Here you learn to open Showmaker, recognize the main views, understand some important terminology, then create and run your first rundown.

Opening Showmaker

First try this

Showmaker runs in a web browser. Enter the URL your administrator provided. It will look something like this:

Otherwise, launch the Mosart Web Apps Configuration Tool

• Click the desktop shortcut, or run C:\Program Files\Vizrt\MosartWebApplicationsConfiguration\MosartWebApplicationsConfiguration.exe.

• From Home, select the Showmaker card. On a multi-studio site Showmaker is grouped under Cross-studio.

Authentication

Whether you need to sign in depends on how your administrator has configured Mosart Web Apps.

• Authentication off: you reach Showmaker without signing in. This is the default.

• Authentication on: you are redirected to your organization's identity provider and sign in there. Once in, your email appears in the user avatar at the top right.

Being signed out when idle

Where authentication is on, a Showmaker session ends after a stretch with no activity. The window is thirty minutes unless your administrator has changed it, and the clock runs from your last activity at the keyboard or mouse, so nobody who is working is signed out mid-sentence.

Ninety seconds before the end, a dialog headed You will be logged out soon counts down and offers Continue session and Log out now. If the countdown runs out you get Session timeout! and a Login button.

This applies to Showmaker, the Template Editor and the Named Overlays Editor. Smart Panel, the Prompter, the Rundown Viewer and the NRCS Plugin stay signed in for as long as their page is open, because they are on-air surfaces. Your administrator can change either decision; see Server Configuration.

Roles

Your role decides what you can do. When authentication is on, Showmaker reads your role from the identity provider:

• showmaker-admin: full access to create, edit, activate and put rundowns on air.

• showmaker-viewer: read-only access to browse shows, rundowns and templates. Editing controls are hidden or disabled.

Troubleshooting

If Showmaker opens but you cannot see any shows, or the rundown table cannot reach a Viz Mosart server, the one-off configuration is still needed. See Setup and Administration of Showmaker.

Tour of the Interface

Showmaker has five views:

• Landing page: select a show and browse its rundowns or rundown templates.

• Rundown page: build and edit a single rundown.

• Rundown template page: build and edit a single rundown template.

• Show Assets page: the show's saved graphics, reached from the Assets button on the show banner.

• Show settings page: how the whole show behaves. Administrators only. See Show Settings below.

Getting back to recent work

On the rundown page, the button next to Home opens Recently edited rundowns. The panel is headed Recently edited and lists up to eight rundowns, most recently opened first, leaving out the one you already have open. Each row gives the rundown's name with its show's name, a Template tag where the entry is a rundown template, and when it was last edited. Click a row to open that rundown, switching show if it belongs to another one. Before you have opened anything else the panel reads Other rundowns you open will appear here.

The button is on the rundown and rundown template pages only, not on the landing page, the Show Assets page or the Show settings page, because those are show-level pages rather than places you switch rundowns from.

Where authentication is on the list belongs to your account and follows you to another machine; with authentication off it is kept in the browser you are using. Deleted rundowns drop out of it on their own, and a renamed rundown shows its current name.

Recent timestamps here and in the rundown library read Today at 1:03 PM or Yesterday at 1:03 PM, and anything older keeps the full date, for example Jun 10, 2026, 1:03 PM. The labels roll over on their own when the local day changes, with no reload.

Key Terms

Showmaker organizes content hierarchically. A show contains rundowns, each rundown is made of stories, and each story holds the items, notes and content that go on air.

Show Settings

Everything that decides how a whole show behaves is on a page of its own, Show settings, rather than in the show dialog. Open it with the settings glyph in the top bar, or press P. The button is in the top bar of the landing page, the rundown page and the Show Assets page, and it appears only for administrators, and only once a show is selected.

The page is headed Show settings with the show's name beside it, and has five sections:

• DEFAULT OPTION FOR NEW RUNDOWNS: Blank rundown or Auto-select template. Auto-select stays unavailable until the show has at least one rundown template, and the page says so with a link to the Templates tab. Choosing it reveals Set default template.

• Auto-calculate planned duration from script, the setting step 5 of the walk-through below depends on, together with the show's Reading-speed presets. A show may hold up to four presets.

• Auto-calculate story duration, and which item types count toward the total.

• Story properties: the properties this show offers its stories, and the values each one allows. A value can be given a colour, and every story carrying that value then shows a coloured chip in the story list.

• Automatically delete old rundowns: off for every show until an administrator turns it on, so it changes nothing for a show you have just created.

There is no Save or Cancel. Changes save as you make them, and the top bar reports the state.

Back, the left arrow at the top left or the shortcut B, returns you to wherever you opened the page from, and to the show library when you opened it directly by address. A separate Home button sits beside it only when Back would take you somewhere other than the library, so the two are never offered for the same trip. If the rundown or template you came from was deleted while you had the page open, Back stops travelling and says so, and offers a way back to the library.

Your First Rundown

A short walk-through that introduces the core concepts. It assumes Showmaker is connected to a working Viz Mosart system, as described in Setup and Administration of Showmaker.

1. Create a show. On the landing page click New show, which is its own button in the top row of the show banner and has the shortcut S. Give it the title My first show, choose a Studio, and create it. Choosing a studio matters for steps 6 and 7, because the on-air controls stay disabled while a rundown has no studio.

2. Create a rundown. With the show open, create a new rundown, title it Demo, and set a planned duration of 10 minutes. Creating it takes you to the rundown page.

3. Name the first story. A story already exists. Click Untitled and rename it Intro.

4. Add an automation item. From the assets panel on the right, open the Viz Mosart templates if they are not already showing, then drag a template onto the story. Alternatively, select the template and click ADD TO STORY.

5. Add a script. Click the script area on the item and type a line or two. If your show has script timing turned on, the item's planned duration is calculated from the reading speed as you type.

6. Sync it with Viz Mosart. Turn on Active for the rundown. It is now live-synced, so it appears in the Viz Mosart UI and every edit you make is reflected there immediately.

7. Offer it to the operator. Turn on Ready to air. The rundown appears in the Ready to Air rundown listing in Viz Mosart, where the operator can take it on air.

You have now built and aired your first Showmaker rundown. To go deeper into any step, see Working with Showmaker.

Getting Help

The ? icon in the top-right corner of every page opens the help menu.