SharePoint as Podcast Platform

Brass Contributor

We are looking to host audio files in SharePoint and would like our team to be able to subscribe to them as podcasts so listening on the go is super easy.

 

Is there a way to do that with the existing library functionality or the Office365 video cabability?

10 Replies

I have the same question. Trying to use Sharepoint to host podcasts/vlog for internal content. I expected to be able to pretty easily do this with the RSS feeds, but having a hard time getting it to work. I am also surprised by the lack of other hits on the topic. Lots of references to the old-old PKS kit, but nothing recent that works with 2016.

 

Any advice appreciated.

I followed the instructions here and translated them to our SharePoint Online application. They worked for internal user RSS feeds, but testing them with www.feedvalidator.com all I could get was 403 and 404 server error messages. Setting the site access rights to everyone with read permissions didn't solve the server error messages.

 

Right now I'm quite dissatisfied with Microsoft SharePoint Online, and I know of much simpler ways of doing this cheaply and free.

Hi @Dan Genel 

We have a similar need.

Our use cases :
"As a marketing manager I want to create information/instruction audio files for sales staff on the road to listen to while driving, because our staff don't get much time to read the campaign / promotional material"
"As a sales person on the road I want to have a company podcast that I can subscribe to using my existing podcast tool, so that I can keep up with what is going on with new product features and promotions"
We have the content : in a sharepoint library as MP3 files with descriptions and titles and other meta data.
Our staff have podcast apps on their phones.
We had hoped that we could publish a podcast feed (RSS / XML) which the staff could add to their existing podcast apps.

The problem

The problem is that 90% of the podcast apps aren't built to secure the connection between the app and the source of the PodCast. They're built for publicly discoverable / accessible podcast feeds.
There are some podcast apps that allow username / passwords to be associated with getting the Feeds BUT most of them send the username and password in clear text over the internet. NOT what we wanted for our Active Directory user's details.
So we came to the following conclusions:

- publish the mp3 files and the Podcast feed on our WWW site but hide it from search engines [for us that wasn't Ok because sometimes future promotions would be part of the content].

- pay a third party for podcast app for our company only, that used SAML or some other method to secure the content and our usenames and passwords. [again not a go for us, due to cost and the fact that it was a tool with only one use]

- use the RSS / XML feed from a sharepoint library where we store the MP3 podcast files. [didn't work for us because we couldn't get a podcast player which could authenticate into our network. LET ME KNOW IF YOU'VE GOT THIS TO WORK]

- solution we're investigating: put each podcast MP3 file into a powerpoint file, export the powerpoint file as an MP4 file, publish the MP4 files to Office365 Stream, teach our users how to use Stream (online and offline) [This was a better solution for us, because it means our staff learn about stream where we do other training and put recorded meetings etc] It isn't as easy as a podcast app, but it is "out of the box" and is using tools our current user licenses make available to us already.

I hope this helps others on the search for this sort of functionality.
Dorje

@Dorje McKinnon Thanks for chiming in.  We ended up with a similar solution with the content hosted on our website. 

 

We are now beginning to rethink that as our hosting provide's cost for storage is really high and we are also considering using Stream too.   

 

I would be interested to hear how your conversion goes.

Hi @Dan Genel ,

 

I'll come and update this thread in a month or so once we've got some wins on the board.

 

Dorje

 

We have implemented your proposed solution, Dorie, and it has worked out great.  We post the podcast on a site, send a  notification to Yammer  via Flow with a link to the video in Stream.  Very easy to access and play from work mobile phones or from a desktop. 


@Dorje McKinnon 

Hi @Cindy Zalme 

that is a great solution, using flow to notify users via Yammer.

I hadn't even thought of something so simple.

 

Thank you.

@cindy and @dorje - I wonder if you’d be able to help me with this and walk me through this solution. I’m new to 365 and would very much welcome a chat? If that’s ok.

Hi All

@Dan Genel @Chris_Masters @Cindy Zalme @Jamie Clark 

I've just come back to this as our requirements have changed and in doing so found Mike Gannotti's video solution
https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/healthcare-and-life-sciences/office-365-podcasting-show-me-ho...

Which is what I think we'll go with. 

As he points out at the end, "go where people are working" and as we've got most staff using teams now we're going to work towards that.
We still don't have a solution for a podcast app that works with Mircrosoft Authentication , let alone the 2 factor authentication we have.
But as Mike's video shows Outlook does the job and IF you enable the download of the content (search Outlook help for RSS Download linked articles as an attachment) with the podcast, the mp3 files appear as attachments within Outlook.
For our users who may have no internet connection this is Gold.

 

22 Jul 2021 update I just wanted to update this post.

We've done some testing of this solution for our users. RSS works in Outlook desktop / Outlook on the web BUT not for Outlook on iOS (booo!).
So we tested displaying the podcast files via a library in the SharePoint iOS app, and as Mike suggests as a Tab in a Teams Channel.
We found the best user experience was to link a TEAMS Channel Tab to a Modern SharePoint page, that used web parts to display the different Pod Cast episodes. This was the best solution as after the user had played the item, the closed the modal window and were back within the Teams iOS app on the Teams > Channel > Tab displaying the SharePoint online page.


Hope this link and comment helps others.