Most digital signage problems don't start on the screens. They start in the back office, when too many people have access to the same content manager and nobody is quite sure who pushed what live. A wrong logo on a lobby screen, an outdated promo running for three days, a meeting room display showing last quarter's numbers during a client visit. These small mistakes happen more often than teams admit, and they almost always trace back to one issue: everyone working inside the CMS has the same level of access.
According to research on workplace communication, around 60% of internal communication efforts fail, and a big part of the reason is unclear ownership and approval processes. When your digital signage software treats a marketing manager and an intern the same way, you end up either locking everything down (slow) or opening everything up (risky). Neither works for a company running screens across multiple departments, locations, or countries.
This is exactly what the latest Castit update is built to solve. We've added role-based permissions and a draft and publish workflow inside the Castit CMS, so teams can split responsibilities, protect what goes live, and still keep things moving fast.
What's New in Castit: A Quick Overview
Castit now supports three kinds of users, each with a clearly defined level of access:
- Admin. Runs the account. Sees everything across all departments, manages users, and can always publish content directly to screens.
- Member. Works within their assigned department. Can edit the screens they're responsible for, but their changes are saved as drafts that need approval.
- Member with publish rights (Moderator). Same scope as a regular member, but their edits go live immediately. This is set with a simple moderator checkbox in the user settings.
On top of these roles, admins can now organize screens into departments and turn on a draft and publish workflow for the whole organization. Both features are optional and can be switched on or off depending on how your team operates.
Where to Find It: Permissions and Workflow Settings
Everything related to the new permissions setup lives in the Settings area on the left side menu, under the Permissions and workflow tab. This is where admins decide how their organization works inside the CMS.
There are two main controls here, and they work independently of each other.
Organize Screens into Departments
The first toggle lets you group screens by team, location, or function. Once turned on, members only see the screens that belong to the departments they're part of. Admins and moderators still see every screen across the whole account, with a small department label on each one so it's easy to keep track of where things sit.
When you enable departments for the first time, all your existing screens are automatically grouped under a default department. From there you can rename it, create new departments, and assign screens and members according to how your organization actually works. A retail company might split things by region. A corporate office might split by floor or function: HR, marketing, reception, meeting rooms. A school might do it by building.
If you turn the toggle off later, all screens become visible to everyone again. Departments are hidden but not deleted, so you can switch them back on at any point without losing your structure.
Require Approval Before Changes Go Live
The second toggle activates the draft and publish workflow. With this turned on, members without publishing rights save their work as drafts instead of pushing changes straight to the players. The screens keep showing whatever is currently live until someone with publishing rights opens the draft, reviews it, and either publishes or discards it.
Admins decide who has publishing rights from the Users tab using a simple yes or no toggle. This means you can have a junior team member preparing daily content updates while a senior colleague does a quick review before anything reaches the actual digital signage display.
When this option is turned off, every edit goes live immediately and any pending drafts are discarded with a warning beforehand.
Managing Users or Members in Castit
User management has moved to its own home. On the left side menu, below Settings, you'll find a new Account section with three items: Account (general information about your account, moved from Settings), Members, and Departments. The Members tab is where you see and control who works inside your account.
For each user, you'll see their name, email address, role, the departments they belong to, whether they can publish, when they were created, and their latest activity. The "can publish" toggle is right there in the row, so promoting someone from member to moderator takes one click. Edit and delete buttons sit at the end of each row for quick adjustments.
To bring someone new into the account, click Add new user below the list. You enter their first and last name, email address, tick the moderator checkbox if they should have publishing rights, and save. They get access immediately.
The Departments Tab
Inside the same Account section on the left side menu, you'll find the Departments tab. This is where you fine-tune the actual structure once departments are turned on.
By default, every screen lands in the default department. From the Departments tab, you'll see each department listed with its name, the number of screens inside it, and the number of members assigned to it. Edit and delete buttons next to each one let you adjust things on the fly.
When you click into a specific department, you get two tabs:
- Assign members. A list of all members in your account. You select the ones who belong to this department and decide whether each can publish. Save changes and you're done.
- Screens. A list of all screens, where you pick the ones that belong to this department.
Worth noting: a screen can only be in one department at a time. This keeps ownership clean and avoids the kind of overlap where two teams both think they're in charge of the same digital signage screen.
What Changes in the Screens Section
In the Screens section on the left side menu, your screens now carry a couple of new visual cues alongside the familiar tags and online/offline status.
The first is a department label, showing which department the screen belongs to. The second is a draft label, which appears whenever a screen has unpublished changes waiting for review. Both labels make it easy to scan a long list of screens and immediately see what's where and what needs attention.
Click into an individual screen with pending changes, and you'll see a clear note saying the screen has unpublished changes, along with two buttons: Publish and Discard draft. No hunting around, no guessing whether your edit went through.
Why This Matters for Digital Signage Teams
The bigger an organization gets, the messier digital signage content management becomes. A growing company might start with one person handling all the screens, but within a year you've got marketing pushing campaigns, HR updating employee comms, reception managing visitor screens, and local managers running content in different offices. Without proper digital signage content permissions management, every change is a potential mistake.
Here's what the new setup gives you:
- Cleaner ownership. Members focus on the screens they actually care about. No noise, no clutter, no accidentally editing a display in another office.
- A safety net for live content. The draft and publish workflow means nothing reaches the screen until someone with the right authority gives it a green light. Typos, broken layouts, and outdated information get caught before your audience sees them.
- Speed without chaos. Trusted team members keep their direct publishing rights, so urgent updates don't get stuck waiting for approval. The workflow scales with how much oversight you actually need.
- Clear accountability. When something does go wrong, you know who edited what and who approved it. That kind of visibility is hard to overstate when you're running a digital signage system across multiple locations.
- Room to grow. Whether you have five screens or five hundred, the same structure works. You can start simple and add departments and approval steps as your team expands.
For organizations using cloud-based digital signage, this kind of structure is usually missing or only available on enterprise plans. We've built it directly into Castit because we think any team running screens, big or small, deserves a CMS that respects how real organizations work.
Try It in Your Castit Account
If you're already using Castit, the new permissions and draft workflow are available now. Open the CMS, head to Settings, and explore the Permissions and workflow tab. You can switch the features on whenever your team is ready, and switch them off if you change your mind.
If you're new to Castit and looking for a digital signage platform that handles multiple users and locations without the usual headaches, we're happy to walk you through it. Book a demo or get in touch, and we'll show you how the new setup works for your specific case.