Stand-ins

Available now Most publishers evaluating SOM have no vendors on the bus yet,

and their vendors wait to see whether the publisher cares. A stand-in is a reference system run by RND that plays one role in a house rehearsal, so a brand-new house can rehearse "a breaking story" and see every step answered before any vendor has connected.

The stand-ins

Stand-in	Producer	What it does in a rehearsal
Newsroom system	sombus-standin-ncs	Owns the story: publishes every story.context snapshot the workflow gives the newsroom system
Web CMS	sombus-standin-cms	Receives story snapshots, tellings and skill warnings
Graphics	sombus-standin-graphics	Books and withdraws lower thirds (link.committed, link.withdrawn)
Playout	sombus-standin-playout	Airs cleared links: telling.started, telling.ended
Media store	sombus-standin-mam	Announces arriving media (delivery.media_available) and files tip-line clips
Skill executor	sombus-standin-skill	Publishes the workflow's scripted skill.warning.raised messages. It runs no skill, so your house's configured instances and values play no part, and it never edits a story

Each stand-in publishes only what that system would be granted in a house. The graphics stand-in, for example, can book a lower third but never clear its gate, so that step of the standards-gate workflow is refused by the bus, as the workflow says.

The standards desk and automation have no stand-in: the rehearsal reads their parts itself.

Turn them on

On the Rehearsal page, under Who plays each part, an admin or owner turns each stand-in on or off. The change is recorded in your workspace's audit log. A stand-in that is on plays its part in every rehearsal where no connection of yours holds its role.

They step aside

When you cast one of your house's connections in a role (a vendor's newsroom system, say), that role's stand-in steps aside by itself, and your audit log records it. From the next rehearsal, that step is your vendor's: it is cued, and you see its connection's counts. If the connection ends, or you take it out of the cast, the stand-in plays the part again. So the rehearsal keeps working as your house fills up.

What they are, and aren't

• Clearly labelled. Everywhere they appear (the Rehearsal page, your story timeline, your vendors' consumers) they carry their own producer id, sombus-standin-<role>, and system id.
• Synthetic content only. They publish the workflow's own synthetic stories, never anything else.
• Only during a rehearsal. They live inside the rehearsal, not in your house: they hold no queue, no credential and no subscription, answer only the rehearsal's script, and nothing a vendor sends can make them publish.
• House traffic. Their accepted messages are delivered on your house's bus, reach your vendors' consumers whose filters match, and are in your story timeline. They count against no vendor's allowance.
• Audited and rate-limited with the rehearsal: 20 rehearsals per house per day.