Release notes - AXIS 9.2 (Mar '21)

Overview

This release contains further sports enhancements, including new asset types and asset fields, Follow functionality and personalization, the ability to search for sports assets, list customizations, and Rocket API enhancements.

Part of this release covers our continuous efforts to address potential security vulnerabilities, and general security improvements, including: 

What’s new

Presentation Manager

New Team and Persona asset types

Introducing two new asset types; Team and Persona, see details and examples below:

Sport	Asset types
	Team	Persona
Football	England	Marcus Rashford
Cricket	West Indies	Deandra Dottin
Entertainment
Actor	N/A	Margot Robbie
Director		Quentin Tarantino

New asset metadata fields

To enhance the new sports functionality, we've added new asset metadata fields: Country, Gender, and Role; see details below:

Asset field	Supported asset type
Country	Competition Event Persona Team
Gender	Competition Event Persona Team Custom
Role	Persona Custom

For more information, see our asset metadata article.

New Item detail pages

To support the features below, we've put together cheat sheets to help you create a sports item detail page and an entertainment item detail page.

Introducing two new Item details page templates to support the new Team and Persona assets:

• Team detail page (sports-specific)
• Persona detail page (supports sports and entertainment) 

View and interact with Team and Persona details, alongside metadata and related content. Both pages support OOTB analytics for user behavior tracking and Right-to-Left languages.

Supported rows include:

Page region	Row
Header/hero row	SHT1 - Team (16:9) (Teams specific) SHP1 - Persona (16:9) (Persona specific)
Body row	STV3 - Events (16:9) ST3 - Events grid (16:9) ST1 - Stages (16:9) C1 - Circle (1:1 or logo) T1 - Standard (16:9) S2 - Large (1:1) T2 - Large (16:9) P1 - Standard (2:3) TB4 - Branded image (16:9) PB4 - Branded image (2:3)

New Team and Persona hero rows

Introducing two new row types; the SHT1 row for Teams and the SHP1 row for Personas, which support the Follow functionality and surfacing of additional metadata.

Both new row types enable operators to configure the following properties:

• Display Sports (toggle)
• Display Country (toggle)
• Image Bounding Box - options include inset (set by default) or outset

SHT1 (16:9) Team hero row:

Asset key metadata is left-aligned over a wallpaper (16:9), displaying the following metadata:

• Team name (title)
• Badge
• Short description (not supported on mobile)
• Team logo (inset or outset)

Reference app functionality:

• Follow the Team by selecting the Follow icon (signed-in users only)
• View Team metadata, including the sport and country. If metadata exceeds one line, expand using the ellipsis icon.

SHP1 (16:9) Persona hero row:

Sports example:

Entertainment example:

Asset key metadata is left-aligned over a wallpaper (16:9), displaying the following metadata:

• Badge
• Persona name (title)
• Persona metadata, including the sport and or country (optional.) If metadata exceeds one line, expand using the ellipsis icon.
• Short description (not supported on mobile)
• Persona image (inset or outset)

Reference app functionality:

• Follow the Persona by selecting the Follow icon (signed-in users only)
• View Persona metadata, including the sport and country. If metadata exceeds one line, expand using the ellipsis icon.

For more information, read our pages and supported rows article.

Sports and Entertainment personalization

Follow assets

Introducing a new Follow feature for Team and Persona assets:

We have created a new Following page, where fans can manage (view and remove) Teams and Athletes from their Following list within the user profile settings area. Operators can provide the user with an entry point to this page by configuring the sub-menu items in the Account menu (more details below).

Following sub-menu item

Operators can configure the Following sub-menu item allowing users to navigate to the Following page to view and manage their followed assets.

To set up the Following sub-menu item, navigate to Admin → Menu → Account and configure a Following sub-menu item using /account/profiles/following as the destination.

For more information, read our sub-menus article.

Manage followed assets

We've implemented a set of new APIs to store the content a user chooses to follow. The default maximum number of follows per profile is set to 50. Administrators can configure the Max Follows per profile via Admin → Settings → System → Profile.

Please note, if the number of profile follows is unlimited, this may lead to performance issues. When a user reaches the maximum follows per profile, an error message displays, prompting users to review followed content.

List customizations

{ProfileFollows} list rule

To support the new Follow functionality, operators can configure lists of assets that relate to assets that a user follows. The example below is a rule set to include an asset type Event that Has Relation to Followed items of type Teams.

List rules:

Use asset relations to control the content that's surfaced, alongside list rules to filter and sort the display of assets.

New Has Relation list filter

This release provides operators the tools to curate lists according to assets related to one another, e.g., showing all Personas in a specific Event. This feature is extremely powerful for our sports customers where asset relations are heavily used.

Select the Has Relation filter option and specify the following:

1. The relation type(s)
2. The ID of the returned related assets

For further information, see our article on asset relations.

New Event Start Date and Event End Date list rules

Operators can now curate list rules according to whether the Event Start/End Date is Greater than, Less than, Equal to, → Now, Now and limited to, or A defined date and time.

Relationship information summary

The API request for /item/{id} now retrieves the Item ID, Item Type, and Title of any assets related to the asset given in the request. For example, you may wish to display the title of the related Competition, Stage, or Confederation.

Search

The search API now includes the new sport asset types, each with a dedicated row; Confederations, Competitions, Event, Stages, and Teams. Persona assets are returned within the People group of results.

The search API also caters for a News and Highlights row described below.

Search result grouping

With the addition of sports assets, we're supporting a pre-defined set of asset subtypes:

• Highlights
• Interview
• Documentary
• News
• Best Moments
• Replay
• Preview
• Reactions
• Throwback

Applying one of these pre-defined asset subtypes dictates whether the asset is surfaced in the News and Highlights row on the search results page. This feature is designed to be used for Program assets. Operators can assign subtypes in the asset metadata, but we recommend that this process takes place at ingestion.

