The Streaming Media Service (SMS) enables staff to publish audio and video content, providing a free hosting platform for the University’s multimedia assets. This includes content aimed towards internal University audiences as well as the general public. The infrastructure providing the service is approaching end of life, so UIS has identified a replacement platform.
Following our February 2021 announcement, we ran a series of focus groups with SMS users in Spring and Summer 2021 to gather a set of core requirements. These helped us to understand the current and future needs of the service and informed a procurement exercise that we completed in Winter 2021–2.
We’re pleased to announce that we’ve completed a contract with YuJa to provide the future cloud-based digital streaming service for the University. This will provide users with new, powerful features to make publishing, editing and managing digital media content easier, hosted on a Cambridge University-branded, ad-free platform.
What is the new platform?
We’ll be adopting the enterprise-grade video content management system (CMS) designed for Higher Education users from YuJa. This new media platform will be available to host digital media content intended for public and internal consumption that would normally be uploaded to the SMS. It also includes lecture capture and streaming capabilities that we intend to use for internal and external events. The University will continue to use Panopto and Moodle to host and deliver all its teaching and learning content.
How will the transition to the new platform affect me?
During the transition period, the two SMS platforms will operate in in parallel:
- When the Yuja platform is ready for launch in the University, the current SMS service will be switched to read-only mode. This means you’ll only be able to upload new content to the new media platform after the launch date.
- There will be two web addresses for the University’s streaming media content during the transition period – the existing sms.cam.ac.uk domain and a new one for the new service. We’ll publish details of the new domain name ahead of the launch date.
- Later this year, content owners will be asked to review their content on the current SMS service to help us identify items that can be retired. We’ll also explain what will be transferred to the new service, as well as how to flag material to be considered by the University Library (UL) for retention in the University’s archives and/or research storage (Apollo).
- Redirects to the new platform will be placed on all SMS content when it’s migrated to the new platform to ensure continuity of service.
What is the roadmap and timeline for moving to the new service?
Next few months
Now that the contract has been signed, we’ll be working with YuJa to prepare the new platform for University use.
This will include:
- working with the vendor to ensure that the new platform meets the WCAG2.1 accessibility standards
- configuring organisational structures in the new platform
- implementing Raven authentication
- performing an initial migration of content that's currently in use
- agreeing the policy governing which types of digital content may be uploaded to the new SMS, making sure there’s a clear distinction between the new SMS service and Panopto/Moodle, which will continue to host all teaching and learning resources
- preparing and publishing information about the features and benefits of the new platform, how long the transition period will last and how the transfer process will work for content owners.
The current SMS platform is reaching capacity, so we’re looking to switch it to read-only mode as soon as the new platform is ready to launch to the University. We are working hard to achieve this this within the next few months.
When this happens:
- the current SMS will continue to host and serve any existing content
- users will need to upload any new content to the new platform
- each item on the new platform will have its own dedicated URL and syndication options will be available.
Later this year
We’ll begin the process of asking content owners to review their content, planning where it will move to and automatically transferring content to the new platform.
The steps will be as follows:
- Content owners will be able to extract a report of their content and review it to decide what should be retired, flagged for consideration for inclusion in the UL’s research and institutional archives (please note that inclusion is at the sole discretion of the UL), or transferred to the new service.
- Content flagged for transfer will be automatically migrated to the new service.
- Once content has been migrated, content owners will need to re-create their ‘collections’ as ‘channels’ and ‘playlists’ in the new service. Unfortunately, it’s not possible to directly transfer these relationships from the current platform.
- Once all the content has been migrated out of the old service, the sms.cam.ac.uk domain will be retired.
Next two years
Once the new platform is launched and old one is retired, we’ll focus on making YuJa’s live-streaming and video capture capabilities available in University lecture rooms.
Archivists at the UL will review offline copies of content from the old SMS and complete their selection process.
Queries and feedback
We appreciate that you may have questions about this new platform and the transition. This announcement is intended to give you advance notice of the significant improvements coming to the SMS. We’ll provide further details on the features and benefits of the next-generation SMS service, as well as the timelines and how the transfer process will work, as soon as we can. We’ll also provide opportunities for you to see a demonstration of the new platform, and to comment and ask questions. However, if you have any urgent concerns, please email sms-feedback@uis.cam.ac.uk.