# Proof-of-play reports: what played, when and where > See what your screens really played: plays per day and per hour, top content and plays per screen. How ScreenTinker's proof-of-play Reports page works. Source: https://screentinker.com/guides/digital-signage-proof-of-play-reports ## Proof-of-play reports: what played, when and where Every time a screen plays an item, it tells the server. The Reports page adds those plays up, so you can see what your screens really showed: how often each slide or video played, on which screen, on which days and at what time of day. That is proof of play, the record an advertiser or a head office asks for. This guide covers opening the report, choosing a screen and dates, reading each part of the page, what counts as a play, and how to leave some items out of the report. ### Before you start - **Reports is in Advanced view.** New accounts start in Simple view, which has no menu link to it. Switch with the **Simple / Advanced** buttons at the top of the menu. - **Everyone in the workspace can open it**, Viewers included. It only shows numbers; nothing on the page changes your screens. - **It shows the workspace you are in.** If you have several workspaces, switch workspace to see another one's report. Plays stay with the workspace a screen was in when it played them, so moving a screen to another workspace does not take its history with it. ### Open Reports In the sidebar, under **Insights**, choose **Reports**. The report for the last 30 days, for all your screens, loads by itself. Thirty days of a café with three screens. The Export CSV button is at the top right. ### Choose a screen and dates - **Device**: keep **All Devices**, or pick one screen from the list. - **Start Date** and **End Date**: the report includes the whole of both days. - Press **Load Report**. The page does not update until you do. One screen on its own: the pastry case plays two items, from 7 am to early afternoon. ### Read the report Five cards sit at the top: - **Total Plays**: how many times items were played. - **Total Hours**: all those plays added together, in hours. - **Unique Content**: how many different items played. - **Active Devices**: how many screens played at least one item in these dates. - **Avg Duration**: how long one play lasted on average. An image set to 10 seconds shows 10s. Then two charts. **Plays per Day** has a bar for each day with plays. A day when nothing played has no bar at all, so look at the dates under the bars if you are checking for a gap. **Plays by Hour** shows the time of day, from 12a (midnight) to 11p. Hold the pointer over a bar to see its exact number. Days and hours are in **each screen's own time zone**, the one the device reports. So 9a means 9 in the morning where the screen is, even if you are somewhere else. Top Content shows what played most; By Device shows which screens played it. Lower down, two tables: - **Top Content**: each item with its **Plays** and **Total Hours**, the most played first. It lists up to 50 items. An item shows the name it had when it played. - **By Device**: the same for each screen. If you use web pages set to **Interactive (walk-up kiosk)** on a touchscreen, an **Interactive sessions** part appears at the bottom: how many visitor **Sessions** there were, their **Average length**, **Pages per session**, and a table for each web page. It only appears when there were sessions in your dates. ### What counts as a play - Each time an item starts on a screen, that is one play. When it ends, its length is recorded. - If a screen loses its internet connection, the ScreenTinker web player and the apps for Android and Fire TV, Samsung (Tizen), Raspberry Pi and Windows keep a list of what they played and send it when they reconnect. Those plays appear at the time they really happened. - A screen that is switched off plays nothing, so it adds nothing. A report with fewer plays than usual is often a screen that was off or offline. ### Leave some items out of the report You may not want everything counted, for example a holding slide or your own logo. You can switch logging off item by item, in the playlist: - Open the playlist in **Playlists**. - Tick the box on each item you want to leave out. - In the bar above the items, press **Don't log**. - Press **Publish**. Tick items, then Log plays or Don't log. To count them again, tick them and press **Log plays**, then **Publish**. Plays from before the change stay in your reports. Remember to Publish Like every playlist change, **Don't log** and **Log plays** are saved as a draft. Screens keep logging the old way until you press **Publish**. ### Export CSV The **Export CSV** button downloads every play in your dates as a spreadsheet file, `proof-of-play.csv`, one row per play, with the Device, Content, Started, Ended, Duration (sec) and Completed columns. Times in the file are in UTC. ### How far back you can look On screentinker.com each play is kept in full for 7 days; on your own server the default is 90 days. After that, plays are kept as hourly totals, so the charts and tables still work for older dates: the numbers are the same, only the single-play detail is gone. On a self-hosted server The 90 days is the `PLAY_LOG_RETENTION_DAYS` setting; older plays are kept as hourly totals whatever you set it to. If you run several connected servers, a workspace copied to a second server shows "Playback history lives on the primary server": open Reports on the main server instead. A server with connected client servers also shows a **Screen uptime by client** part at the top of the page. ### FAQ #### A screen is missing from By Device. It played nothing in those dates. Check that it was switched on and online (on **Screens**), that it has a published playlist, and that its items are not all set to **Don't log**. #### The hours look wrong for one screen. Hours are in the screen's own time zone, which comes from the device's settings. If a screen's clock or time zone is wrong, its plays land in the wrong hours. Fix the time zone on the device itself. #### Can I see a report for a group of screens? The **Device** list has **All Devices** or one screen at a time. **By Device** shows every screen side by side. ### Try it on your own screens Start a 14-day Pro trial on hosted ScreenTinker: up to 15 screens, every feature, no credit card. [Start your free trial](https://screentinker.com/app#/login) Or host it yourself, free and open source: [self-hosting guide](https://screentinker.com/guides/self-hosted-digital-signage.html) · [GitHub](https://github.com/screentinker/screentinker) ### Related guides - [Content and playlists](https://screentinker.com/guides/digital-signage-content-playlists.html) - [Widgets](https://screentinker.com/guides/digital-signage-widgets.html) - [Users and roles](https://screentinker.com/guides/digital-signage-users-roles.html) - [Troubleshooting](https://screentinker.com/guides/digital-signage-troubleshooting.html) - [All guides](https://screentinker.com/guides/)