Collaborate like never before
July 27th, 2010 Filed Under Customers, Faculte, New Features
Last night our Studio saw yet another release, and yet again we have new, exciting features for you!
The main change this time around is a new and improved version of our Collaboration feature. Up until now, Collaboration could be ON or OFF for an account. If Collaboration was ON, you could choose whether the default setting for a Broadcast was Everybody can edit, Everybody can copy or Nobody can do anything.
Then one Producer asked us: What if I want to create a Broadcast with one of the other Producers? I don’t want everybody to have access to my assets, but I want to have this person collaborate with me on the project. Can I do this without giving her my password?
Another asked: My Broadcast is in English; I want someone to translate it for me so I can reach a broader audience. But I only want to give my Translator access, not everybody in my account – and I don’t wish to provide her with my password either. Can I do this?
We started thinking about this. How about expanding our Collaboration feature so that:
- A Translator can join an account, be given collaboration access to the specific Broadcast that needs translation, and once translated, the access is removed again.
- A Marketing Manager can make an outline of the new Marketing content. He then invites their professional VoiceOver expert to join the account, turns Collaboration ON – and when the VoiceOver is created, turns Collaboration off
- The in-house design team is part of the account, but they are not interested in seeing all the Communication content being created. Every now and then, when a Broadcast is ready to be shared, they will be given access to it, can refine and decorate it, and once that is done, access is taken away and they do not have to worry about it anymore
… and of course, all of the above can be done without everybody in the account seeing, accessing, and having their Home tabs cluttered by a load of non-relevant Broadcasts.
Online Authoring Collaboration has had a big advantage over Desktop Authoring for quite a while now. Even Microsoft Office is taking their Authoring Tools online!
With our new and improved Collaboration Feature, we take yet another step forward and away from Desktop Editing. Gathering, Editing and Collaborating on your Multimedia Content online has never been easier with Faculte.
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Searchable Channels – our latest innovation
April 27th, 2010 Filed Under Faculte, New Features
A Broadcast is composed of one or several multimedia pages and viewed like a video.
A Series is a group of a few Broadcasts, in a specific order.
A Channel is a user-branded web page containing a collection of broadcasts and series, along with a browseable category hierarchy (which is easily administered by account users) and a full-text search field.
Channels is a Premium Feature which enables users with a lot of content to easily create and maintain a directory of the content. You add and manage your own categories and subcategories, and post Series and Broadcasts under these. You can create and distribute as many channels as you like, you can administer the workflow of posting and accepting posts, you can secure the channel, restrict access, and require payment for content. The channel can be shared by email or direct link. It is also possible to embed a Channel in a website or blog – if this of interest to you, please contact us.
Personally, I can not wait to start using our channel for our help section. Until now, I have been maintaining a large number of pages in our wiki, both content pages and navigation pages. Whenever one link or subcategory changes, or I add a new category, I have to go in and manually change every navigation page and manually add links to the new content. The wiki is easy to edit – but it is time consuming! With Channels, I can simply create a Help Section Channel, and embed it on the first page of the wiki. Whenever I create a new broadcast or add a category, I make the changes quickly in the Broadcast Studio, as part of my content creation workflow. I don’t even have to visit the Help Section editor!
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Latest release – Awesome Annotations!
March 30th, 2010 Filed Under Faculte Story, New Features
Early this morning we deployed the latest version of our platform – with many small tweaks, and a total makeover of one of our renowned features.
Annotations
Our praised annotation pen – used for highlighting your message – has gone through a major makeover. Some people are good at free-hand drawing with their mouse – but most people are not. Now you can draw arrows, circles and check-marks with a click-and-drag of the mouse. You can even zoom in on the content of your page. So simple – yet so powerful and impressive!
Smaller tweaks
We have also added a group of new, beautiful sound loops to our Audio Background collection – so that your Broadcasts can be as professional and beautiful as possible!
When producing a Broadcast, you can now sort your files and broadcasts by Label. Easier navigation makes your creation process simpler and faster.
Next on our list
Ladies and gentlemen, there’s more goodies to come! In just two short weeks, we will announce our latest big feature – our developers are working around the clock on it. Stay tuned for more!
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Combining Multiple Broadcasts in a Series
March 1st, 2010 Filed Under Education, New Features
Today, we released a new exciting feature in the Faculte Broadcast Studio: “Series”. Now you can bundle several broadcasts into a single container, and share them together as a unit. When your viewer clicks on the “broadcasts series”, he or she will be able to browse through all the broadcasts in a series, and play them inside the player one by one. Click on “play” below to see a series in action.
