access to each programme’s transmission history and available runs.
“Our first priority was the
workflow, which became the operation manager’s best friend. Our mission was to take out the manual steps of their process as much as possible.” Following nine months of testing and providing feedback on the prototype, “in 2011 we felt confident the system was ready to fly solo.” The success of this system also led to the creation of a post production module for ordering and booking. “From starting small and
growing step-by-step as we needed, it worked for us. It was essential to allow plenty of time to test and do a parallel run,” said Buga
Echoing earlier comments
about the importance of people when implementing new technology or systems, she said: “The system is only as good as the people using it. It is essential to involve all the potential users as early as possible. Good project management is key and we believe it is better to be sourced within the team than outsourced.” So how will the Provys system evolve? “We’re at the point where we are ready to start linking our physical assets to the records in Provys. We’ll be able to introduce more steps of automation. “In a few months time the system should be ready to do self queries, see which files are edited and automatically upload for transmission. Hopefully by this time next year we’ll be able to have the whole process triggered from Provys and have exceptions reporting for the humans to deal with.
“’Good company upon the
road is the shortest cut’ sums up our relationship with Provys,” Buga concluded. – Melanie Dayasena-Lowe
Collaboration tools for News production: building the BBC Journalism Portal
PART OF the BBC’s response to the rapidly changing media environment is the creation of the Journalism Portal, a flexible and ‘living’ web-based system for collaborative working that can change as the needs of the organisation change. The BBC’s aspiration is also for all the production tools a journalist needs for video, audio and web production to be integrated as lightweight web applications through the Portal. This provides not only a mash-up of timely, relevant information to be presented to the journalist, but also the mash-up of workflows across the organisation. Pauli Visuri from Sharepoint City consultants shared with ITBW delegates insights and experiences from the development of Portal applications, including cutting through the complexities of systems and requirements involved; working with users to craft appealing, user-centric applications in record time; and successes and challenges with the chosen technology. BBC News has taken the methodology and notion behind social media platforms and tools and built a system on top of an existing piece of collaboration software to create one Portal for its journalism community. The Portal is built on top of
a Microsoft SharePoint web application platform designed to facilitate collaboration and the sharing of content and documents. Unlike most of its existing production systems, the Journalism Portal is accessed via a web browser: it is available anywhere there is an internet connection. The architecture of the
underlying SharePoint platform was co-designed with Microsoft. That was combined with an associated networking
Pauli Visuri, consulting director, Sharepoint City
requires a community approach: unless journalists make the effort, they in turn will not be able to benefit, said Visuri. Organisational strain is also a big issue. On top of normal day- to-day pressures, BBC News Group is dealing with a range of tough financial efficiencies, moves to new premises and huge editorial challenges like the 2012 Olympics. And at the moment there is no standard for taking third party applications and bringing them together to build a mash- up journalism system. MOS protocol has had a huge impact in how iNews, ENPS and other systems tie into third parties — but as yet there is no successor. It’s likely there will be a broader industry need for a more standard model for creating these mash-up systems — and not every news organisation can go out and develop a customised portal. These are still early days,
infrastructure designed to deliver high availability, with the level of redundancy that a business-critical system demands. The servers are split across two primary locations in London. This allows for the realities of server patching and maintenance as well as disaster scenarios. To match the demands of the BBC News Group, under the direction of BBC Technology, the Portal team developed an agile methodology: new functions are developed with journalists, and prioritised to keep step with the evolving needs of the business. Common standards and interfaces are vital in a Portal manipulating content from a variety of different sources and systems. A service-oriented architecture has been adopted
across BBC technical systems, alongside a requirement for standard protocols such as SOAP or REST. Some of the requirements of
the Portal — tagging and adding metadata — can seem as though they are adding to workloads. But this system
but the BBC has seen enough to commit to this type of technology and approach. The Portal is starting to add speed and depth to its journalism, driving a culture of change around knowledge sharing and collaboration. — Fergal Ringrose
Business to business: Discussions continue in the David Lean Room at ITBW