Scheduling patterns with relative ending dates

Back in 2018, we released a change allowing the simple scheduling of stacked (or staggered) episodes within a season. You can read more about this change in the original release note.

A new year, and we’re re-visiting that work and extending the functionality! We are adding the ability to create more complex patterns when scheduling, allowing the scheduling of the same content multiple times in a pattern with a single scheduling action, and allowing the use of relative ending dates for your schedule entry pattern.

This note describes this change in full, and, as usual, you can contact support or your Technical Account Manager for further clarification.

As before, when using a Frequency pattern you have the choice of scheduling Daily, Weekly or Monthly.

A new field is displayed underneath which allows the definition of a window length. Previously when using the pattern, all scheduled episodes would last until your defined end date - now this can be overridden to, for example, make two episodes of my series available every Wednesday, with each episode online for 7 days.

Of course any scheduled content will still only exist within the Start and End dates for your overall schedule window - the frequency pattern defines how schedule entries will be defined only within the start and end date constraints.

What does this “Fill schedule window” checkbox do? I’m glad you asked. Checking this box means that the pattern will automatically cycle around and fill your entire schedule window with episodes, even if your rule runs out early.

What this means in practice is that the same episodes will cycle around and become available again. Give it a play today, and if you have any questions about how you can use this functionality ask your TAM!

References

• movida#8251 Scheduling patterns with relative ending dates