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Video Tutorial: What is a Channel?

Watch this video to learn the importance of Channels in AVAIL

FAQ: How are Channels used in AVAIL?


Introduction:

Will Rouse provides a quick tutorial on AVAIL Channels.  This is a simple organizing principle in AVAIL and can be a powerful tool in organizing and sharing content.

Key Points:

  • Channels in AVAIL are empty containers for content, similar to playlists in music streaming services.
  • Channels can be organized around various concepts such as content types, job functions, teams, industries, or studios, offering flexible categorization options.
  • A single channel can contain multiple types of content, allowing for versatile content management.
  • After creating and populating a channel, users can customize the tag and filter system to enhance searchability and content discovery.
  • Sharing channels with other users is a crucial step, which can be done easily through the platform, either by individual user or through Active Directory groups in the Enterprise version.

Transcript:

All right, hey everybody, wanted to spend a minute or two talking about some basics, particularly what is a channel. We actually get this question a lot inside of demos with AVAIL and I thought it would be good to just spend a couple of minutes talking about what a channel is. I have a blank channel created here and understand that channels at the highest level are empty containers for content. You can think of these as also being like playlists. If you use Spotify or Amazon or Apple Music or any those music services, they are empty containers for content. So you will create a channel. A channel can be anything. It can be a content type, it can be a job function or a team like BIM manager team channel, digital practice channels, it can be organized around content types as I said with standard libraries, it can be organized around a specific industry or studio. It can be anything that you want.

After you have created your channel, what you're going to do is put content into that channel and it can be any content. If you can see over here on the left, I have a lot of channels and they all organized around content, but this is just for demonstration purposes. Channels can have any type of content in there and multiple types of content. So open your mind up when you're thinking about what channels are for and what should go in them. It can be anything that is relevant.

After you have indexed content into your channel, you can organize the tag and filter system. AVAIL is very flexible and customizable and we have other videos that show how to manipulate those keys, those tags, and filters that all help your end-user search and arrive at things in interesting ways. But after you have created your channel indexed content into it, the most critical thing is you're going to want to share that channel out to other people. So when you create your channel, it's empty. Then you index content into it, but now nobody knows it's there, so you need to share it.

And sharing content, sharing channels in AVAIL is very easy. You can hit on the shared user's button. If we're mapping to your active directory groups in Enterprise, you can share out via an AD group or you can share on a one-to-one basis, but that's all you need to do. It's fairly straight forward. You'll just create your channel up here in the top left by hitting create a channel, give your channel a name, put some content into that channel, organize it the way that you want it to be organized, and then share that channel out with other individuals.