For more information, read our search article.

Enhanced Event metadata

We've made several improvements to the metadata that is shown for existing sports rows.

Operators now have greater flexibility over the ability to surface Event metadata for sports-specific row types:

• Round information is pulled from the Event asset's metadata area

• Competition information is pulled from the Competitions menu within the Event asset's Related area
• Stage information is pulled from the Stages menu within the Event asset's Related area

If available, Event asset metadata can be displayed on the following row types:

ST3 row:

The pre-existing ST3 row has been renamed from ST3 Stages (16:9) to ST3 Events grid (16:9). This row now supports:

• A Display Stage Selector toggle. If activated, the stage selector displays above the row assets, helping users to refine content
• An option to display additional Event asset metadata, e.g., the Stage/Round or the Competition/Stage

ST1 row:

To better represent the row's purpose, we've renamed the ST1 row from Stages (16:9) to Standard (16:9).

If metadata is available on the Event asset, the ST1 row now surfaces the Round/Stage.

STV2 row:

Within the STV2 row properties, operators can now control the display of additional Event asset metadata via selecting either Stage/Round or Competition/Stage.

SHC1 (Competition) hero row:

Operators can now choose to display further metadata on the SHC1 row, including the Sport, Confederation, and Season.

SHCF1 (Confederation) hero row:

Operators can now choose to display the sports metadata on the SHCF1 row, e.g., Football or Tennis.

STV3 row:

Within the STV3 row properties, operators can now control the display of additional Event asset metadata via selecting either Stage/Round or Competition/Stage.

Operators can also now configure the following row properties:

• The max. number of assets to display
• A specific destination URL for the list title

SHE1 row:

Operators can now toggle on/off the display of the following related asset metadata:

• Sport
• Competition
• Stage
• Round

C1 (1:1 or logo) row:

Formerly known as the SC1 Competitions (1:1) row, specifically for sports content, we've reworked this row and renamed it to the C1 (1:1 or logo) row. Operators can use the C1 row to display all assets for both sports and entertainment. The C1 row supports the display of a 1:1 square or logo inside a circular bounding box, and we've added some new properties:

• The destination URL
• The image bounding box (small or large)
• The circle size (inset or outset)

Existing rows supported on Sport item detail pages

To enhance editorial options, we've made changes to enable specific pre-existing entertainment rows to be added to the following sports item detail pages:

Row	Supported page templates
TB4	Confederation item detail Competition item detail Event item detail Persona item detail Team item detail
PB4
T1
T2
P1
S2

 

For more information, read our pages and supported rows article.

Filter Event assets by Distributor

Event assets can now be filtered by the Distributor within the asset catalog. Distributor information is surfaced from the deal the asset is associated with.

Rocket API enhancements

Broadcast date

We've added the Broadcast date to the ItemDetail and ItemSummary for Rocket API consumers.

Asset following

Obtain information on the following:

Action	Final endpoint
Update the profile API to include information about followed assets	GET /account/profile
Save information about a new unfollowed asset	PUT /account/profile/follows/:itemId
Receive information on whether the asset is followed	GET /account/profile/follows/:itemId
Remove an asset from the profile's list of followed assets	DELETE /account/profile/follows/:itemId
Receive information about all the assets the profile follows	GET /account/profile/follows
Return a list of followed assets per profile	GET /account/profile/followed/list

 

What's changed

Presentation Manager

New endpoint for images with client-side caching

Images in Presentation Manager are now served using a new endpoint that adds client-side caching instructions. This improves the operator's experience in image loading times on repeated page visits.

Restricted access to sensitive internal APIs

We've split our services on a network level to tighten up sensitive internal APIs and improve stability. Operators can now only access AXIS REST services.

Intercom

Internal HTTP APIs and encryption

We now use HTTPS in all internal traffic; therefore, we have removed the HTTP bindings altogether, ensuring no unencrypted communications are used. This process tightens the security of the AXIS product.

What's fixed

Presentation Manager

• Fixed an issue that prevented setting the allowed image types for Confederation, Competition, Stage, and Event asset types
• Fixed an issue with the date and time asset fields incorrectly saving the set value
• Fixed an issue that displayed the Sequence number field in the incorrect position
• Fixed an issue that caused event dates to save incorrectly when using the 12h time format
• Fixed an issue with the left sidebar that overlapped the main content in some scenarios on a small browser window
• Resolved an issue that prevented the Role, Gender, Countries, Round, and Competition type fields from being multilingual
• Fixed an issue with the page row data preview when a single asset is selected
• Fixed an issue with the asset selector when creating a new link that previously did not display the whole asset title
• Fixed a page loading on browser refresh issue when changing password
• Fixed a layout issue that occurred when opening the sitemap

Back Office

• Fixed a Rocket API issue that returned the wrong list size on getListDetail endpoint when the relations parameter was specified
• Fixed a Rocket API getPage endpoint issue that now returns stage Titles instead of ShortTitles for the Competition detail page
• Updated the API lang parameter description issue in the API documentation, stating a dash should separate the optional region identifier from the language identifier instead of an underscore

What's fixed

• Made a change to prevent potential caching issues when using the API
• Fixed an issue that prevented operator profile lists from being used in the navigation/menu
• Fixed an issue where the expected list results were not being returned in certain circumstances - for example, when using the stage selector to filter events
• Fixed an issue where page rows were not being updated when an operator switched from a standard to a restricted profile
• Fixed an issue that prevented the ingestion of certain asset types through SOAP API
• Fixed an issue that caused a Generic - Publish Image activity error to occur on Presentation Manager during asset ingestion