How to Show Weather-Based Recommendations

Completion Time: 45 minutes

This guide shows you how to build a Content that switches to the right offer when the weather changes: umbrellas and indoor activities when it rains, sunscreen and outdoor tours when it is sunny, hot drinks and winter gear when it snows.

The Content does not need a Playlist or a Schedule. A Weather datasource supplies the current condition, and Datasource events on the Content jump to the matching page whenever that condition changes.

How it works

Part	What it does
Weather datasource	Fetches the current condition for a location, as a text (Cloudy) and a code (26)
Override datasource (optional)	An internal datasource with the same field, so you can change the condition by hand during a demo or a test
Datasource events	Content-wide rules: when the condition matches X, jump to page Y
Pages	One page per offer, plus a Default page for anything else

Upsell ideas by condition:

Condition	Upsell idea
Showers, rain, cloudy	Umbrellas, raincoats, indoor activities
Sunny, fair	Outdoor activities, sunscreen
Snow	Winter gear, hot drinks

Step 1: Create the Weather datasource

1. Go to Datasources and click Add external datasource.
2. Choose the Weather type.
3. Under Locations, click Add first location and choose Add by city (or Add by geo position for coordinates).
4. Fill in City / Zip code and pick the Country code. Both are required. Optionally, set a Display name.
5. Open Advanced settings > Refresh settings. Set Refresh type to Simple interval and Refresh interval (seconds) to 600–900 (10–15 minutes).
6. Save.

Change the refresh interval

A new datasource refreshes once a day (86400 seconds) by default. With that setting, the Content can show a sunny offer all afternoon in the rain.

Refreshing more often than every 10–15 minutes does not help. Wallboard's weather service holds each location's data for up to 30 minutes before it asks the provider again. Your server may also enforce a Minimum datasource refresh time (seconds).

The current condition is in the datasource at:

query > results > channel > [location] > item > condition > text   (for example "Cloudy")
query > results > channel > [location] > item > condition > code   (for example "26")

channel is a list with one entry per location, in the order you added them.

Learn more: Weather datasource

Step 2: Create an override datasource for demos (optional)

Real weather changes slowly. To show the switching live, or to test every page before go-live, create an internal datasource whose value you can change by hand:

1. Go to Datasources and click Add internal datasource.
2. Set Structure type to Table.
3. Create one table with two columns and one row:

{
  "Single Weather": {
    "header": {
      "Code": "number",
      "Condition": "string"
    },
    "rows": [
      { "Code": 26, "Condition": "Cloudy" }
    ],
    "connectors": {}
  }
}

❓ Confirm how to paste this JSON in the new datasource editor. The old Edit JSON button exists only in the legacy editor; you can also add the table, columns and row by hand.

During the demo, you bind the Datasource events to this table instead of the Weather datasource (Step 4). For production, bind them to the Weather datasource.

Look up the codes

You can also import the full code list (Step 3) as a second table, so the codes are at hand while you set up the events.

Step 3: Decide what to match on: text or code

Each condition comes as a text and as a code. Both work.

Match on	Good for	Watch out for
Text (condition > text)	Demos: easy to read and to type	Spelling and capitals must match exactly when you use regular expressions (see Step 4)
Code (condition > code)	Production: one number per condition, no spelling issues	You need the code table below

Weather codes returned by the Weather datasource:

Code	Text	Code	Text
0	Tornado	24	Windy
1	Tropical storm	25	Cold
2	Hurricane	26	Cloudy
3	Severe thunderstorms	27	Mostly cloudy
4	Thunderstorms	28	Mostly cloudy
5	Mixed rain and snow	29	Partly cloudy
6	Mixed rain and sleet	30	Partly cloudy
7	Mixed snow and sleet	31	Clear
8	Freezing drizzle	32	Sunny
9	Drizzle	33	Fair
10	Freezing rain	34	Fair
11	Showers	35	Mixed rain and hail
12	Rain	36	Hot
13	Snow flurries	37	Isolated thunderstorms
14	Light snow showers	38	Scattered thunderstorms
15	Blowing snow	39	Scattered showers
16	Snow	40	Heavy rain
17	Hail	41	Scattered snow showers
18	Sleet	42	Heavy snow
19	Dust	43	Blizzard
20	Foggy	44	Not available
21	Haze	45	Scattered showers
22	Smoky	46	Scattered snow showers
23	Blustery	47	Scattered thundershowers

Where the codes come from

Wallboard's weather service gets its data from more than one weather provider and translates each provider's conditions into this one list. Two things follow from that:

• Some codes never appear. Codes 1, 2, 6, 7, 8, 15, 23, 37, 38 and 41 are in the list but are not produced by any current provider. Keep them in your rules if you like; they will simply never match.
• The same sky can get a different code. Which provider serves a location can change from one refresh to the next. For example, a lightly clouded sky can come back as 34 Fair or 30 Partly cloudy, and a clear night can come back as 32 Sunny. Group conditions generously rather than relying on one exact code.

