Retrieve Channels and Videos from Office 365 Video Portal Using REST Video API

In this post, you will learn how to retrieve the video portal information, video channels and videos of respective channel from the Office 365 sites using REST Video APIs (Newly introduced for Video Portal).

Microsoft has introduced new APIs for working with video portal. The hierarchy of information storage will be,

• Video portal is present in an Office 365 instance.
• Video Portal consists of channels.
• Channels in turn consist of many videos.

Retrieve Video Portal Details:

First we will see how we can retrieve video portal URL of the Office 365 site using REST Video API.

The API used to get the video portal information will be “https://siteurl/_api/VideoService.Discover”. The properties which can be accessed from this operation are, Video Site Page URL, Channel Template URL, Player template URL and Video Site URL.

The following code snippet shows the JQuery Ajax call to get the video portal information from the Office 365 site.

1. $.ajax
2. ({  
3.     url: "/_api/VideoService.Discover",  
4.     type: "GET",  
5.     headers: { "accept": "application/json;odata=verbose" },  
6.     success: function(data)
7.     {  
8.         var videoSiteInfo = data.d;  
9.         console.log("Video Site Page URL : " + videoSiteInfo.O365VideoPageUrl);  
10.         console.log("Video Channel URL : " + videoSiteInfo.ChannelUrlTemplate);  
11.         console.log("Player URL : " + videoSiteInfo.PlayerUrlTemplate);  
12.         console.log("Video Site URL : " + videoSiteInfo.VideoPortalUrl);          
13.     },  
14.     error: function(data){  
15.     }  
16. });  

Retrieve Channels:

On the Video portal, you can start creating channels. The channels are used to categorize the videos. Creating channel literally means you are going to create site collections.

To get the channels from the video portal, the video portal URL should be used with REST Video API to pull the information. The REST API URL will be https://videositeurl/_api/VideoService/Channels. Here video site URL is the component which we have identified in the above section.

Next, we will see how we can retrieve information about particular channel. Identify the channel and get the channel id manually or by using the previous operation. The operation will be very similar to the above one. Only difference is Channel id is passed to get the particular channel information.

https://videositeurl/_api/VideoService/Channels('Channel-GUID')

The following code snippet shows the JQuery Ajax call to get the channel details from the Office 365 Video portal.

1. $.ajax
2. ({  
3.     url: "/portals/hub/_api/VideoService/Channels", // Pass Channel id to get particular channel info  
4.     type: "GET",  
5.     headers: { "accept": "application/json;odata=verbose" },  
6.     success: function(data)
7.     {  
8.     var channelInfo = data.d.results[0]; // First Channel  
9.         console.log("channel Name : " + channelInfo.Title);  
10.         console.log("channel URL : " + channelInfo.ServerRelativeUrl);  
11.       // Similarly other properties can be retrieved
12.     },  
13.     error: function(data){  
14.     }  
15. });  

Retrieve Videos from Channels: 

Now we will see how we can retrieve videos from a particular channel using REST Video API. With the video portal URL and channel ID identified in the above sections, get the channel videos using below API.

https://videositeurl/_api/VideoService/Channels('Channel-GUID')/Videos

The operation will fetch us all the videos from the channel. Using for each, loop through the result set to get the details of each video. The properties which can be viewed are File name, video url, Author details, video download URL, view count, thumbnail url, duration, video uploaded date and channel details. The following code snippet shows the operation in detail.

Now we will see how we can retrieve particular video detail. This is again similar to the above operation. Once you identify the video id, you can pass it using query to SharePoint along with channel id to get more information about single video. The same set of properties will be retrieved here. The REST Video API will be,

https://videositeurl/_api/VideoService/Channels('Channel-GUID')/Videos('Video-GUID') 

The following code snippet shows the JQuery Ajax call to get the video details of a channel from the Office 365 Video portal.

1. $.ajax
2. ({  
3.     url: "/portals/hub/_api/VideoService/Channels('Channel-GUID')/Videos",  
4.     type: "GET",  
5.     async: false,  
6.     headers: { "accept": "application/json;odata=verbose" },  
7.     success: function(data)
8.     {  
9.         var videoInfo = data.d.results[0]; // First Video  
10.         console.log("Video Name : " + videoInfo.FileName);  
11.         console.log("Video URL : " + videoInfo.Url);  
12.     // Similarly other properties can be retrieved  
13.     },  
14.     error: function(data){  
15.     }  
16. });  

An Overview of New Office 365 Video Portal

In this post, you will learn about Office 365 video portal. From this portal, users can manage their videos and categorize the videos using channels.

Video Portal:

Microsoft has introduced new video portal for Office 365. Office 365 creates separate site collection for portal (/portals/hub). The point publishing page present on hub site collection will be used to create/upload, view or edit the videos on the portal. The videos on the portal can be categorized using channels. Users can view their own videos or the videos uploaded by other portal users.

Channel:

The channel acts as a category for videos uploaded to the video portal. Users can create new channel from point publishing page.

• Once channel is created, user can upload videos to the channel.
• Click on upload button on the top, and select the target channel to upload the video. Set the title and description, then save it.
• Channel settings helps to modify the settings and information of the video channel.
• Title or color can be changed for the channel.
• Permissions can be set for special set of groups.
• Spotlight – Promoting videos on the channel page.
• Yammer – Platform to discuss about the channel on yammer.

• Recycle bin - The component shows all the deleted content on the video portal. Users can restore the deleted content from recycle bin.

Once user go back to the respective channel, they can view the videos they have uploaded to the channel. They can view three tabs, 

• Trending – Shows videos based on user view count
• All Videos – Videos from all portal users
• My Videos – Videos uploaded by logged in user.

Once User clicks on video, video player page will open. Here, Users can play video.

• Video quality can be changed before playing.

• Video can be played with full screen mode.
• Manage section helps user to edit/delete the video.

• The existing thumbnails of video can be viewed and users can update as new thumbnail for video (Several thumbnails will be generated once a video is uploaded to video porta). Or Users can also upload new thumbnails for any video.
• Subtitles or captions option will help users to upload subtitles for a video. The subtitles can be uploaded using this option. Subtitles are of .vtt file extensions.
• Delete option is used to delete the video from portal.