What's Coming
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Mobile links in Show Description. Clickable links in descriptions are valuable for giving audience members easy access to related content or interactive requests like survey forms. While we provide clickable links on show descriptions in our desktop experience, we are now enabling them in our mobile application too. When a mobile audience user clicks on a link in the show description, they will be switched to their device’s default browser to access the link, but uStudio will remain open on the Show screen so they can easily switch back.
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Mark as played/unplayed. We’ve heard your request to return this value back to our desktop and mobile experiences. Audience users can now mark an episode they may not have entirely finished as played, as well as to mark an already played episode as unplayed. This feature helps users control their personal app experience and lays a foundation for exciting upcoming features in My Library like dynamically-generated playlists. Note, when a user marks an episode as played or unplayed, the episode analytics will not change; usage analytics will continue to reflect actual consumption only.
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Easy Embed Players. We have received an overwhelmingly positive response to our recently released Easy Embeds feature for securing players in third party applications. We will be taking this one step further by offering an elevated look and feel of the player so that your embeds look as shiny and desirable as possible. With this upcoming release, the player will also provide a link back to your full streaming application experience so your users can discover and stream new content. Remember, for highly specific or custom organizational needs, our platform features are always available for your team to DIY your players.
To start leveraging SharePoint embeds today, book a 15-minute appointment with uStudio’s deployment and support team and an IT administrator from your organization.
- Email sender name and reply-to address. Soon you will have the chance to configure uStudio system-generated emails to customize the Sender Name and Reply-to Email Address. Utilizing this configuration will help your team recognize your emails as internal, increasing their perceived trustworthiness. You will also have the added benefit of receiving replies to uStudio emails, helping you keep your finger on the pulse of your audience.
What's New
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Microsoft Search. We have released Version 2 of our Microsoft and Sharepoint search feature which ensures that users can find podcasts even when they aren’t in the podcast application. It looks amazing when your podcasts show up in your enterprise search. It’s fast and easy to configure. Reply to this email to get started.
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Smarter in-app search. We’ve enhanced content discovery in your mobile and desktop streaming apps by indexing more metadata. Now the episode description in addition to the name is indexed and searched so that your returned results are better than ever. Results will also be ranked in order of relevance to the search term.
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Limiting Administration Access. The most successful programs allow many administrators to upload and publish content in uStudio’s management console. To help manage the difference between “program administrators” and “content managers,” uStudio now has the ability to support access control of the Administration tab in the management console. Specifically, uStudio program administrators can limit who can navigate to the program-level dashboard, feedback, and application management functions around users, groups, and categories.
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Content engagement graphs. One of the most powerful media analytics that help you drive decisions is how long your audience engages with a piece of your audio or video. Did you know that this data is provided for each episode in your content management console? Not only have we made this data visualization better by replacing bars with lines, but we have also increased the ease of accessing this data. Check it out.
- Infrastructure Upgrades. Application infrastructure updates have been rolled out over the past month. While these changes aren’t visible to your audience users, these infrastructure upgrades allow us to increase the pace of feature development and ensure you continue to experience the application stability you are accustomed to.
What's Changed
We wanted to share an update on a feature we have chosen to rethink. Last month, we discussed reengineering our links to offer fancy, unfurled descriptions the way a YouTube or external podcast link works. Along the path of feature development, our engineers shared with us that industry-standard and accepted unfurling practices expose episode information on public Internet servers, potentially discoverable by bad actors. That security risk felt out of balance with our brand and the value of the feature. We know that content promotion is critical for success and adoption. We’re continuing to explore where we can invest here to bring the most value to your programs.