The Series feature comes in handy when you are trying to create a “course” composed of several lessons, a “product demo” composed of a number of slideshows and videos, or a series of tutorials about a single product or subject.
A Series of broadcasts can be Shared exactly like a Broadcast – by Email, Direct Link or Embed as a Player or Widget, and it can of course also be modified on-the-fly. Access of a series can also be controlled and managed exactly as you manage and control access to a broadcast: you can make it public, require registration, protect via a password, or distribute securely to a private group. If you are monetizing your content, you can prompt your viewer to pay one sum for the entire Series, instead of on a broadcast by broadcast basis. Ever thought about creating a course and selling it on your blog? Give it a try and let us know what you think.
Creating a series is very easy. Create it, Add Broadcasts, give the Series a title and Publish it! You can also set more advanced options such as Access Restrictions and Collaboration.
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Your Faculte – Your Brand!
January 28th, 2010 Filed Under Faculte, Faculte Story, New Features, Presentations
One of the things I appreciate most about working in a start-up company is that one of our main focuses is Feature Development. This means that a lot of the changes that appear with every new deployment are visible – this time around, incredibly visible!
Our latest invention is developed with larger organizations in mind; preferring to use their own brand. They want their employees or affiliates to see their Company Brand, and not the Faculte Brand, when they are in the content creation process. With the changes to our Branded Templates, that is exactly what they are able to do.
The feature is of course there for every Premium Account to use, large organization or not – providing a nice way to re-decorate your work environment! Personally, spending hours on our Platform every day, it was such a relief to be able to change the color of my background, header and footer. Yes, my boss hated the bright pink. No, I don’t really care. (Okay, fine, I cared enough to change it to purple.)
To change the whole look and feel of your Premium Faculte Account, go to Settings and Branded Templates – and go ahead and create your personalized style. The changes are reflected right away, making it a simple and immediate process.
We all hope you will enjoy the new feature, and stay tuned – there are more changes to come. Our developers are doing an amazing job!
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Your feedback matters, Part 2
December 18th, 2009 Filed Under Faculte, New Features
New release – new features – and they are still what you wanted and did not hesitate to ask for!
With your honest feedback, we understood that when creating broadcasts with a lot of pages, the navigation might get a bit difficult, both for you and your viewer. So we took a closer look on our Chapter feature to see if we could make some improvements. With this release we introduce the Sidebar Menu. You can, as before, give your pages names and divide them into chapters. Your viewer can now open a sidebar next to the playing broadcast, to easily get an overview of and navigate your chapters.
We know that the two most important things when it comes to your videos is that the videos play smoothly – and that they look good! With the latest release, we changed the Video Conversion Process, to ensure that your viewers get the best possible video quality with as little loading as possible.
Our Wizard has gone through some cosmetic changes – but it still provides an easy, step-by-step creation of Broadcasts.
We hope our existing and new customers will enjoy the changes – and as always, keep the feedback, suggestions and honesty coming!
On behalf of the whole Faculte Team, I wish you all Happy Holidays, and may 2010 be just as good a year as 2009 – if not even better!
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Your feedback matters!
November 24th, 2009 Filed Under Faculte, Faculte Story, New Features, Presentations, Video
Over the past weeks and months, our faithful customer base has given us the most valuable thing a young start-up can get; they have given us their honest feedback. Yes, sometimes it hurts, but we have kept our ears open and listened.
Today, we launched the first of a larger series of customer-requested changes. Our development team have been focused, and will keep focusing, on what YOU want and what YOU need. So please, everybody, keep the honest feedback coming! It is the only way to make our product perfect!
You told us that being able to add background music to your broadcasts would make them even more professional. So we added the Audio Background feature. When you edit your broadcast, go to Preferences and select Audio Background. We have given you a variety of music loops to choose from, and we do hope you will find your favorite amongst them! The selected Audio Loop will play continuously, without pausing in between the pages – even if the rest of the content is loading.
You told us that you’ve started having a LOT of files and broadcasts, and it is hard to manage them. We want you to create a lot of content – so of course we want to give you the possibility of managing it easily! Thus, we are now releasing Labels – so you can easily administer and access the files and broadcasts you want.
You told us that you love being able to add webcam recordings to your broadcasts, but that the first second of your recording – the one where you look at the timer, realize you’re recording, smile awkwardly, draw your breath – was so difficult to avoid. So instead of giving all our customers acting lessons (which may have been equally awkward?), we have now released Video Trimming. When you hit Record, and the countdown starts, just draw your breath and relax. You can trim away the first second of the video anyway!
There have also been several changes to your home page:
We hope these changes will make you a happy customer!
We promise to keep the improvements coming – if you promise to tell us what you want!
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