blog.frederique.harmsze.nl my world of work and user experiences

March 31, 2016

Office 365 Video Portal – It is really getting there

Filed under: Office365 — Tags: — frederique @ 23:51

The standard Video portal offered by Office 365 has grown a lot over the last year. It still has some limitations, but the worst problems have been solved. By now, I can recommend it for real.

A year ago, I discussed the Office 365 Video Portal in a previous blog post. At that time, I concluded that it was interesting and somewhat usable, but I could not really recommend it to innocent users yet. The Minimum Viable Product was too minimal for that. But now we are getting somewhere! See also What’s new – Office 365 video.

The Office 365 Video portal as it looks today.

The Office 365 Video portal as it looks today.

Easier to add videos as a contributor

Is was never difficult to upload a video, if you had permission. But now we can do a lot more than just upload a video.

  • Central upload button
    you no longer have to go to a specific channel first, before you can click Upload. You can use the central Upload button and then specify where the video should go.

    Click the central Upload button and then select the channel.

    Click the central Upload button and then select the channel.

  • Upload multiple videos and follow their progress
    When you drag & drop multiple videos into the upload area, the system give you a progress indicator per video. While you wait for the video files to be uploaded, you can add descriptions and edit the titles.

    Follow the progress of multiple video files that are uploaded, and tweak the titles and descriptions while you wait.

    Follow the progress of multiple video files that are uploaded, and tweak the titles and descriptions while you wait.

  • Select a custom thumbnail
    Progress in the domain of the thumbnail is huge for me. At first, the Lync/Skype for Business recordings I uploaded all had a blank screen as a thumbnail. Terrible. Then the tool automatically selected an image from further down the recording, so that I least we saw something. And now we can either choose form a set of proposed screen captures, or even upload our own image as a thumbnail.

    Choose a screen capture as a thumbnail or upload your own image.

    Choose a screen capture as a thumbnail or upload your own image.

  • Add closed captioning
    Ok, it is not easy to create closed captioning or subtitles for a video. But if you are an advanced video maker and you have created a .vtt file for that, it is easy to upload it with the video.

    Manage menu for a video, including the option to add subtitles

    Manage menu for a video, including the option to add subtitles

Easier to handle videos as a consumer

Of course it is still easy to watch a video. But now you can also tell your colleagues and discuss it directly from the video:

  • E-mail a link to a colleague.
    You could e-mail the link to anyone; you have to make sure yourself that the person to whom you are sending the e-mail can actually view the video.

    The e-mail generated from the E-mail button.

    The e-mail generated from the E-mail button.

  • Comment on the video in Yammer.
    The channel owner can specify the Yammer Group where the conversation will take place, if there is a one-on-one mapping between the channel and a Yammer Group. Or the channel owner can leave it up to the user to select the most appropriate Yammer Group. It is a pity you have to click to open the comments and you do not immediately see them below the video (like in YouTube), but it is nice to have the option to see and give comments anyway.

    Yammer comment on a video

    Yammer comment on a video

  • Download
    The channel owner can determine in the channel settings who can download the video: only owners, owners and editors, or viewers as well. Then you can download the video and watch it while you are on a train or a plane without an internet connection.

Easier to manage my video channel as an owner

I still do not have many options as an owner of a channel in the Video portal. But some crucial options have become available.

  • Permissions for contributors: Editors
    It came as a huge relief when I could give people permission to upload videos, without giving them permissions to change the entire channel as owners. We now have ‘Editors’.

    We can now distinguish between Owners, Editors and Viewers, seperately determining which of these groups can download a video.

    We can now distinguish between Owners, Editors and Viewers, seperately determining which of these groups can download a video.

  • Statistics
    Channel owners often ask us for statistics. But video contributors also ask sometimes if they can see how often their video has been viewed. And now they can! Everybody who can view a video can also see the statistics: the total number of views near the title, and below the description a graph of the daily number of views and visitors over the last 14 days and the monthly views and visitors over the last 36 months.
    The bar chart indicates how many people have watches the subsequent portions of the video. Typically, many people view the first part and then they stop watching so that less people view the later parts. Note: this chart only displays the views starting 19 February 2016, so it will not reflect reality for older videos.

