This article explains how the Continue watching playback feature works, and how to use it to provide personalized content to users in their apps.
The following topics are covered:
- What is the Continue watching feature?
- How does it work?
- Does Continue watching work across seasons?
- Where else can I find Continue watching content?
- How do I configure the feature?
What is the Continue watching feature?
Easily pick up where you left off with Continue watching. Typically displayed on the Home page, user rows configured with a Continue watching list, allow your end-users to quickly navigate back to the content they have previously watched.
User rows display a personalized list that exists behind the scenes, populated by what your end-users interact with, showing the last part-watched content by the profile.
How does Continue watching work?
Note: If a user row is set up but the data does not exist to populate the row, the entire row does not appear.
User rows supporting Continue watching, Bookmarks, Entitlements, and Watched content will only display once a user has engaged with an asset.
For example, a user row displaying Continue watching content only displays once end-users have part watched an asset. A user row displaying Bookmarked content only displays once end-users have manually selected content to return to at a later date.
Episodes are grouped by the show. If an end-user has completed an episode in full, the show displays in the continue watching row, however, it now points to the next available episode.
To trigger playback of the content displayed in a user row, simply select the asset to play from the latest resume point.
Does Continue watching work across seasons?
The Continue watching functionality relies on user entitlements. It works sequentially across seasons if the user has entitlements to concurrent seasons.
For example, a user has entitlements to season 1 and season 3 of a show, but not season 2 (i.e. season 2 is not offerable). The user completes season 1, however, on reaching the end of the final episode of season 1, the first episode of season 2 is not available to the user, so won't appear as a Continue watching option and no further episodes play automatically.
Where else can I find Continue watching content?
As well as configuring and displaying a dedicated row for partly watched content, when selecting content from the app and viewing the details page for the partially watched asset, users are shown a Continue watching button.
How do I configure the Continue watching feature?
The majority of work happens automatically, based on what content your end-users interact with. You only need to set up the row type on the desired page.
1. Navigate to the sitemap and select the page to which you wish to add the row.
Tip: use the search field to help you refine the available row types.
2. To insert a new row on this page, select
3. Select a User row type, choosing from one of four different display ratios.
4. The User row is added to the page, ready for configuration.
5. Enter information into the fields to configure the row:
- Enter title of row...: Specify the row title, e.g. "Continue Watching"
- Select type...: Select Continue Watching from the drop-down menu (required to enable the feature)
- Any Device: Specify the devices the row appears on
- Any User: Specify the user groups the row appears for
- Any Segmentation Tag: Specify any segmentation tags that apply to this row
- Any Date: Select edit to specify a date period in which the row is active
Note: Configure user rows to set up Bookmarks, Entitlements, and Watched rows of content in the same way, by selecting the desired row type from the Select type dropdown.
Properties:
- Tagline: Specify text to display underneath the row title
- Display Asset Titles: Select none, either, or below, to determine how content titles appear
- Destination URL: Specify an alternate URL destination. Read our article to find out how to do this.
Are you looking to only display the Continue watching row for specific audiences or devices? See our editing row variants article for details on how to do this.