WAN Manager - District Video-on-Demand

• District Content Sharing and Playback - Share content with other systems in your district. Browse and request playback of content that resides on remote servers. Media files requested for playback are queued and transferred at scheduled times.
• District Playlist Sharing - Share playlists across systems in your district.
• District Global Search - Find content from other schools in your district.
• Content and Playlist Publishing Approval - Require that shared content and playlists are subject to administrative approval first before they are distributed to the district. Any users you specify may be granted rights to approve content.
• Content License Distribution - Content may be licensed per school or for entire district. Easily assign content to schools on your WAN from one central district location.
• Transfer Scheduling (Low-Bandwidth Support) - “Store and Forward” technology synchronizes media files between locations during off-peak hours on the schedule you specify. This makes for content sharing that is effective over any connection speeds.
• Bandwidth Management - Throttle bandwidth used for file transfers between server locations.
• Personalization
  • Enhanced Dashboard - A comprehensive, personalized “Dashboard” gives you an at-a-glance view into your recent activities on the WAN, such as recent playlist activity and content transfer activity.
  • Content Logo - Upload your organization’s logo. Your uploaded content is branded with your logo.
• Flexible Server Topologies
  • Direct (Virtual) Schools - WAN Manager Parent Servers / District Servers – Browse over your WAN connection directly to the central server (no local SAFARI Montage server required), and utilize the system as if you have your own local server (with your own users, playlists, uploaded content, etc.). Ideal when high bandwidth is available between school and central server.
  • Remote Schools - Remote schools have their own WAN Manager-enabled server connected to the central server. Ideal when low bandwidth is available between remote school and central server.
• District WAN Settings Management - Manage certain server settings and preferences from the district level.

District and School News

Mark any media upload as “school news,” making it automatically play upon login at your school or the entire district.

Curriculum Standards Improvements

Curriculum standards and correlations have been fully updated for all states. Standards browser allows filtering by document type (e.g., assessment framework, learning standards, and performance descriptors) and standards set.

SAFARI Montage Tutorial

An interactive tutorial is now available within SAFARI Montage.

LDAP

Map multiple LDAP groups to a single SAFARI Montage group.

Content Packages

This release supports the following content packages. All packages listed are available in QuickTime and Windows Media formats. There are no new packages supported in this release.

• Core K-8
• Core K-8 American Overseas
• Core K-8 Canadian
• Core 9-12
• Core 9-12 American Overseas New!
• Core 9-12 Canadian
• Core K-12
• Core K-12 American Overseas New!
• Schlessinger K-8 Additional

SAFARI Montage

• DO NOT INTERRUPT THE UPGRADE PROCESS - It is critical that you do not interrupt the upgrade process. It may appear to be inactive, but it is not. SAFARI Montage 2.0 is an upgrade of significant size. We have seen the software update process take as long as 2 hours on slower hardware. Please be patient.
• Log Out after Software Update (Missing Content) - After the software update completes and the server reboots, some processes may still be finalizing in the background. If you log in to SAFARI Montage for the first time and do not see any content but know that it is active, log out, completely close all browser windows, wait 5 minutes, and log in to Montage again. Initialization can take several minutes. Please be patient.
• Customizable Login Screen - The Customizable Login Screen feature has been disabled in this release. It will be returning soon in a future version.
• Permanent Links and Microsoft Office - Permanent Links feature has been disabled in this release. The links may not function when placed into certain Microsoft Office applications on certain machines. This is due to known issues with the way Microsoft Office handles external hyperlinks. We are working on a solution for a future SAFARI Montage version.
• Help System - The Help system does not yet contain WAN Manager documentation. It is forthcoming.
• Browser Compatibility - The following legacy browsers are no longer supported for use with SAFARI Montage:
  • Mac Internet Explorer 5.x
• Operating System Compatibility - The following legacy operating systems are no longer compatible with SAFARI Montage:
  • Mac OS 9

WAN Manager™

• Initial Connection to Parent Server - When parent server connection is first made by entering an IP address or hostname into the “WAN Manager Parent Server” field in WAN Settings, a message appears indicating that connectivity is offline. This message should be ignored. It will disappear once the background sync application has had a chance to finish. Allow 10 to 15 minutes to elapse and the message will disappear.
• WAN Settings Changes are not Immediate - Any changes in WAN Settings are not sent immediately to other servers. A background syncing process runs every 15 minutes to exchange these settings between servers. It may take up to 30 minutes before other servers are aware of these changes and are acting on them. For example, if you disable the Transfer Schedule so that media files are exchanged continuously at all times of day, the files may not begin transferring for up to 30 minutes after saving the change to the WAN settings.
• CreationStation Content on Playlists is not Playable or Transferable to Parent Server - CreationStation content will not be playable or transferable on a globally shared playlist that arrives at the parent server from a child server. Clicking “Play” on these items will display “File not found on this server”. If you would like to share CreationStation content throughout the WAN, you must do it from the parent server. Log in to a school on the parent server, upload your content, then create and share the playlist.
• Parent Server can not See Packages Assigned to Child Server - The Schools page on the parent server currently does not show packages that are assigned to remote schools. You may log into that school’s server directly to see which packages are assigned. It is important to make sure you do not assign a package to a school that already has that package because unassigning a package can only be performed with permission from Library Video Company.
• Pending Items are Hidden after “Require Approval” is Disabled - Disabling either of the “Require Approval” checkboxes on the WAN Settings page does not automatically approve or disapprove any existing items in the Pending Playlists or Pending Content sections. The items will remain in the pending areas until they are manually approved or disapproved. Disabling “Require Approval” checkboxes causes their pending buttons to hide from the left-hand sub-menu. If you have items in the pending areas and you disable “Require Approval,” they may appear to be missing. It is a good practice to approve or deny all items in the pending areas before disabling “Require Approval.”
• “Newly Received Content” Panel - The “Newly Received Content” panel may not always show all content that has recently arrived at this server and is accessible to this user. This will be fixed in a future version.
• “Publish” and “District Sharing” Sometimes Unavailable - Publish and district sharing features are sometimes grayed out until the synchronization process is 100% complete. On the parent server, check the “Connected Montage Servers” page to monitor database synchronization activity. On child servers, check the “WAN Settings” page.

CreationStation™

• Browser Compatibility - The following browsers are not compatible with the CreationStation add-on:
  • Mac Firefox 1.5
• Operating System Compatibility - The following operating systems are not compatible with the CreationStation add-on:
  • Mac OS X 10.2
• Uploading Media - If you experience any issues with uploading media, be sure the latest Java plug-in is installed (http://www.java.com) in your web browser.