United States Zone – Semi-Monthly RC20200131 Released

We have successfully pushed an update to all instances residing in the United States. Please note that this release will be pushed to Canadian and European Union zones next week. This release includes over 135+ new features and improvements.

  1. Full Sub-Administrator Capabilities within Custom-Designed Hierarchies
    The Video Platform now provides full capabilities to create hierarchical representations of your organization including Faculties, Departments, Schools, Campuses and Schools. Within this hierarchy, custom-defined Sub-Administrators can be created that can manage specific sets of Users, Courses, Devices, as well as create subsets of functionality. Over the coming months, we will continue to create new Sub-Organization capabilities so your feedback will help shape the future product roadmap of this capability.

  2. Create Sub-Administrators Based on Both Role Scope and Functional Needs
    Custom sub-administrator roles can be defined based on virtually any role scope and functional need. Some examples of possible sub-administrator roles you could create include:

    • Classroom Device Manager for Medical School
    • Closed Captioning Associate for the Department of Earth Sciences
    • Full Admin for the Online Campus


  3. Each Sub-Administrator Role Can Be Assigned a Custom Start Page
    Each sub-administrator role can now select the default start page that is shown on login. The options listed in the drop-down will adjust based on the functional capabilities of the sub-admin role.

  4. Support for Upcoming Chrome 80 Version (“The Cookie Crumbling Update”)
    In advance of the upcoming – and much anticipated – Chrome 80 release which introduces several breaking changes to most major third-party web applications, we released an update that is compatible with this new browser version. With this change, we believe your users will not be affected when the Chrome 80 browser, that is currently in beta, releases to production.

  5. New Picture-in-Picture Viewing Mode Designed for Tight Spaces
    We have introduced a new viewing mode that is designed for tighter embedded viewports such as within an LMS. The Picture-in-Picture mode can also be enabled selectively as an additional viewing option on the primary or secondary Media Player menu. The Picture-and-Picture sources can be swapped and users can also move the embedded picture source within the window to suit their viewing preference.


    Note: To enable the new Picture-in-Picture capability within the Media Player, within the Admin Panel’s Branding tab, please add this option to your Media Player branding.

  6. Live Streaming Infrastructure Now Scales Elastically with No Practical Limit
    As part of a larger-scale project to create elastic scalability in all key sub-systems, the Live Streaming infrastructure can now stream to any-size audience without the need for in-advance provisioning. There are some related capabilities we have planned for future releases to also elastically scale the real-time live stream transcoding sub-system.

  7. New Video Platform Branding Options Enable Customization of the Left Navigation Bar Colors
    The Video Platform now includes the ability to customize the colors of the Left Navigation Bar to align with your organization’s brand.

  8. Minor Version Update to YuJa Mobile for Android Native Application
    We released a new minor version update to our YuJa Mobile for Android application (2.0.9) that incorporates 15+ smaller bug fixes and video streaming improvements. We are actively working on a new iOS application which matches the current functionality of the Android application.

  9. Improved Video Quiz Integration with LMS Course Copy
    To support the use of LMS Course Copy and the creation of Master Course Shells, for LMSs that support Content Item Message-based Course Copy, namely Canvas and Blackboard, previous Video Quizzes can be re-posted to the newly copied course as a new Video Quiz directly within the LMS interface. For Moodle and D2L customers, to take advantage of this capability, please contact your LMS vendor and request a status on the following open feature items: Moodle MDL-66934 and D2L LTI Copy Course Updates.

  10. New Video Conference Start Meeting Panel
    The new Video Conference Start Panel provides quicker access to start an impromptu meeting, schedule meetings, and view the calendar of scheduled meetings.

  11. New Video Player Capabilities including Click-to-Pause, Improved Multi-stream Mobile Compatibility and More
    The Media Player now offers some additional enhancements including the ability when viewing single-stream videos to click the video box to pause and resume the video. For multi-stream videos, there is a new hover effect to swap the primary stream. We also improved multi-stream compatibility on mobile browsers and added a new hover-glow effect for the Media Player icons.

  12. Support for Canvas Accommodated Groups
    To provide specialized video support for designated Accommodated Groups within Canvas, the Video Platform can now interface with the Canvas LMS to pull Accommodated Group rosters and display specific sub-channel content designated only for the Accommodated Group.