Step 4: Add the Datasource events

1. Open the Content in the Content Editor and click the background, so that no Widget is selected.
2. In the External events section, click Edit datasource events.
3. Stay on the Content wide events tab, so the rules work from every page.
4. Add one event per offer page. For each event:
   • Bound value: select the Weather datasource, then query > results > channel > the first location > item > condition > code (or text). For the demo, select the override datasource's Code (or Condition) column instead.
   • Evaluation type: regular expression (match), with the pattern from the table below.
   • Action: Jump to, with the target page.
5. Add one more event for the Default page, with regular expression (no match).
6. Click Save.

❓ Confirm how the data picker shows the channel list (the first location as 0 or by name) on a screenshot.

Patterns by code (recommended)

Page	Evaluation type	Pattern
Rain	regular expression (match)	^(3|4|6|8|9|10|11|12|17|26|27|28|35|37|38|39|40|45|47)$
Snow	regular expression (match)	^(5|7|13|14|15|16|18|41|42|43|46)$
Sunny	regular expression (match)	^(29|30|31|32|33|34|36)$
Default	regular expression (no match)	all of the codes above in one pattern

These groups are an example: the Rain page also takes cloudy skies, as in the upsell table above. Move codes between groups to fit your offers, but keep each code in one group only. If two content-wide events match the same value, both jump. ❓ Which jump wins was not checked; avoid the overlap.

The Default pattern is every code from the other three rows, so anything else (fog, wind, 44 Not available) lands on the Default page:

^(3|4|5|6|7|8|9|10|11|12|13|14|15|16|17|18|26|27|28|29|30|31|32|33|34|35|36|37|38|39|40|41|42|43|45|46|47)$

Patterns by text (demos)

Page	Evaluation type	Pattern
Rain	regular expression (match)	^(Cloudy|Mostly cloudy)$|[Ss]hower|[Rr]ain|[Dd]rizzle|[Tt]hunder|Hail
Snow	regular expression (match)	[Ss]now|[Ss]leet|[Bb]lizzard
Sunny	regular expression (match)	Sunny|Fair|Clear|Hot|Partly cloudy
Default	regular expression (no match)	^(Cloudy|Mostly cloudy)$|[Ss]hower|[Rr]ain|[Dd]rizzle|[Tt]hunder|Hail|[Ss]now|[Ss]leet|[Bb]lizzard|Sunny|Fair|Clear|Hot|Partly cloudy

Regular expressions are case-sensitive

The Case sensitive switch does not apply to regular expressions; they always match capitals exactly. A pattern with Rain does not match Heavy rain or Freezing rain, and Cloudy does not match Mostly cloudy. Use [Rr]ain, [Ss]now and so on, as above, or match on the code instead.

The text patterns follow the same groups as the code patterns: cloudy and mostly cloudy go to Rain, partly cloudy goes to Sunny. Some texts contain two words from different groups, for example Mixed rain and snow or Light snow showers. With the text patterns above, they match both Rain and Snow. If that matters, match on the code.

Why not "contains"?

contains checks whether the value contains the whole text you enter. Rain does not contain Showers / Rain / Cloudy, so a grouped condition never matches. Use one contains event per word, or one regular expression (match) event per group, as above.

When the events run

• An event runs when its rule becomes true: when the datasource refreshes with a new value, or when you edit the override datasource.
• While the value keeps matching, the event does not run again, so the Content does not jump back to the same page on every refresh.
• When the value stops matching, the event is ready to run again the next time it matches.

❓ Check what the pages do between weather changes. If each page has a duration and the Content moves on to the next page, the offer changes even though the weather has not. Test on a device and, if needed, give the offer pages a duration long enough not to advance.

Learn more: Evaluation Types

Learn more: Jump To Action - Navigate Between Pages

Step 5: Test with the override datasource

1. Open the Content in preview.
2. In a second browser tab, open the override datasource.
3. Change the Code (or Condition) value and save:

Set the value to	The Content jumps to
12 / Rain	Rain page
32 / Sunny	Sunny page
16 / Snow	Snow page
20 / Foggy	Default page

When everything works, change the Bound value of each event back to the Weather datasource.

Step 6: Show the live weather on the Default page

The Default page is a good place for a Weather Widget, so viewers see the current conditions and forecast while no special offer applies.

Learn more: Weather Widget

Related articles

• Learn more: Weather datasource
• Learn more: How to Create a Content That Shows the Current Weather
• Learn more: Refresh and caching