    The number of views of the video daily and monthly, as well as an indication of which parts of the video were viewed.

    The number of views of the video daily and monthly, as well as an indication of which parts of the video were viewed.

Easier to add to your team site, as a site owner

You already could add thumbnails of videos stored in the Office 365 Video portal to your SharePoint Online team site in that environment. But now it has become even easier.

  • Button insert > Office 365 video
    There is an explicit button to upload an Office 365 video. This amounts to the same result as clicking Embed at the video, inserting a Script editor web parts on the page and then pasting the code as a snippet. But using the Office 365 video button, you can search for a relevant video directly from the page where you are working. In this way, you display one specific video on your team site page, where the users can play it.

    Insert an Office 365 video into your team site page.

    Insert an Office 365 video into your team site page.

  • Search-driven content
    You can also automatically display the latest videos from a specified channel, or display videos that meet any other search criteria, using Search-driven content web parts. The most obvious one is the one called Video.

It is not perfect yet

The Video Portal is still in development, and I hope that some things will be added and improved at a later stage.

For example, I still have to select each spotlighted video manually. It would be a lot easier if I could simply tag key videos as ‘spotlight’ and have the channel start page display the latest spotlights automatically.

In a broader sense, it is metadata that I am still missing. The only way to structure the collection of videos is by using channels. We only have the title and description to indicate what the video is about. The system also uses data that the contributor has no control over, like the publication date and the number of views, to bubble up the latest and trending videos. But not spotlighted videos, videos about a specific topic or of a specific type within a channel etc.

But even if the Video portal in Office 365 is not perfect, you can use it and get a lot of benefits from it in your digital workplace.

 

March 28, 2015

Office 365 Video Portal – It is a start

Filed under: Digital Workplace,Office365 — Tags: — frederique @ 21:32

The Office 365 offering now includes a standard Video Portal. So how does it work for us? We can use it to share videos with our colleagues in an easy way. However, it has a lot of limitations at this point. The bottomline is that we can use it, but I cannot recommend it wholeheartedly yet.

Video is often talked about in the context of Corporate Communications, as it can be a great medium to convey corporate messages in a lively, appealing way. For me, video is a great medium to share knowledge, and offer ‘how to’ instructions, for example. Show, don’t tell how things work. In a video you can also capture a real-life presentation and demonstration for the people who were not able to attend it in person, like the knowledge sharing lunch sessions that I talked about in a previous post.

So the new Office 365 Video Portal could be very useful. Only it is not as useful as I had hoped. Not yet at least. I am looking forward to the improvements that will make it shine.

Video portal in the Office 365 menu

Video portal in the Office 365 menu

I have put the recordings of our knowledge sharing lunch sessions in the Video Portal, but a lot of basic functionality that I want to use is just not available yet. I found a lot of information about what the Video Portal does and does not do in this review and this ‘how to’. Below, I list the things I like and do not like in the Video Portal as I am setting up a video channel for our lunch session recordings. I am not trying to do anything fancy, just want share these knowledge videos in an easy way.

What I like about the Video Portal

It is easy to create a video channel

I was able to create a video channel for the lunch session within minutes, with the button New channel.

Create a new video channel

Create a new video channel

It is easy to upload a video

To add a video, just click Upload videos and then drag & drop one or more videos into the channel.

Upload a video

Upload videos…

... by dragging and dropping

… by dragging and dropping

Please be patient: It takes some time to process the video. My 47 seconds of test video of almost 20 MB took about 5 minutes.

Processing takes quite some time

Processing takes quite some time

It is easy to play a video

When I click on the thumbnail, the video starts to play. Then I can do the usual: play it full screen, pause it, rewind, jump to a later section, change the volume, and play it again.

