You would make a collection of channels, then send that to the clients and hide All/Favorites.
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Make a Channel Collection named Kids, and kids only mode will force that.
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Thanks, that’s really neat. Discovery for users could be improved but now I know, fantastic. Thank you.
Edit: @Maddox I've tried what you've suggested and it doesn't work. What did work, was setting a 'server side setting' to choose a particular collection for the device.
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Another issue I've found. I've been experimenting using my iPad. Having worked out how to do what I wanted, I disabled the kids only mode from the setting overrides. The channels DVR app on my iPad was still in kids only mode and I had to change that back manually from the app rather than simply removing the setting from the server.
Kids only mode will force the collection named “Kids”. Be it the default one, or one you made with the name “Kids”.
Yes, server side settings actually set the settings and lock them on the client side. If you remove them, the setting doesn’t go back to what it was previously. It doesn’t track it like that.
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Yes, I understood that is what's supposed to happen but it didn't for me.
I had a collection named Kids that was ignored by the kids only setting.
Weird. Working fine here. Submit diagnostics from the app and we’ll take a look.
I've just submitted diagnostics a minute ago from the iPad app and now from the web interface: 6e5ee237-bcca-419e-80cd-f0e8ae55ac09
Here are screenshots from iPad and from the channel collections.
Have you applied that channels collection to the clients via the server side settings?
Well, that's how I have it working. I understood from your initial post that Channels would spot a collection called Kids and apply that automagically when kids only mode was activated
Make a Channel Collection named Kids, and kids only mode will force that.
I had a collection already but I made a new one named Kids thinking it would apply automatically when kids mode was enabled. But that didn't work, so I applied it as the only collection visible via server side settings.
If you turn off kids only mode does your Kids channel collection show?
No, not my iPad (that I’ve been testing), nor my iPhone.
It shows the auto generated kids collection. Ie, not my one, the one that channels has made.
There’s the disconnect. If it’s not showing at all, it definitely won’t show in kids only mode.
If your app is showing the old Kids filter, it means you haven’t applied any channel collections to your device via server side settings.
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Wow, ok, these settings are way more complex than I had expected. I appreciate the power and granularity, but I can't help feeling there might be a more user friendly UI.
So previously, I'd set up my daughters iPad with the following settings to get over the issue I had been having.
It hadn't even occurred to me that even after setting up a collection that you might then have to separately make that collection visible to clients generally.
But now I've done the global setting that forces the kids collection to be visible for all clients, yes, it has replaced the default 'kids' collection as you suggested.
Edit:
I suppose I find it a bit convoluted that setting up a collection requires so many steps. Shouldn't the assumption be that the collection is visible to all clients unless told not to be, either explicitly or via turning on of kids mode? It just feels like there is at least one more step here than there might be and discoverability is low.
Saying all that, I'm really impressed by how much control and complexity there is here in fine tuning settings per device. I'd just like to think there might be a more user friendly way of exposing all this functionality.
OK, now I've got another problem.
If I use the global server side settings to force the Kids channel collection to all devices, that is then the only collection visible on all devices. Is there not a way to have the bespoke collections added rather than replacing all?
This is just all so confusingly complex.
If they were all forced on all the clients, by just existing, then you’ll have to hide things if you didn’t want them to show. Then it would be more complex. Additionally, there’s times, like March Madness, that you might want collections showing while not showing the rest of the year.
So, you make them, and then apply them as you wish. This is all explained in the documentation of Channel Collections.
Any time you utilize channel collections, the old ones will be removed. Check out the docs where all of this is explained.
You can add as many collections as you want, and the kids collection will be forced while in kids only mode.
You’re sort of coming to channel collections backwards, from just trying to get this one thing to work with kids only mode.
Is really suggest reading the docs on Channel Collections, then it will be more clear on how to strategize using them with Kids Only Mode.
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Maybe you think I’m coming at it backwards, but I am just a user reporting my experience.
I had skimmed the page about collections that you shared previously. It confirmed what I had done to get things working my way which felt very much like a hacky approach. That’s why I was interested in your solution which sounded much more straightforward.
Personally, I think Collections should have a sub-setting to control where they are applied. It would be very obvious to users: create collection, choose where it is applied. Done.
I think it is not user friendly to have to do two separate actions in different locations to create the desired effect. My proposed arrangement would allow for turning on and off some collections periodically and by device. Perhaps you could even add date or time ranges to each so that they turn on and off automatically. But with these settings within the collections UI, it could be (if designed well) very easy to understand.
I don’t think the feature is so complex that it should require reading of help docs. Conceptually it is a very simple idea, it’s just been implemented in a complex way.
I’m saying that as someone who is far from a clueless, IT illiterate user. I think most other people I know would have never figured this out at all.
I get that you guys are a small team but UI / UX is really important, especially if you want to make the product accessible to more people. I’m assuming that you do want to do that right?