Extend the GetSessionList SOAP API to allow for the retrieval of archived sessions
Hello,
As per a recent exchange with one of the Panopto developers, it turns out that GetSessionsList only returns active sessions, contrary to what is for example included in the Sessions Created or Edited report :
The 'Sessions Created or Edited' report includes active and archived sessions while the GetSessionsList api only includes active sessions. The report also includes sessions that were created, edited, or approved/rejected in the date range, while the GetSessionsList api only returns sessions that were created during the date range.
There are no options to get the GetSessionsList api to include archived sessions at this time..
Given that, to the best of my knowledge at least, there seems to be no easy way to retrieve a time-bound list of all sessions, be they active or archived, I would be very grateful if the extension of an existing method to allow for that could be considered in a future release. The functionality could be added as an option in the ListSessionRequest class properties, for example.
The business rationale for this feature request is to strive towards feature and data parity between the synchronous APIs and what is returned asynchronously by reports.
Of course, if a simple, alternative way should exist to return a list of all sessions, please and let me know and disregard this request.
Kind regards
Cristiano Sala
Comments
Hi
thank you for your question.
You can retrieve the Session storage report which we recently added. It will show you sessions archived as well.
It is listed as point 1.4.m in this article:
Hope this is what you after.
Best
Evelin
Hello Evelin,
Thank you for your comment. As stated in my original post, the intention here is to use the SOAP APIs to return the same result as the Session Report. I am aware that the latter also contains the archived sessions, and am trying to reproduce this behaviour using GetSessionsList in order to build a near real-time student analytics dashboard.
That's why I was enquiring as to the possibility of enhancing the GetSessionsList method so as to return the list of archived sessions as well.
I hope that makes it clearer.
Kind regards,
Cristiano
Great points. The API needs to have parity with the UI and the reports, but there are also some pretty large deficiencies in the reports themselves.
For example, none of the session based reports provide information about sessions or their analytics for sessions which have been deleted.
Hundreds of students could have watched thousands of hours about a video but if the session has been deleted, it will not appear on any future reports. I believe the only way to retain that information is to retain old copies of the generated reports because even if you re-run the same report with the same date range, the deleted Session no longer appears on the report.
I think the System views and downloads report retains viewing information about a session's views, but the session ID to which the views are linked simply won't be on any of the Session focused reports.
I sent the following suggestions for the System session storage report to Panopto 3 weeks ago:
We’re getting much closer to providing admins with the information we need. I think there’s just a few tweaks which need to be made but you’re like 95% there.If a file is deleted but is still in the recycle bin, does it appear on this report? I can’t check because in the Panopto UI, there’s no way to see the SessionID for recycled content. It should, because my understanding is that those hours still count as Stored hours. Learn About Created, Stored, and Archived Hours
What are Stored Hours?
“This is the total number of hours of video stored in your Panopto library, including videos in the Recycle Bin.”
But when a file is permanently deleted, I assume it no longer appears on this report. This reduces our ability to analyze content usage over time. If you simply changed the status to Deleted and told us when that happened, we could better track content lifecycles.
It would be better if instead of having a column which is only T/F and only for Archived content, if that field indicated the status of the video: On-Demand/Archived/Recycled/Deleted. It would also be good to know when the status changed and by what person/content retention policy.
I don’t think the report currently explicitly states whether a video is a reference copy or not. Right now I think the only way this report can tell you if a video is a reference copy is if the On-Demand Hours are Zero and the Archived field is False.
Here is an example from my site:
Original file: Editing Training 2 ee04145f-e74f-4e81-b314-aeff013dcdab
Ref Copy 1: Editing Training 2 81ba2c19-50bc-4c5a-ad00-af0000314100
Ref Copy 2: Editing Training 2 83efb4b5-208a-4eef-917a-af010026e11d
To make this easier, you could add a field Is Reference Copy and set it to “True”, and instead of saying the source is “Unspecified” in the Stream Source field, set it to “Reference Copy”. It would also be helpful to know the source SessionID of the reference copy. (I do like that you set the On-Demand Hours to Zero. When I am creating reports in Tableau, this helps me ensure I am not counting those hours.)
The UI for report creation/scheduling is confusing but that’s minor. Since the report reflects the storage at a particular point in time rather than a rolling report, the result is the same whether it’s run as a recurring or a one time report.
Summary of suggested changes:
Change Archived (T/F) to Status (On-Demand/Archived/Recycled/Deleted)
Change Archived Date to Last Status Change Date
Add a field Changed By which shows either the person (or content retention policy) which archived, deleted, or restored the file.
Combine On-Demand Hours and Archived Hours into Session Hours. We can use filters to get the totals we need.
Add a field Is Reference Copy (T/F)
Add a field Reference Copy Source which contains the SessionID of the original file
Improve clarity when scheduling the report
I think those changes would really improve the utility of the report and I think satisfy most of my remaining reporting requests.Am I correct that the following statements are accurate?
Reference copies do not appear in Sessions created or edited reports
After a file is deleted it no longer appears on future Sessions created or edited reports
Charles Barbour
Educational Technology Analyst? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
University of Notre Dame
[email protected]
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Hi Christiano,
I spoke with @Jim McNeill about this. We are not planning to add to the SOAP API, but rather to the REST API going foward.
However, we are likely to include that information in the upcoming analytics improvements.
Kind regards
Evelin