Your first event

Spring Vendor Showcase 2026 runs March 12-14 at the Riverbend Convention Center. Time to put that in DisplaySync so Lakeshore AV can start claiming signs against it.

Events are the unit of work in DisplaySync — every sign belongs to one event, and most of what you do (claiming, monitoring, sending commands) happens inside an event's context.

Where to start

From the dashboard, go to Events in the left sidebar, then click the New Event button (top-right of the events list).

If you don't see Events at all, you're not in any organization — go back and finish Account setup first.

Required fields

The new-event form has four required fields, marked with an asterisk:

Event Name — what you'll see it called everywhere. For Lakeshore: "Spring Vendor Showcase 2026".
Timezone — the venue's timezone. Pre-filled from the device you're creating the event on, since events are usually created on site. For Lakeshore: America/Vancouver.
Start Date — the first day of the event.
End Date — the last day of the event (same as start date for one-day events).

Venue is optional but worth filling in — free-form text, useful when you're managing multiple concurrent events at different locations. For Lakeshore: "Riverbend Convention Center".

There's no "save draft" — once you submit the form, the event exists in upcoming state.

About the timezone

The timezone is the one field that isn't just record-keeping. It's the authority two other things run on:

Signs show times in this zone. Kiosk hardware loses time — a dead clock battery or a venue with no time server leaves a sign hours out. A sign at this event renders content in the event's timezone regardless of what its own operating system believes. If your content shows a session schedule or a countdown, this is what keeps it right. See Clock and displayed time.
Scheduled refreshes fire in this zone. A standing "refresh every wall at 07:00" runs at 07:00 at the venue, not wherever the person who set it up happens to be. See Bulk actions → Scheduled.

The default is the timezone of whatever device you're on. If you're creating the event from head office for a venue three zones away, change it — that's the one case where the default is wrong.

Editing an event requires the timezone too. If you're opening an older event that predates the field, the form asks you to pick one explicitly rather than guessing from your device.

Event start and end dates are calendar dates. When you set the start date to "March 12, 2026", you'll see "March 12, 2026" displayed everywhere — the dashboard, the mobile app, and your team members in any time zone — without any timezone shift. The date you typed is the date everyone sees.

Other timestamps in DisplaySync — heartbeat times, audit-log entries, "X seconds ago" relative times — are moments in time, so those do render in your local time zone. Only event start and end dates use the calendar-date treatment.

This matters because event teams often span time zones. The Lakeshore AV founder might enter the dates from Vancouver while a tech in Toronto reads them — both see "March 12" without arithmetic.

The event's Timezone field doesn't change how dates are displayed — start and end dates stay calendar dates in every zone, as above. It does decide two things: what time zone signs and scheduled refreshes use (above), and what time zone governs the status lifecycle below. "Today," for deciding the event's status, means today in the event's timezone — an event with no timezone set is evaluated in UTC.

Event status lifecycle

An event moves through four states automatically:

upcoming — created, but the start date hasn't arrived yet
active — today, in the event's timezone, is on or between the start and end dates — through the end of the last day
completed — the last day has ended in the event's timezone
archived — set by you, or set automatically about 24 hours after the last day ends (on by default — see below)

The first three transitions happen on their own based on dates.

Auto-archive. By default, an event archives itself about 24 hours after its last day ends, in the event's timezone — you don't have to remember to do it. It releases every sign still linked to the event (each shows a claim code, ready to link to the next event) but keeps all the event's data, and you can unarchive at any time. A checkbox on the event form, Automatically archive this event when it ends, controls this per event — on by default, editable when you create or edit the event, and from the event detail page. Your org's event subscribers get an Event archived automatically notification and email when it fires. Need an event to stay live past its listed end date? Push the end date out rather than fighting the checkbox — auto-archive follows the dates. Un-archiving an event that already auto-archived turns this checkbox off for it, so it won't immediately try to archive itself again.

One billing consequence to know: sign-day metering does not wait for the start date. A sign counts for any day it's linked to the event and online at some point that day, in the event's timezone. Pre-created sign records cost nothing, but linking does: a kiosk has to be online to link, so the day you link it counts, and so does every later day it's powered on. A linked sign that stays powered off costs nothing. Lakeshore can pre-create all 40 sign records for Spring Vendor Showcase in February, then link and power the hardware the day before doors — the first billed day. If they link in February instead, each sign bills that one February day, then nothing until it's powered on again. See Pricing and billing for the full sign-day model.

Pre-event vs. during-event at a glance

The work you do in an event splits cleanly along the upcoming-vs-active boundary.

Pre-event (event in upcoming):

Pre-create Sign records for known booth positions
Set assigned URLs for each sign so they display content the moment they come online
Invite the team and assign per-event roles
Test the venue network from a single test sign

During-event (event in active):

Claim or link the remaining signs as kiosks come up at the venue
Monitor sign health from the dashboard or mobile app
Send remote commands (refresh, reboot) when a sign misbehaves
Watch the notification feed for offline alerts (Notifications)

The dashboard's event detail page is where you'll spend most of an active event. See Dashboard tour for the layout.

What's next

Event created — time to put a kiosk on the wall: Claim your first sign.