You, as the site administrator, instructor, course manager, or another user with editing access, can create groups, displayed as tabs, to help organize course content. How you create content and structure a course can determine the types of groups you choose to create within a simple Course page.
You can create the following types of groups within a Course page:
Simple. A simple group populates track content in a Course page when users explicitly upload tracks to the course in your iTunes U site.
Smart. A smart group displays tracks in a Course page by performing a search of your site for all tracks that match the criteria you specify.
Feed. A feed group automatically populates track content in a Course page based on the specified podcast feed URL and details. Course content can be updated on a periodic basis and, depending on your site settings, can be updated as often as every day.
Using feed groups, your institution can host content on a local server instead of uploading content to Apple’s servers, allowing the content to remain inside your institution’s network. This technique offers multiple forms of distribution from a single source, allows the content to appear in iTunes U and other podcast aggregation destinations without multiple efforts, and allows your institution to provide much more content than if it was all uploaded to Apple’s servers.
To create a simple group:
Make sure you are editing a Course page (click Edit Page in the Tools area).
Click the Add icon in the tab controls section to create a new group.
Type a name for the new group.
Choose Simple from the Type pop-up menu.
Choose an advisory label for the group, if needed:
Unset. Indicates that the group’s explicitness is unknown. iTunes U does not apply an advisory setting to the group.
Do Not Mark. Indicates that the group’s content is not explicit. iTunes U applies the setting, but does not display an advisory graphic for the group. Apple recommends that you choose Do Not Mark when a group is not explicit but should not have the Clean icon advisory graphic because the group does not contain an alternate version of content from an explicit group (Mark Explicit). Choose Do Not Mark to implicitly indicate a group is clean.
Mark Explicit. Indicates that the group is known to contain explicit content, and you want iTunes U to apply an “explicit” setting to the group. iTunes U applies the setting and displays the Explicit icon advisory graphic for the group.
Mark Clean. Indicates that the group is known to be free of explicit content, and you want iTunes U to apply a “clean” setting to the group. iTunes U applies the setting and displays the Clean icon advisory graphic for the group. Apple recommends that you choose Mark Clean only if the group contains alternate versions of content from an explicit group (Mark Explicit).
iTunes U applies the advisory label setting to any new tracks added to the group and displays an advisory graphic for the group, and all tracks within the group. You can override the setting for specific tracks using the Upload and Manage Files page. For more information, see “Adding Content Using the Upload and Manage Files Page.”
Click the Save icon in the tab controls section to save the new group.
For sites that upload content to Apple’s servers, a simple group populates track content in a simple Course page when users explicitly upload tracks to the course in your iTunes U site. To explicitly upload tracks to the course, click Upload And Manage Files in the Tools area of the Course page.
To create a smart group:
Make sure you are editing a Course page (click Edit Page in the Tools area).
Click the Add icon in the tab controls section to create a new group.
Type a name for the new group.
Choose Smart from the Type pop-up menu.
Choose one of the following from the Rules pop-up menu:
All. Indicates you want iTunes U to combine rules and search for tracks that match all the rules you define.
Any. Indicates you want iTunes U to search for tracks that match at least one of the rules you define.
Choose the criteria you want to search from the pop-up menu.
You can choose one of the following criteria: Title, Album Name, Artist Name, Comment, Course Description, Group Name, Course Name, Handle, Information, Keywords, Description, Lyrics, Kind, Release Date.
Type the criteria text you want to match. For example, you can create a rule with the criteria that “Title matches physics” or “Artist Name matches John Smith.”
If you selected Kind as your criteria, choose Audio, Video, Audio or Video, or PDF from the pop-up menu to indicate the media file type(s) you want to match.
If you selected Release Date as your criteria, type a number indicating you want iTunes U to search for tracks with a release date in the last x day(s). For uploaded tracks, Release Date is the date the track was first uploaded to iTunes U. For tracks within a feed, Release Date is the track’s “pubDate”. If the track does not have a “pubDate”, Release Date is the date the track was first added to iTunes U.
Click the Add icon to add more rules and combine rules to refine your query, or click the Save icon to save the rule.
Click the Save icon in the tab controls section to save the new group.
A smart group displays tracks in a simple Course page by performing a search of your site for all tracks that match the criteria you specify. Tracks displayed in a smart group can change when you add or update tracks to your site. Depending on your search, it can take up to 24 hours to display new or updated tracks in a smart group.
Because iTunes U populates the group by performing a search of your site for all tracks that match the criteria you specify, and the actual tracks in the smart group exist in another group within your site, when a user access a smart group, the track list iTunes U displays in the group depends upon the user’s permissions to the track’s original group. For example, if a user does not have access to a track in its original group, the user does not have access to the track in the smart group and iTunes U does not display the track in the smart group track list.
To create a feed group:
Make sure you are editing a Course page (click Edit Page in the Tools area).
Click the Add icon in the tab controls section to create a new group.
Type a name for the new group.
