CMS Connectors - Control the Video Workflow On Your Terms
Marketing
Welcome to the 3rd article in this technical series. Last time, I talked about the benefits of the new ingest system, Dynamic Ingest, and how it impacts on your video workflow. With this entry, I will talk about CMS Connectors, what they do, and their benefits.
If you’re a marketer, particularly if you’re in content or product marketing, you may find yourself spending the whole day in your CMS. And what about when you add video content? Do you have to manage this publishing process through two different platforms? I’m sure you’d much rather manage your videos directly from within the CMS you already know. Or maybe you’re a video producer who has to routinely stop what you’re doing to fetch video files for your team. What a pain. Instead of being the gatekeeper, perhaps you can allow colleagues use the Video Cloud functionality in a controlled way. This is where CMS connectors come in- linking systems and unlocking video marketing resources to be used widely with less hassle.
Brightcove has created connectors for the most popular CMS platforms, where the end-to-end video workflow can be managed entirely within the CMS. That means, with the Connector in place, you will be able to upload, set the metadata, and publish the video, all without leaving the familiar interface of the CMS.
Brightcove supports connectors for these platforms:
- Wordpress
- Drupal
- Sharepoint 2013
- Adobe Experience Manager
- Sitecore
Each connector provides installation and configuration documentation.
How to Build Your Own Connection Between Your CMS and Video Cloud
And if there is a platform that you use but is not on the list above, the CMS API along with the Player and Dynamic Ingest APIs can be used to manage the video workflow. A friendly note: If you do venture down the path of creating your own connector and the CMS provides a plug-in/connector architecture, please review the Integrating Video Cloud with a CMS article along with the API documentation. Both of these resources provide the best way to connect the CMS with Video Cloud and provide best practices.
In my last post, I wrote that Brightcove had introduced a new set of APIs. These connectors have either been updated or created from the ground up to use the new API set so you can rest assured that the connector functionality will not be deprecated anytime soon. You will need to set up credentials for the CMS to access your Video Cloud account(s). Please follow these steps.
With all the CMS connectors, the source code is openly available so if you want to adapt the functionality, feel free to do so. And if you think the fix or feature would be beneficial to others, please send a Pull Request. Brightcove will review all changes and merge them back into the code base.
Also, it is our intention to keep the connectors current in line with platform changes and as new functionality is released.
That concludes the tour of CMS connectors. Hope I was able to provide an insight into these beneficial tools. Next time, I will talk about Digital Rights Managements (DRM).