Smart Playlists

A smart playlist dynamically collects media clips based on one or multiple filters. For example: setting a filter to only include videos published in the last 10 days will result in a smart playlist that continually updates to show only videos published in the past 10 days.

More advanced Solr queries can also be applied (recommended for advanced users only).

1.0 | Create a smart playlist

To create a smart playlist, click “Create new smart playlist” and fill in a title and description.

Use suggests
Select “Use Suggests” to find related content based on the context that the playlist is embedded in. Contextual information from the website or article will be used to select content within the playlist’s filters. See section 5.0 | Suggests for more details.

Allow dynamic filters
Enabling this will allow the playlist to use dynamically set values as input for its filters. See section 3.0 | Use dynamic filters for more details.

2.0 | Use filter sets

Set a filter for the playlist based on metadata, such as title, published date or source ID. Newly uploaded videos that meet the filter conditions will be automatically added to the playlist.

Filters work using the “and/or” principle:

• Add multiple filters within a filter set by clicking “+add filter” within the filter set. For example: only include content where media type is ‘video’ or ‘audio’.
• Apply multiple filter sets by clicking “+add filter set”. For example: only include content where the media type is ‘video’ and content published in the last 2 months.

Alternatively, you can use a Solr query to filter the playlist. Selecting the Solr query option overrides previously set filters. Solr queries are recommended for experienced users. Read more about the Solr documentation.

3.0 | Use dynamic filters

Dynamic filters allow you to customize which items are shown in related items on a per-clip basis, without the need to use multiple playlists.

When “Allow dynamic filters” is enabled, a plug icon is shown next to the filters you create. Clicking the plug opens a modal that accepts input from a variety of sources:

• Local storage value: reads a value stored in the viewer’s browser
• Datafeed: fetches a value from an OVP datafeed
• Query string: uses a URL parameter such as ?category=sports to filter
• Javascript: write custom JavaScript to handle the filter input
• Text with macro: allows to filter on a range of media clip attributes (e.g. {{mediaclip.length}}) that expands per clip

The content preview on the Playlists page does not update with dynamic filter settings, because dynamic filters are evaluated per clip. To test dynamic filters, preview or publish a clip with the corresponding input present (e.g. a URL parameter or local storage value).

We recommend also setting default filters alongside your dynamic filters. These will be used as a fallback when the dynamic filter input is missing (for example, due to a missing metadata field).

4.0 | Limit & sort results

Besides applying filter sets, the playlist can be limited to a certain number of videos. Apply sorting to rearrange the order of content:

Make sure to activate your playlist in the top right corner and click “Save”.

5.0 | Suggests

The Suggests feature enables a smart playlist to automatically show content relevant to the page it is embedded on. Instead of displaying a fixed set of clips, the player reads context from the surrounding webpage (such as the article title and metadata) and uses that information to search for matching clips within the playlist’s filter results.

This is useful for publishers who want to surface relevant video content alongside editorial articles without having to manually curate a playlist for each page.

5.1 | Requirements

• The playlist must be of type Smart playlist. Suggests is not available for static playlists or Playlist Collections.
• The feature cannot be combined with Slideshow mode or Datasource playlists.
• Suggests must be enabled on your publication. If the option is not visible in the playlist settings, contact Blue Billywig support.

5.2 | How to enable Suggests

1. Open the playlist you want to configure in the Library.
2. Make sure the playlist type is set to Smart playlist.
3. In the playlist settings, tick Use Suggests.
4. Save the playlist.

Once enabled, the playlist limit is automatically set to 30 results and the Limit, Sort, Slideshow, and Datasource controls are disabled; these settings are not applicable when Suggests is active.

5.3 | How it works

When the playlist loads in the player, it reads contextual information from the page it is embedded on. It looks for the following metadata:

• Open Graph tags (og:title, og:description, og:keywords)
• JSON-LD schema data
• The page title, meta description, and meta keywords

This information is used to build a search query that looks for clips within the results of the playlist’s existing filter settings. In other words, Suggests searches within the filtered set; it does not override or ignore the filters you have configured.

To avoid showing the same clip more than once, the player tracks which clips a visitor has already watched using their browser’s local storage. Already-viewed clips are automatically excluded from subsequent suggestions.

5.4 | Extra Suggests query

The Extra Suggests query field allows you to fine-tune what the player searches for, in addition to the context it reads from the page.

You can enter:

• A plain search string: added to the contextual query as a search term
• A Solr-weighted query: add ^xx (replacing xx with a number) to control how much weight a term carries relative to the page context. A higher number means more influence.
• JavaScript: an expression that evaluates to a string, allowing dynamic queries based on page variables or data layer values

If you enter a term without a weight modifier, it is automatically assigned the highest weight, making it the primary driver for the suggestions.

Example: plain search string

sports

Example: weighted query

sports^50 football^20

Example: JavaScript

document.querySelector('meta[name="category"]').getAttribute("content");

5.5 | What is shown below the settings

When Suggests is enabled, the playlist preview in the CMS shows a notice:

The clips shown in the preview represent the filtered pool that Suggests searches within; not the clips that will necessarily appear to a specific visitor. The actual clips shown depend on the context of the page where the playlist is embedded.