A waiting room TV screen gives the people waiting something calm to watch, a few notices that take turns, the time and the weather, and a QR code to check in from their seat instead of lining up at the desk. You set it up from your phone, and the TV only has to open a web page.
The questions the desk answers all day, where the water is, how long the wait is, whether there's wifi, end up on the wall, and the room feels looked after while nobody is free to look after it.
Everyone sitting there can read the screen, and its address opens the board for anyone who has it. So put on it only what the whole room may see. Never a patient's or a client's name, an appointment time or the reason for a visit: call people from the desk.
Something calm to watch
A video tile plays a YouTube video or a playlist across its part of the screen, always muted, so the room stays quiet. The tile suggests a few calm ones to start from, fireplace, snowfall, aquarium, rain on a window and beach, or paste any video you like. It plays on by itself all day, and a player that stalls is started again without anyone noticing.
Notices that take turns
Write a few notices in an announcement tile with a blank line between each, set "Show it" to "Rotate", and they take turns, each for as long as you say: how to check in, where the water is, that the parking validates at the desk. One notice can stand out and light the tile while it is up, for the thing nobody should miss.
A line to read that changes
Add a Something to read tile and the board offers a new line on the clock, every hour or as often as you choose: a quote from a book, a poem or a letter old enough to belong to everyone, with who wrote it, a kind word, or what happened on this day from Wikipedia. Every TV showing the board changes at the same moment. It is on the free plan.
The time and the weather
A clock and the weather for your town are the two things people look up from their phones for. The weather shows now and the next few hours or days, and when the US weather service sends a warning for the place, it shows across the tile, so nobody walks out into a storm they didn't know about.
A code to check in
Point a QR code tile at your check-in or booking page, give it a title like "Check in", and people check in from their chair. The site it opens is printed under the code, so nobody scans it blind, and the same tile can point at a review page or a form instead.
When you're running behind
"We're running 20 minutes behind." Put up an alert from your phone, a line of up to 140 characters, and it runs across the bottom of the board, or over the whole of it, for 15 minutes, an hour or until you take it down. It reaches the screen without anyone touching the layout, and comes down by itself when its time is up. People who know how long they'll wait ask the desk a good deal less.
Only while you're open
Set the board's hours to your opening hours, and outside them the screen goes near-black with only a dim clock, rather than lighting an empty room all night. Left on all day, the layout drifts a fraction every few minutes so nothing burns into the panel.
Your logo
A picture of your own is on the free plan: your logo, or a poster for this month's clinic. On Pro your logo sits on the board itself, your own color runs through it, and our name comes off it.
A board worth copying
Pick "Waiting room" when you make the board. The video takes the top left with the notices under it, and on the right your logo sits over the clock and the weather, with the check-in code along the bottom. That is six tiles. On a screen turned on its side the logo leads, then the video and the notices, the clock and the weather side by side, and the code at the bottom.
For a counter where people order rather than wait, the menu board guide has the menu and the customer wifi, and the office guide covers the guest wifi at a front desk. The layouts guide has every starting point.