Choose Feed from the Type pop-up menu.
Provide details about the new feed group using the fields and options provided.
Feed URL. Type an RSS 2.0 full podcast feed URL. To verify that enclosures within the feed are unique, iTunes U checks enclosure Globally Unique Identifiers (GUID). If the enclosure GUIDs do not exist, iTunes U then checks the enclosure titles. If iTunes U encounters duplicate enclosures, iTunes U rejects the feed.
Security. If the RSS feed URL is protected, choose HTTP Basic Authentication or HTTP Digest Authentication from the Security pop-up menu and specify a username and password in the fields provided. iTunes U uses the credential information, together with the access levels you define within your site, to authenticate both the podcast feed URL and the actual content when users attempt to download content.
Signature. To enable download authentication, choose Append SHA-256 Signature from the Signature pop-up menu. iTunes U appends a SHA-256 Signature to both the podcast and enclosure URLs. Specifically, iTunes U appends: time=${TIME}&userID=${USER_IDENTIFIER}&signature=${SIGNATURE}, where:
${TIME} is the time, in seconds, when the URL was generated. Specify time as the number of seconds from the epoch (midnight January 1, 1970), normalized to GMT.
${USER_IDENTIFIER} is the unique identifier (userIdentifier) passed to iTunes U in the identity string for the user who created the feed group.
${SIGNATURE} is the SHA-256 signature based on the string containing the first two arguments ('time=${TIME}&userID=${USER_IDENTIFIER}'), signed with the shared secret used in your transfer script.
“Check for changes.” To check the feed for updates on a daily basis, choose Daily from the “Check for changes” pop-up menu and provide an email address in “Feed owner email.” iTunes U uses the email address to report errors when the daily check of the podcast feed URL fails for any reason. When these periodic checks fail 3 times in a row, iTunes U stops checking the feed and no longer updates the group content.
To manually update a podcast feed, edit the group and click Apply. iTunes U creates new tracks for new items, updates existing tracks, and deletes tracks no longer included in the podcast feed.
Status. Displays status details regarding the last time iTunes U attempted to update the feed group. iTunes U displays either date and time information for the last time new content was added to the group from the specified podcast feed URL or an error message if iTunes U encountered a problem while attempting to check the feed URL for changes.
Click Apply to save changes.
Click the Save icon in the tab controls section to save the new group.
For an example of a well-formed RSS feed, see “RSS Feed Sample.”
Notes:
If your RSS feed contains the iTunes <itunes:explicit> tag, iTunes U applies the advisory label setting and displays an advisory graphic for the group or track as appropriate. For example:
No <itunes:explicit> tag indicates that the explicitness of the content is unknown. iTunes U does not apply an advisory setting.
An <itunes:explicit> tag with a “no” value indicates that the content is not explicit. iTunes U applies the setting, but does not display an advisory graphic. Apple recommends using a “no” value when a group or track is not explicit but should not have the Clean icon advisory graphic because the group or track does not contain alternate versions of content from an explicit group or track ('yes’). Use “no” to implicitly indicate content is clean.
An <itunes:explicit> tag with a “yes” value indicates that the content is known to be explicit and you want iTunes U to apply an “explicit” setting. iTunes U applies the setting and displays the Explicit icon advisory graphic.
An <itunes:explicit> tag with a ‘clean’ value indicates that the content is known to be non-explicit and you want iTunes U to apply a “clean” setting. iTunes U applies the setting and displays the Clean icon advisory graphic. Apple recommends that you use ‘clean’ only if the group or track contains alternate versions of content from an explicit group or track (“yes”).
If you use the tag at the channel level, iTunes U displays the advisory graphic in the simple Course page. If you use the tag on an item, iTunes U displays the advisory graphic in the track list for the specific track.
iTunes U copies relevant information and data from your RSS feed and automatically populates your feed group track content based on the podcast feed URL information and the details you specify. When users subscribe to the feed, they are subscribing to the copied information and data, not your RSS feed directly. Because iTunes U does not use your your RSS feed directly, iTunes U cannot update simple Course page track content at the same time the RSS feed is updated. If you choose Daily from the “Check for changes” pop-up menu, iTunes U can update the feed group content on a daily basis. If you want to force a feed group update you can:
Send a request to http(s)://deimos.apple.com/WebObjects/Core.woa/PingPodcast/site.name with an id or handle parameter. You can pass the parameter on the query string for an HTTP GET, or pass it as an HTTP POST parameter using a content type of application/x-www-form-urlencoded. For example: https://deimos.apple.com/WebObjects/Core.woa/PingPodcast/itunesu.edu?handle=876546541.
Use the iTunes U UpdateGroup Web Service operation. For more information, see “UpdateGroup.”
If you create a feed group using port numbers other than the default port 80 (for example, in the feed URL, or in image or enclosure URLs), use port 8080.
© 2011 Apple Inc. All Rights Reserved. (Last updated: 2011-11-03)