Catalogue Management
Effectively managing a catalogue relies on the ease and efficiency in which it can be done. Console is regularly making leaps and bounds in this area. As part of the attention to the customer, Piksel regularly seeks feedback and adds it to our own feature ideas, and Console reflects that attention to the needs of those responsible for maintaining the catalogue of content. There are a few new upgrades going into Console in the near future, mostly around simplifying the interaction with the UI - drag and drop functionality for category assignment and image upload, but also easier ways to filter the content.
Browse view
Grid view
Displaying catalogue items by the box art can be a good way of identifying titles quickly and if the artwork is clicked the Console will display the ‘detail view’ for that content item.
List view
This shows the title and some of its data, but we can customise the columns that are displayed to show the data required and sort the list. Again, you click on the title or any data field to enter the screen where that item can be edited.
Filters
The best way to discover what filters are available is to type a space in the entry box for filters and the input box shows a scrollable list.
An example filter would be ‘releaseYear:2018’.
Console provides a search for everything that doesn’t apply to a filter. In logic it would be called a ‘NOT’ operation, e.g. ‘NOT releaseYear:2018’ will display all titles except the ones released in 2018. To apply this type of query, click the filter and it will change to a red box with an ‘!’.
If a filter is used repeatedly, especially useful for long filters to avoid reproducing every time it is required, it can be kept in the filter input box without being applied. Click the filter twice and it will turn grey and the text will be struck out, i.e. ‘text’. Simply reactivate with a click.
When adding content to the catalogue some data or assets may be unavailable at that time. To highlight this missing information, add a tag to the item, for example ‘missing-image’. A content administrator can search for these tags to find content that they can then update and ensure the catalogue is accurate and complete. It could be useful to add a widget (refer to the Dashboards section) to count all these items that contain a specific tag and even a browse view to list them so your editors can click through and quickly update missing data and assets.
Tags are fully bespoke and have many uses. Please read the Getting Started Guide for a step-by-step of how to add tags, filter them and add a widget to illustrate it on the dashboard.
Detail view
This screen allows editing of the metadata, associated images, relationship to other titles (e.g. linking episodes to their parent season) and credits for that title.
Once the data has been edited the save button will show notification to indicate that a save is required and also gives an option to revert changes.
A brief word regarding Ingest - Each data field in detail view can be “locked” so that an automated Ingest run doesn’t overwrite the changes made in Console.
For more detail on data, refer to the section on Metadata.
Category manager
This is an area of console that will be developed further. The concept is to create a visual way of assigning the content to a genre and collections for when that becomes appropriate. The interface will soon allow for more quick filters and introducing a drag and drop assignment of a title to a category is being considered. In response to customer feedback, simple point and click interactions are preferred to typing instructions or filters.
Language support
Console now shows the multi-lingual support for your catalogue - the drop down menu highlights which assets are available for that title with a ‘page’ icon next to the language. In the example below, this content item has Dutch, English, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish versions.
