Stream Channel: Organize/Categorize Videos

Copper Contributor

On a channel homepage, I need the ability to create video categories, as defined by me, the channel owner - possible? Alternatively, the ability to sort by Name would be an acceptable work-around.

22 Replies

I'm experiencing the same thing. I've organized our company videos into a channel for ease of access, but they can't be re-ordered in the list. They don't appear in the list in the order I uploaded them or even alphabetically.

This is an issue for me as well.  I created a naming strategy using numbers so they could easily be organized.  I can't even figure how they are being organized.  They are not by date or name.  Please help.

@Nick Hasselblad - We don't have a way to organize videos within channels. However if you created a group, then you can create channels under that group for further organization of the videos. 

 

Today on a channel we let a user viewing the channel sort by Trending (views/likes/comments in last few weeks), published date, total views, total likes. If we added video name to that drop down would that help? Or are you looking for a feature where you as the channel owner can pick which sort option is selected by default when a user views your channel?

@Dave Kartunen  and @Brad Millner - By default we sort videos in a channel by "Trending." This uses an algorithm to determine which videos are popular in the last few weeks against views, likes, comments, etc. A user could pick a different sort order for the channel when they are viewing it. But as I said above we don't have a feature for owner of channels to pick a different sort order by default.

My company really needs to be able to manage the sorting option.

We need to be able to sort by metadata, or published date.  Please add this -- it would be greatly appreciated.

 

@Teresa Swehla - Could you explain a bit more on what you are looking for in terms of more sorting options? 

 

Is it that the user can sort on things when they view a group/channel list of videos?

Is it that as a group/channel owner you want to determine the default sort orders of videos when people visit your channel?

Are you looking for more of a playlist feature where you can build a playlist and put videos in a specific order? 

Something else?

It will be the same thing we all want. To SET the default sort order for a channel when it appears to the user...*somewhere other than on the teams site*

 

For instance, adding a channel as a Tab in Teams for folk to keep up with regular update videos needs us to be able to set the default view to be PUBLISHED so that the most recent video appears first etc. or display the view picker that you get on the main streams site, to allow users to switch views

Same with embedding to SharePoint pages.

 

"Trending" is useless in so many cases when presented separate from the actual Streams website, with no  option to either set a default or even have the view picker available.

Thanks Chris for explaining further your use case.

 

If you could add your votes/comments to the ideas forum it would be great.

 

Default sort order: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Microsoft-Stream-Ideas/Define-default-sorting-order-for-a-cha...

 

The 2nd idea about showing the sort/filter/search options when you embed a channel into Teams/SP isn't in the ideas forum yet. You could add that one and add your votes.

Hello -- thanks for your response.

 

Our users want to be able to sort ascending & descending order of their videos by title or a metadata field.  Right now the default sorting of videos when linking to Stream is "Trending" -- that doesn't help them at all. They want to be able to choose what default they prefer (which is linear...most recent to oldest).

 

There is a view that appears to work this way. The view they most enjoy is the "play" view...when a video is selected to play, the other videos appear on the right margin in chronological order of upload date/time. Linking to that view doesn't work though.

 

Basically, if the videos could have metadata assigned to them to allow users to create desired views to display the videos the way that is most helpful to their groups, THAT is what they're looking for.

 

Thanks - Tracy

We use the Channel for playing work safety videos on our intranet. Having the videos sorted alphabetically would be extremely helpful. The only way to find the video you need to watch is by search at this point!

"Trending" is not useful in many contexts. Our users are employees and the scenario is often not like Facebook or YouTube where people can sit around watching what is "viral". At work it is a common business requirement to organize and make a set of videos available to a group of employees who are required to watch them, whether they be popular or not.

We publish training videos for our engineers and they are broken up into sessions. The video title includes the session number and currently the "trending" sort order just completely ruins the order and actually makes it difficult for our users to find the session they need to watch next.

I would also like the ability to set an order to videos within a channel.  I have training videos that I would like to align with the order of the items for which they are providing training for.

For us, Groups organize which channels appear where, but it would be nice to sort videos by dragging and dropping an order; essentially an officewide playlist within the channel.

I am an integrationist at a school, and when teachers load videos for class, the students do not notice the "All Videos" tab, though right there, and they assume the latest video has not been uploaded.  Teachers like having more control.  There really are very few options available in videos for sorting, etc.

 

We would also like to be able to give permissions in Channels to whole groups.  If a class is working on a project, it is very time-consuming to have to load each student individually, especially when we have synced groups to use.  

we have asked for playlist functionality like most other video platforms have. i think it's "on the roadmap" but who knows how long that will actually take.

Without a feature for the business to organize videos in a playlist type of way then Stream is pretty much useless.  Businesses are not trying to create a viral video site for their employees, they are trying to communicate and train and engage with their employees.  The ability to curate videos and organize them for relevant and contextual consumption should be the first and highest priority task of the Microsoft Stream team.  This issue has been open for years without being meaningfully addressed and that tells me that this service is abandon-ware.  Can you respond to this and convince us all that I am wrong on this?

 

Unfortunately I can't wait anymore for this feature. I am migrating my content to a new service, Litmos, which is a training platform specifically for enterprises.

@Marc Mroz  Hi Marc, it would be great if as the channel owner we could set the default sort by field to by date, that is so that we can ensure that users will see the latest videos that are uploaded automatically by default, otherwise they may not know to sort them by date, and we will lose viewers. Please could MS add this feature?


@Marc Mroz wrote:

@Nick Hasselblad- We don't have a way to organize videos within channels. However if you created a group, then you can create channels under that group for further organization of the videos. 

 

Today on a channel we let a user viewing the channel sort by Trending (views/likes/comments in last few weeks), published date, total views, total likes. If we added video name to that drop down would that help? Or are you looking for a feature where you as the channel owner can pick which sort option is selected by default when a user views your channel?


 

You can categorize your videos via hashtags in Microsoft Stream! Just add them in the description as a way to group up similar videos. When you click on the hashtag you'll be able to see other videos with the same tag. If you have other questions this Microsoft Stream Q&A might have the answers  @Nick Hasselblad