Real-Time Alerts

We have successfully pushed an update to all physical zones residing in the United States. Please note that this release will be pushed to Canadian zones next week. This release is mostly a maintenance update that includes over 40+ new features and improvements including:

1. Crisp Sub-Channel Visualization and Improved LMS Integration – For those users using sub-channels within their course Media Channels, we’ve changed to a tab-style interface that is easier to navigate.
   
2. Keyboard-Only Tab Navigation Improvements – We have an ongoing project to review our keyboard-only navigation and ensure that all screens are a smooth navigation experience. We’ve reviewed many of the screens and this effort continues.
3. Better Media Channel Layout – To better use the top-region of the Media Channel, we’ve move away from a 3-video layout and introduced a 7-video layout (where space allows). This is a better use of the available screen (see screenshot above).
4. New Visualization of Word Clouds, Transcripts, and Tags – Along the same theme of better use of space, rather than a linear down-the-page style, we’ve moved each of the AI-powered video cognition attributes to individual tabs. See screenshot below.
   
5. Bulk Download Now Integrated With Date Search – We’ve integrated the existing date-based media searching with the ability to use the Bulk Download capabilities. This enables users to refine their search to identify which media to bulk download.
   
6. General Platform Improvements – In addition, we also made some general Platform improvements:
   • Changed Blackboard Media Chooser Extension to use the actual zone-specific embed code rather than the generic Platform URL. This ensures that use of an embedded video with a Single-Sign-On is directed to the organization’s SSO.
   • Identified rare issues within the Media Player that could cause the geographic restrictions to fail for specific network types. Also resolved rare issues related to Blackboard media embedding within self-hosted instances.
   • Improvements to the HTML5 Video Editor in handling very large caption files
   • Improved overall Platform compatibility with older versions of Internet Explorer (the predecessor to Edge)
   • Improved HTML5-based Editor’s multi-stream sync when editing large media files.
7. Limited Release of Zoom Connector – We’ve finished deploying all the backend infrastructure for the Zoom Connector and those organizations that had expressed interest in using it should be able to. In a few weeks, we’ll open this up to all organizations to try out.

In the next release, we anticipate rolling out some updates to the HTML5 Video Conferencing, Platform performance improvements, new notifications for any media transcoding errors and more.

We have successfully pushed an update to all physical zones residing in the United States. Please note that this release will be pushed to Canadian zones next week. This release includes over 70+ new features and improvements including:

1. Improved In-Video Commenting with Timeline Commenting and Pop-up Comment Bubbles – We improved in-video commenting by enabling the ability to comment directly on the video timeline, see comments on the timeline, and see “pop-up” comments as the video plays. As you’re using the new capabilities, we encourage you to provide feedback on ways you’d like to use this capability so that our Product Team can extend and expand it.
2. In-Video Quiz Suite Now Part of Media – We’ve extended the video quizzing to be integrated more deeply with the Video Platform as a whole. While this will change how users create and access quizzes, we are confident that the improvements will make it even easier to create video-based assessments. Here are some of the details:
   • Top-Bar Take-Quiz Workflow – Quizzes that are available for users to “take” are now linked directly within the top-bar of the Platform (look for a new “Bell” icon). This makes it easier for students to find available quizzes without having to “dig into” the Polls & Quizzes suite.
   • Quizzes Stored in My Account tab – Created text-based and video quizzes are now stored in your My Accounts under a sub-tab called My Assessments.
   • UI Refinements – We also tidied up some naming inconsistencies with the use of the term “poll”, resolved a Unicode oversight that prevented non-English languages from being used for quiz questions, as well as a few other smaller improvements.
   • Supports In-Video Commenting – In-video quizzes can be used in conjunction with in-video commenting.
3. New Tab Orientation for Media Details – To accommodate the new Comments tab within Media Details, our design folks switched the tabs to stack vertically. We will be further refining the user experience within the Media Details sub-tabs in upcoming releases.
4. HTML5 Video Conferencing (alpha) – Our plan to migrate capabilities from the Flash-based Video Classrooms tool to the HTML5-based Video Conferencing continues. In this release, we moved over record-and-replay capabilities. We’re getting there!

Looking ahead, in the next release we’ll be providing some feature updates to the HTML5 Video Editor, providing better self-service Bulk Downloading capabilities, new Live Streaming capabilities, and much more.

We have successfully pushed an update to all physical zones residing in the United States. Please note that this release will be pushed to Canadian zones next week. This release includes over 80+ new features and improvements including:

1. General Availability of new Media Chooser for Canvas with Analytics Capabilities – We are now offering all customers with more powerful LMS media embedded with the Canvas Media Chooser to track analytics. To take advantage of this, please uninstall the old Canvas Media Chooser and follow the installation documents to install the new one with the revised Paste XML. If you have questions on how to install this, please email us at support@yuja.com.
2. Emebeddable Live Stream Media Player – Administrators can now pre-schedule an embeddable HTML5-based HLS-compliant Live Stream Player. This expands the available use-cases to include guest speakers, events and graduation ceremonies. Through March and April we will be rolling out a number of exciting Live Streaming capabilities that will also move to General Availability.
3. New Live Stream “Waiting Room” Experience – For pre-scheduled Live Stream events, if users try to enter a scheduled Live Stream ahead of time, they will now receive an waiting room UI with a countdown timer. Once the event starts, they will be automatically placed in the live stream.
4. New Media Details Pop-up for Faster Media Organization – When users access the More… option within the Media Library for a particular media object, we now offer a fast-loading inline pop-up rather than having to click to navigate to a new page.
5. Additional Player Branding Options – Administrators can now customize which options they would like to have within their Media Player’s secondary menu. We also did some further refinements to the Media Player playback experience.
6. Minor Aesthenic Improvements for Processing Media – We improves some of the visuals for the ingestion process as well as improved the main menu button. This is part of a longer-term initiative to bring visual and user experience consistency to all suites.

