We are excited to announce new functionality just released in PathFactory’s latest release, and the last one for 2020, Product Release M. There is no connection to M from the James Bond movies – who is the head of the MI6 – a British Secret Intelligence Agency. But, we can’t keep this release a secret any longer, so here goes!
We hope you dig in and see we have addressed specific requests from you, our valued customers and partners, including the ability to easily revert to an original thumbnail image for content and setting a custom URL slug when initially adding content to the content library. In addition, we have made enhancements to VEX and added new reports to Path Analytics…and much more. So let’s reveal the secrets we’ve been working on.
Platform Updates
Revert to Default Thumbnail
When adding a new piece of content to the content library, the platform automatically scans that piece of content to pull out an image to be used as a thumbnail. You can then overwrite that image to whichever thumbnail you desire. However, in the past you weren’t able to easily revert back to the platform generated image, until now. Now you can easily revert that image back, either at an individual content level or in bulk fashion.
When you click on a piece of content in the content library, you will see a new Thumbnail setting under public configuration in the menu that flies out from the right side. Here you can click the checkbox to revert the image back to the original system generated image. Simply check the box and click save. Easy, right?
If you would like to revert a batch of content assets back to their default image in bulk, simply hold down the shift key on your keyboard, select up to 10 pieces of content at a time that you would like to update and select the thumbnail option on the right side. This will allow you to update up to 10 images at once upon hitting save.
Set the Custom URL Slug When Adding Content
We know it was a cumbersome process to set custom URL slugs after content had been added to the content library – we felt your pain. So, we implemented a change to make it easier. You will now see when you add a new piece of content, there is a Custom URL Slug field you can set right in the configuration screen.
As always, you can still set the slug after adding the content when it is selected in the content library in the configuration bar that pops out on the right hand side. Whichever way you prefer to update, both options are now available to you!
New reports added to Path Analytics
You will see a few new reports in Path Analytics which provide more insights on your visitors and their engagement with your content.
First off, when you navigate to the Reports tab in Path Analytics and scroll down to the Track Insights – Overview report, you will see two new tables: Content Page Views and Query String Performance.
- The Content Page Views report will showcase your top content by number of page views, showing the unique visitors associated with those and the view time.
- The Query String Performance allows you to focus on the UTM parameters that are driving the most engagement.
We have also added another report in the Reports tab called Explore Performance Overview which can also be found under the Track Insights section. This provides an overview of the engagement from your Explore pages – including visits, bounces and how visitors are engaging with the content in the content tracks associated with specific Explore Pages.
VEX
Dry Run Capability
We know dry runs for any event are essential and they are just as important to ensure all things VEX are configured, your speakers and moderators are comfortable with the platform and confirm you're almost ready for showtime.
To set this up, you will need to navigate to the specific session and set anyone you want to access the session early as a moderator in the chat section (this can always be removed after the testing period).
Once their email address is set as a moderator they will be able to access the session before the session start time. One thing to remember is the visitor who you wish to have early access must be identified with the same email address as set up in the moderator list. This can be done through a form fill on the session or event, or by manually adding the lb_email query string parameter to your session link. This would look something like this: https://company.pathfactory.com/event-name/session-name?lb_email=katie@example.com
VEX Widgets
We have added the functionality to allow our VEX customers to bring in their own widgets into the session experience. This will allow you to use their own chat bots, 3rd party polling aps, etc. And now you can configure when you want the widget to show – live, on demand or both – this includes the native chat functionality offered within VEX.
First, navigate to the gear menu in the platform and under VEX you will find widgets. This is where you will add the code for the widget you will add to the sessions.
Once they have been configured, you can choose from the drop down options in your session. Simply navigate to your session in your event and click on the widget tab. Select which widget you would like to add to the session. Once you have added it, you can configure the widget for when you would like it to appear.
When the widget is configured for the session, it will appear on the right side of the video in the session, either under the supplemental content if any is configured or in line with the video if it’s the only additional configuration added.
Add Search to VEX Landing Pages – Session Groups
You now have the ability to add a search field to specific session groups you have added to a landing page in VEX. This will allow your visitors to easily search for live or on demand sessions from within a session group.
When you add a Session Group section to your landing page, simply toggle on the Enable Search toggle in the settings screen to add search to that grouping. This will allow your visitors to search by the title, topics associated with the session or the description of the session.
VEX Form Fill Information
While you’ve always been able to push registrations from VEX to your Marketing Automation Platform, or export the email addresses of those registered, we’ve now added the ability to do a simple export of all registrants and all of the fields they entered. This is helpful for event marketers who want a simple export of all registration information in the lead up to an event. You can now easily download all the form fill information that is collected through the standard form used for registration in VEX right inside the PathFactory platform. This report will give you all the registration information for each event in one convenient spot to action off of.
In your event, start by clicking on the analytics tab and then click the drop down where you see Event Overview and you will now see a new form captures report. From here you can download form capture (registration) data.
Set Topics for Event Sessions
We have added an additional field in the VEX event session configuration to allow you to set topics, similar to how you can set topics on a piece of content in the content library. This will allow your visitors to easily search by topics that are associated with the live session.
In the session configuration page, you will see the newly added field called ‘Topics’ under the session description field. Simply click the input field for a list of your topic taxonomy to populate and select, or type in your own new topics. Note: natural language processing is currently not used to pull our smart topics as it does in the Content Library. These are set manually by the user.
Events Description Field – Removed from UI
We have removed the description field from the event setup page in VEX to avoid confusion. Previously, this was an open text field where you could add a description of your event, however it wasn’t displayed anywhere in the attendee experience – often causing confusion for our customers and users configuring events. Given this, we removed it to reduce complexity and confusion.
Automatically Remove Spaces from Zoom Passwords
We have implemented a fix to reduce the opportunity for error with the Zoom password field when setting up your event session. We will now automatically trim the password to ensure there are no leading or trailing spaces that were accidentally to the password field.
We hope you have experienced and enjoyed many of the major and minor module and feature improvements we have made in 2020. Our R&D team has been hard at work and has more amazing updates and enhancements up their sleeves for 2021. We know you will be as excited as we are when we share those secrets with you next year.
We know this year has been a bit rough, to say the least. We hope you all take time to relax and safely enjoy the holiday season. Thank you again for being a customer and partner with PathFactory. Here’s to a brilliant 2021!