Play the video, with the usual options to view full screen, pause etc.

Play the video, with the usual options to view full screen, pause etc.

What I miss in the current Video Portal

I cannot select my own thumbnail

The thumbnail image of the video helps users to decide if the video interests them, and it makes the video portal look more appealing.

The problem is that the system creates the thumbnail for me automatically based on the first seconds of the video. And my Lync recording all turn out with blank thumbnails. So the video thumbnails just look stupid right now… I can’t select my favourite moment and take a snapshot in the Video Portal. I can’t create my own picture manually and add that as my thumbnail. This surprised me, because I can do that in the SharePoint Media Web Part and I expected a thumbnail option here as well.

I cannot change the thumbnails, and the thumbnails of my recordings are blank.

The thumbnails of my recordings are blank and I cannot change the thumbnails .

So, for now I need to edit my video before I upload it, so that the system (Azure Media Services) picks a more interesting snapshot.

I cannot add metadata except a title and description

I created a channel for Lunch sessions where I hoped all my colleagues who organize or give these sessions could upload their recordings. And I counted on metadata to structure the – hopefully – big collection of videos, by tagging the videos with the lunch session series that they belong to, the subject, the type of session, etc. That is how we organize our files and our data, right? By enriching them with metadata and offering different views and refinement options?

The problem is that currently the only metadata I can add are the title and a description; the system adds the duration (0:47 in my test video). If I want the owner of the video to be included in the metadata, I will have to ask that person to upload the video himself or herself. And even then, the owner’s name is only displayed when you click the ellips (the … dots) from the thumbnail. This surprised me, because SharePoint is  good at metadata and I expected the same functionality here.

Videos don't have custom metadata or even categories.

Videos don’t have custom metadata or even categories.

The only metadata shown with the thumbnail are the title and the duration. When I click the ellips (...) I also see the description and the owner.

The only metadata shown with the thumbnail are the title and the duration. When I click the ellips (…) I also see the description and the owner.

So for now, we use channels to provide the main structure and make the title of the video as informative as possible. In the lunch session channel, we use the following naming convention: [series] – [title of the session] – [name of the speaker] – [date of the session].

I cannot give people Contribute permissions

I want my colleagues to upload their own videos. But I am the owner of the channel, and I do not want just anybody to change the settings of my video channel.

The problem is that permissions in the video channels are all or nothing: either people can only view videos, or they can not only add and manage videos but also manage the channel itself. This also surprised me, because SharePoint has known the Contributor role since at least 2003. Obviously my SharePoint-based expectations are quite wrong for the video portal.

Permission options in the video channel

Permission options in the video channel

So for now I have given all my colleagues ‘channel admin’ rights in my video channel and I trust them not to break it.

The spotlights are static

I want to be able to highlight the videos that will be of special interest to many viewers, so that these interesting videos do not get swamped by the rest. This is especially important if the other ways of structuring the video collection are not optimal. In the new Video Portal I can put videos in the spotlight. Via cogwheel > Video channel settings > Spotlight.

Videos in the spotlight. It is a pity the thumbnails are blank..

Videos in the spotlight. A pity some thumbnails are blank..

The problem is that the spotlights are static: I have to indicate which video belongs in which spotlight tile. The spotlight tiles do not get filled automatically based on a ‘spotlight’ tag, so that we always see the latest spotlight videos. I cannot drag them from one time to another.

Spotlight settings: click on a tile to select the video that should be displayed there.

Spotlight settings: click on a tile to select the video that should be displayed there.

So for now, I have to manually go to the spotlight settings and change them regularly, to keep the start page fresh and to make sure the recent videos of special interest also get a chance.

 

Bottomline is that I find the Video Portal interesting, especially if Office 365 and the underlying Azure Media Services can handle big video files smoothly, and if we can play the movies on different devices in a size and format that fits the device. But as yet, we have only the bare bones of the Video Portal of our dreams.

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