Newshub 2.3: A Smoother Client Experience

For news agencies and content producers that share or sell content with clients, transparency is a key part of doing business. When news is planned, scheduled, or even considered, end users – publishers themselves – need to be kept updated so that they can plan, too.

Transparency was the driving factor behind two recent updates to Superdesk Newshub. With Newshub version 2.3, news subscribers are always in the know.

Custom Metadata

A major enhancement in version 2.3 is how we process clients’ custom metadata. Previously, when a customized vocabulary was created in Superdesk and transmitted to Newshub, users were limited in how these custom fields could be filtered on the frontend.

For instance, if The Canadian Press, one of Newshub’s users, wanted its clients to be able to filter content by “index” or “version” or any other custom field, they wouldn’t have been able to. Now they can. 

“This is a significant enhancement for news agencies and their clients,” said Gideon Lehmann, a Sourcefabric project manager. “They can now distribute content with separate metadata fields to end users, enabling those users to filter more granularly than before.”

Better Coverage Planning

The other major update relates to how news clients are informed about upcoming coverage. In Newshub, news producers could alert customers to content by “Planning” items or “Events.” In 2.3, clients can filter by either category on the frontend. This is useful to get a sense of breaking news versus news items related to scheduled coverage.

For instance, STT, the Finnish news agency, might be planning to cover a big sporting event or the next election – news that is tied to a date and can be scheduled. By contrast, breaking news – the earthquakes in Turkey and Syria, for instance – is unpredictable. In Newshub, editors can now alert their clients to what’s on their agenda for both content types. On the front end, clients can filter between “Planning” items and event-related pieces. Previously, these were lumped together.

Auto routing from Superdesk 

Finally, we’ve made changes in the Superdesk Planning Component to allow for auto ingests and routing of news items to Newshub via Superdesk. This will facilitate the metadata and planning updates and ensure that everything works smoothly in the background.

“Taken together, these tweaks to Newshub will provide even more transparency to clients of news agencies big and small,” Lehmann said.

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