About Asset Metadata Formatting

As of Skillport 8 Patch 61, a new configuration setting is available to improve the formatting of OLSA generated metadata. You can work with your Skillsoft Account Team to enable these features.

The information below highlights the differences when the new setting is enabled.

Course Description Block

The following changes apply to the Course Description block of the asset metadata.

• The course_description= tag is removed, but the course description text remains.
• In name-value pairs, the "=" sign is replaced with a ":". For Example, "Duration=" is "Duration:"
• The labels for some field names are different:
  • TargetAudience is updated to Target Audience
  • In some instances, Duration is updated to Expected Duration
  • In some instances, Creator is updated to Presenter or Author
• Some new fields are included in the updated metadata:
  • The Pages field is added to Book assets that have pages, but is not included for assets without pages such as Video or Audiobook.
  • The Media Type field is added for Book assets. Values include Audiobook, Video, and Book for all other Book assets.
• Some fields are excluded from the updated metadata:
  • CoverImageURL
  • Language
  • Fields with no value
• Changes to field values include:
  • For videos, Course_System=skillsoft_book is now Course_System=skillsoft_video
  • Author and Presenter (formally, Creator) names are no longer surrounded by double quotes.

For Duration and Expected Duration, the old format is <minutes> or <hours>:<minutes>. The new format is shown in the table below:

Note: Previously, Duration for Book assets was always n/a. Now, videos and audiobooks will display the actual duration in the old format for sites without the configuration enabled, and in the new format for sites with the configuration enabled.

Example

Format Comparison for a Video Asset

Truncation Rules for the Description Field

New truncation rules for the Course Description area apply for both the old and new formats. In the old format, truncation may have been abrupt, such as, "Managing your personal ener." Now, truncation occurs just before an area of white space, and an ellipsis (...) is appended, such as, "Managing your personal..."