Spring has arrived on our side of the globe, bringing with it a new release and the March newsletter. We love working with our clients, and this time, a big part of our focus has been on customer-driven projects, including AdSales and desktop scheduling features. We’ve also been enhancing the web client, working closely with two pilot customers, conducting internal testing, and adapting the platform to better meet user needs. Security and functional testing remain a priority as part of our ongoing efforts to make the system even more reliable.
Web Access Module for agencies & AdSales
One of our clients working with AdSales needed an interface for third-party users—specifically, agencies. In this release, we rewrote the interface using the current web client framework and incorporated it into the standard product. To ensure data security, we implemented shadow entities—a feature that exposes only explicitly defined rows and columns of a table to the web front end—and added two-factor authentication for external users. During the reimplementation, we introduced several functional and performance improvements to simplify the agency booking process.
New Desktop Scheduling Features – Deleted Slots Bin & Quick Blocks
We have introduced Deleted slots bin functionality in planner screen. When user switch this functionality ON using a dedicated button on a toolbar, all deleted slots are kept in a special user block called Deleted slots bin. User can display content of the Deleted slots bin and possibly copy or move the slots back to the transmission schedule. However, such slots might lose information about position in long term plan, replay, etc.
Quick Blocks provide a separate view of user blocks, which can be either user-specific or public collections of transmission slots. Quick blocks can be filled with content from programme, version, record, and validity period list, serving as a buffer for future use—ideal for frequently used combinations of promos or bumpers. Additionally, new actions have been introduced to simplify reordering, allowing users to move slots up or down.
Improvements to the Web Client
PROVYS web contains new functionality of Favourites and Recently used items on home screen. Users can star their favourite agenda using application main menu. Such agenda is then placed into the Favourites items. Recently used items just contain agendas visited by the users in the past. Drag-and-drop functionality in web planners, copying the favorite mechanism from planning in the desktop app. There are also unique URLs for planners, giving the option to share what you are doing by link or opening many windows at the same time.
Outgress Gateway Proxy – Secure Connectivity
Sometimes, integrated systems or storage used for integration are not directly visible from the PROVYS system (this often happens when PROVYS is deployed to the cloud and integrated systems are in the customer’s internal network). Outgress Gateway Proxy is a simple service that enables forwarding communication from PROVYS / Outgress Gateway to a different network segment without compromising security.
Functional Testing
In our functional testing program, we continue to expand AdSales price calculation tests by adding support for two critical business areas. The first is acquisition finance—since licensing rights are the most significant part of a broadcaster’s assets, we now rigorously test activations, depreciations, and other financial operations to ensure accuracy down to the last cent. The second focus area is microscheduling, where we concentrate on material selection, content segmentation, logo placement, and secondary events to ensure frame-accurate transmission scheduling.
