Countdowns and progress bars

Two moments on an event day deserve a countdown: before the doors open, and before a talk starts in a room. Wunderframe has two ways to show the time left, and you can use one or both:

• A countdown shows the time as numbers: 04:59.
• A progress is a bar or a ring that fills up as the moment approaches.

Both are the same block, the Clock widget, set to show a countdown or a progress. Neither has any words of its own. “Doors open in” or “Keynote starts in” is an ordinary text block next to it, so you word, translate and style it like any other text.

1. Open the scene the screen plays before the moment: the lobby loop before the doors, the room’s welcome slide before the talk.
2. Add a Clock block from the palette, and set Shows to Countdown or Progress.
3. Tell it what to count down to: either a fixed date and time, or the name of a blank the screen fills in, like next_session_at.
4. Choose what happens when the time is up: stay at 00:00 or full, or disappear.
5. Add a text block next to it with the words you want.

For a progress, pick Bar or Ring and its fill and track colors. It fills from the start time you set, or over the last ten minutes if you set none. You can change that number.

A talk with a person on screen is a session on a stage. Until it goes live, the stage plays its usual story. Put the countdown there and aim it at the blank next_session_at. Every screen fills that blank with the start of its own stage’s next session, so one welcome slide works in every room and moves on to the next talk by itself.

Next to it, a text block such as {next_session_title} · {next_session_time} names the talk, and {next_session_speakers} the people. When the session goes live, the stage switches to the speaker. The countdown doesn’t need to hide itself. If the talk starts late, the countdown waits at 00:00 rather than jumping to the talk after.

Doors are a fixed time, so give the countdown that date and time, and set When the time is up to Disappear. Put it on the scene the lobby plays before the doors open, with a text block “Doors open in”.

To change what the lobby plays at the doors, not only hide the countdown, use a stage rule by the clock. From 18:00, for example, the lobby switches to the welcome story.

On a session’s own slide, aim the countdown at ends_at, the planned end, and give it a Label such as “Noch” or “Time left”, and a Label when the time is up such as “Überzogen”: the words change with the numbers, above them or before them. Set When the time is up to Count the overtime: at the planned end it turns into +00:01, +03:12 … and keeps counting until the session is finished. Nothing switches away by the clock; the talk ends when someone presses Finish.

Under Colors as the time runs out, give the last minutes a warning color (the last 5 minutes in orange, say) and the time up its own (red). A progress bar takes the same colors, so the bar turns with the numbers.

If your event has an agenda, the program as data, a room’s story can hold a session slot. The slot shows “Up next” before each item, “On now” during it and “Thank you” after. Inside the slot, the blanks starts_at and ends_at hold the item’s start and end, and phase_from the moment its “Up next” began. A bar from phase_from to starts_at fills exactly while “Up next” is on screen. A bar from starts_at to ends_at shows how far a talk is.

Agenda and sessions are different things. The agenda is your published program: every item, including the ones nobody presents (doors, lunch, the apéro). It feeds the agenda boards and the Up next slots. A session is how a person gets on screen live. The event builder makes both from one agenda and links them. You only need an agenda for boards and slots. A countdown to the next talk works from the sessions alone.

When an AI agent builds your event from its agenda (AI agents), it adds the event kit: ready-made scenes for session cards (Up next with a countdown, On now, Thank you), plenary items, the agenda board, the speaker intro and the presenter slide. They are ordinary scenes in your library afterwards. Restyle them, add a progress bar, or copy a countdown from them into your own scenes.

Connected agents know both widgets. Ask in your own words:

• “On the main hall’s welcome slide, add a progress bar along the bottom that fills up to the next session, with the talk’s title above it.”
• “In the lobby, count down to the doors opening at 18:00 and make it disappear then.”

The agent adds the widget and the text block. Nothing reaches the screens until you publish, if your workspace publishes by hand.

• next_session_at, next_session_title, next_session_time, next_session_speakers: on any scene a stage plays, its own next session.
• starts_at, ends_at, phase_from: inside a session slot, the agenda item on now.
• starts_at, ends_at: on a session’s own slides (the presenter slide and the speaker intro).

In the editor there is no stage yet, so a blank shows as its name, like {next_session_title}. On a screen, and in the stage preview, it shows the real value.