ways out and a step-free route to an accessible exit.
Tell the security desk the moment a broadcast starts.
DigiMaps sends signed webhooks to your building management, paging or ticketing tools. Each request carries an
HMAC-SHA256 signature in the X-Digimaps-Signature header, so your endpoint can check it came from
us.
emergency.broadcast- An emergency broadcast goes out
kiosk.offline- A kiosk stops reporting in. The same alert can go by e-mail.
kiosk.online- The kiosk is back
POST https://security.wayvale.example/hooks/digimaps
X-Digimaps-Signature: sha256=4be1…c09a
| Time | Event | Endpoint | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10:02:07 | emergency.broadcast |
Security desk | 200 Delivered |
| 08:31:02 | kiosk.online |
Facilities desk | 200 Delivered |
| 08:15:46 | kiosk.offline |
Facilities desk | 200 Delivered on retry 2 |
| 08:15:41 | kiosk.offline |
Facilities desk | 503 Retry in 5 s |
| 08:15:40 | kiosk.offline |
Facilities desk | 503 Retry in 1 s |
Retries at 1 s, 5 s, 30 s, 5 min and 30 min. Every attempt stays in the delivery log, and a failed delivery can be sent again.
Events and information pages change the same way.
What’s on and the pages visitors keep asking about are live content too. They change without a map release, and events are also published as an iCalendar feed for calendars and signage players.
Events
A picture, a place, times and a Take me there button. Set an event to repeat and it does.
Information pages
Plain-text pages with simple formatting, in the order you choose.
Questions facilities and safety teams ask
If your fire safety officer asks something we have not answered here, send it to us.
Can digital wayfinding replace our evacuation signs and alarms?
No. DigiMaps emergency mode supplements, never replaces, your approved signage, alarms, staff and procedures. It puts your message on every screen in every venue language and, where your exit data allows, shows a route to the nearest reachable exit. It is not a certified life-safety or evacuation system.
How quickly does a closure reach the kiosks?
Within seconds. Closures, notices and emergencies travel over a live channel to every kiosk, phone and signage screen, without publishing a new map. A visitor already following a route is re-routed and told why.
What does “Show me the way out” do if our map has no exit data?
The emergency message still appears on every screen, but exit guidance needs approved exit data on the map. If no exit can be reached on the walking network, the kiosk says plainly that no route can be shown. DigiMaps never invents an exit to fill a gap.
Who can post closures or start an emergency broadcast?
Studio roles decide who can post live content, venue by venue, and live posting can be granted per venue. Every post, publish, end and duplicate is written to an append-only audit log. Only an operator can end an emergency; visitors can shrink the message to a bar but cannot close it.
Can DigiMaps alert our building management or security systems?
Yes, through signed webhooks. An emergency.broadcast event fires when a broadcast goes out, and kiosk.offline and kiosk.online events report kiosks dropping off and coming back. Starting a broadcast from a fire alarm panel is not something we have built or tested, so talk to us before you plan on it.
Do notices also show on our digital signage players?
DigiMaps has a signage display page that shows live notices and the emergency takeover, plus RSS, JSON Feed and iCalendar outputs for players that read feeds. We have setup notes for common players, but no third-party player model has been verified by us yet, so we test yours on site.
See a closure and an emergency takeover live
In a 30-minute demo we close a lift, post a zoned notice and start an emergency broadcast on a sample hospital, so your facilities and safety teams see exactly what visitors would see.