We have successfully pushed an update to all physical zones residing in the United States. Please note that this release will be pushed to Canadian zones next week. This release includes 150 new features and improvements including:

1. Easier to Use Main View with Action Buttons for Common Workflows – The Platform user interface has been updated to include the most common tasks as Action Buttons in the top-bar. Users can access media channels, create captures, and manage & uploads media all from the main screen.
2. Refined Media Player with Better Search Visualization and Small-Screen Capabilities – We’re introducing a new Media Player which offers even easier to navigate search-inside-video capabilities, improved embeddability in smaller windows, and better support for mobile devices and tablet screen sizes. We also added some new capabilities including topic highlighting in the auto-scrolling sidebar, better search-inside-video sidebar, and a simplified Play-Bar.
3. Live, Multi-Source Room Preview Snapshots of Active Captures – The latest Software Capture applications for both PC and Apple, as well as the latest Hardware Hub firmware now supports multi-source preview within the Admin Panel’s Devices tab. Administrators can now keep tabs on active room recordings with periodically updating snapshots of actively recording rooms and lecture halls.
4. New Quiz Question Types and Refined Quiz-Taking Interface – The Video Quiz suite now has new question types including Multi-Select, Short Answer and True-False options.
5. Auto-Captioning Support Now Available in Six New Languages – As part of the more powerful Artificial Intelligence-based auto-captioning engine we integrated in the last release, we are now introducing the ability to auto-caption in additional languages including French, Dutch, German, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish.
6. Improved Support for Legacy Browsers – Our focus was improving support for the deprecated since IE Edge – but still used – Internet Explorer browser.
7. Improved Media Library Performance – We optimized a number of heavily used search and general sub-routines to make them much faster. Our performance tests in various physical zones showed improvements in overall Media Library load time and snappier navigation.
8. Additional Infrastructural Work for HTML5 Video Conferencing – While still in an alpha state, we have continued to bolster the infrastructure, as well as, migrate over functionality from our Flash-based Video Classroom. We expect this suite to enter Beta in the March / early-April timeframe.

We have successfully pushed an update to all zones. This release includes:

1. Ability to create “virtual edits” using the Sub Clip capability within the HTML5 Player. This enables Content Owners to send a video link that plays at a certain start point or sub-section without needing to use the Video Editor to create a new copy.
2. Improved accessibility of HTML5 Player with new use of highlight color on the buttons, the ability to initiate the initial play action with only the keyboard, and the ability to incrementally control the volume bar with only the up-and-down keys.
3. Improvements to IMS role mappings to ensure LTI mapping roles are preserved within a Course for TA and other non-student and instructor roles.
4. UI improvements including improved thumbnail icon for videos and more consistent dialog format across the Platform.
5. Ability to customize the name of your Login options. For example, if your institution calls your Single-Sign-On a institution-specific name, you can now use that in the Platform label.

We also used this release to improve a total of 115 separate items across the Platform. Looking ahead to October and early November we will be introducing some key features including: Metadata Schema Management and Enforcement, new filtering tools for administrators to better track Accessibility Compliance across all video assets, brand new secure HTML5 Live Streaming Player, configurable Transcoding Profiles, an update to the YuJa Software Station for PC, and much more.

Important Notes:

1. We introduced a feature to set a customizable color for the Sliding Side Bar within the Platform. This also updated the rendering of the icon colors which your web browser may have cached. To see your new or customized color palette, please clear your browser cache.
2. With the new ability to customize Platform Login options, Administrators will need to re-select their preferred Login method. We apologize for the oversight in setting the most likely default for institutions.

We have successfully pushed an update to all zones. This release includes:

1. Toggle capabilities for offline media download capabilities within the HTML5 Media Player;
2. New Video Classroom capabilities for switching presentation sources;
3. Resolution of some minor accessibility gaps within the HTML5 Media Player;
4. Refined Polls & Quizzes user interface (we also pushed out an incremental set of capabilities that includes the ability to add a picture to a quiz question).

In this release there were a total of 94 features, smaller improvements and fixes.

We have successfully pushed an update to all zones. This release includes the introduction of configurable LMS-to-YuJa role mappings, new folder-level embedding and direct-linking capabilities to share a full media playlist, the ability to preview a linked-document right within the HTML5 Media Player, improvements to the Quizzes & Polls user interface, new settable roles and end-meeting workflows within the Video Classrooms. There are also 42 smaller features and fixes.

We have successfully pushed an update to all zones. This release includes a refined workflow within the Capture & Live Stream tab, improved performance and experience within the HTML5 Media Player, improvements to Video Classroom recording, and 67 other features and fixes. As a reminder, as previous indicated we sunsetted the Shared Files and Course Syllabus to better focus on the the capabilities most relevant to our customers.

We have successfully pushed an update to all zones. This release includes a refreshed Main Menu, more modern Institution->Devices tab, an updated Android app that resolved a number of device playback issues on recent devices (we will commence work on refreshing our iOS app in July for the same purpose), and updates to our Video Quizzes to use our branded HTML5 Player.

We also added over 50 features and fixes included the ability for authenticated users to download their digital notes and bookmarks as a PDF, improved performance and search within the  Courses & Groups tab, the ability to better manage auto-generated PDFs and Audio Description tags.

We have some exciting features rolling out in phases this summer – stay tuned!

All production zones received a bi-monthly update which added over 150 new features and improvements including updated Video Classrooms, new Media Management capabilities, added capabilities within Visual Analytics, and general UI updates / enhancements.