Slice-wide permissions in WMSPanel

WMSPanel cloud service provides full set of capabilities for controlling Nimble Streamer behavior as well as reporting its stats. The main instrument to split stats is a data slice which allows defining servers and respective applications or streams to get stats from.

The hierarchy of users in WMSPanel account is simple - admin users ("admins") can do anything, non-admin users (or "users") are allowed to see the stats in the data slices where they are assigned. However if you need to give some non-admin a permission to do something with server setting, you can define individual permissions, it's described in this article.

There are cases when you need to define some set of permissions to an entire set of non-admin users.

Now WMSPanel provides this option using data slices. The main idea is as follows:

• Create a slice.
• Assign a set of servers which you want to give control to.
• Assign non-admin users which you want to give permissions to.
• Define permissions.

Those permissions will be applied to all users and they will be allowed to make specific set of operations over the servers assigned to this particular slice.

When a non-admin user switches to particular slices, he or she gets access to servers and as allowed by slice' permissions list.

Data slice permissions and per-user permissions (defined as described here) are combined together in a white-list manner. So, if you set "Incoming streams" in per-user permissions list and "Outgoing streams" in a data slice permissions list, a given user will access incoming streams in any slice and outgoing streams in that particular slice only.

We strongly recommend to enable 2-factor authorization for all admin users and non-admins with special set of permissions to improve the level of your security.

Let's see how it's set up.

Go to slices management page by clicking on Manage link under the top menu. Create a new slice if you haven't created it yet.

For the designated slices, click on "gears" icon on the right from the slice details, it's there among other icons. You will see a dialog like this.

Once you click on "0 permissions" you'll see a list of permissions for a particular server. Just click on check boxes for required features.

You can do that for all servers from those assigned to the slice.

Clicking on a check box near server name checks all features.

That's it. Once you save settings, they will be applied to your slice and your users will be able to use selected features.

Secure your account in 3 easy steps article gives more ideas about working securely in WMSPanel, including 2FA and Google, Apple and Okta SSO.

Related documentation

WMSPanel data slices, WMSPanel users management

WMSPanel geo and ISP reporting API

WMSPanel cloud service is known for its reporting feature set available for various types of media servers such as Wowza and Nimble Streamer. WMSPanel provides rich API for obtaining various data from our products.

So now we introduce API methods for obtaining geo-location and ISP statistics available in our reporting framework.

To use this feature set, run the designated methods from listed below. Full list can be found in WMSPanel products API reference.

• Enable API access - this is where you need to start from.
• Get data slices list - get IDs of the slices for further requests.
• Get Geo stats - get geo-location statistics for selected dates range.
• Get ISP stats - get Internet service providers statistics for selected dates range.

Each method is illustrated sample request URL which you may use via any technique or programming language. If you run it from command line, check this FAQ question as well.

Follow us to learn about new features and contact us in case of any questions.

Related documentation

WMSPanel API reference, WMSPanel reporting feature set, Nimble Streamer status API, WMSPanel Paywall

In-depth statistics for advanced reporting

WMSPanel provides excellent reporting for media servers - this is one of the major reasons for our customer to like our services. We've been continuously improving the statistics feature set and today we'd like to announce new reporting framework.

We call it in-depth statistics reporting, or simply deep stats.

Per-stream and per-file reports

Deep stats allow collecting a set of daily statistics for each media which you stream:

• each individual stream if you're making live streaming;
• each individual file if you make video on demand.

You may enable this reporting for any slice in your account. Every stream or file has its daily statistics for the a dates' range. Maximum range is defined per data slice.

Metrics

In the report for each file or stream you may see the most important information:

• Connections total and per-protocol amount.
• Outgoing and incoming traffic amount.
• Timing and duration periods with connections amount.
• Devices and players two-dimensions reports.

Stream-based data slices

We introduced data slices concept in late 2011 and changed it to properly cover Wowza Media Server in early 2012. It was based on applications - you can define regular expression for application names and get the date gathered for specified app only. Application is the basic way to separate different streaming instances within Wowza, like different clients which have different VOD content or live streams. So each slice was a reflection of one or more applications and all the data we have for daily stats - like connections, traffic, bandwidth, geo-location, duration, billing - was collected using this basis.

Right after we launched slices, people started asking if we plan making data slices based on stream names. Many people want to know the performance of individual streams rather than entire application. Streams reports were not enough in some cases. So we've been gathering this feedback and changing our infrastructure and processing algorithms to cover this upcoming approach.

Now we introduce new stream-based data slices. This means that you can now create 2 kinds of slices - application-based and stream-based. Application slices has advanced include/exclude rules distinction while streams are a bit more simple. Let's see what it can do.

Slices management links

To create a slice you need to click on data slices Manage link and then click on Create streamed data slice. You will see a dialog asking for Slices short name and description. Enter them and click on Create slice button. You may also specify time zone.

Creating a slice.

You see 4 sections:

• Slice information - you can change these detailed settings by clicking on Edit link on top right corner.
• Assigned servers.
• Rule for defining streams names.
• Assigned users.

Slice information contain the following settings:

• Name and description - which you previously entered to identify the slice.
• Show servers details for users defines if end-users (who we will assign to this slice later) are allowed to see details about servers which send their data to this slice.
• Billing details - they are used in Billing feature set.

Streamed slice basic info. 

Then you need to assign servers to the slice. This is how you define which servers will be sending information to this slice. You need to add them from the list of servers available in the system.

Assigning servers.

The next step is to define a rule with the regular expression for the streams and applications which you would like to track. Each expression may cover any number of streams or apps. So learn more about regexes and set up what you like.

Adding rule for a stream.

Rule is ready.

In case of Wowza you may also specify exact virtual host to collect data for.
For Nimble Streamer you may specify domain name. In both cases you may use regular expressions to describe the match.

Specifying domain for collecting its data.

Then you need to assign new or existing users to the slice. Please read this blog post for detailed description.

So now you're all set. Having this slice you can switch to it and see what's going on with your stream. You can set up white label branded panels and create accounts for your clients so they could see these statistics too. All end-user experience related features can be used with streamed slices.

Data slice also provides a mechanism for assigning non-admin users to control certain features of Nimble Streamer. Read this page for more details.

Notice that streamed slices are eligible for subscription payments. Please refer to our full prices page for details. We recommend using lite slices as their reduced functionality is mostly covered with streamed slices capabilities hence they are half the price from the original full slices. Please contact sales for enabling this pricing option.

To see this in action you need to make a sign up to try our panel.

Read more about slice-related features in on the dedicated Slices & Branding page.

Read more about WMSPanel streaming reporting.

Related documentation

End user reporting for Wowza, Daily statistics, High precision reporting, Geo location reporting, Data slices for statistics, Billing customers using daily stats, White label branded panel, Screencast for daily statistics, Screencast for data slices and white label, Statistics import API

Improving Wowza end-user reporting experience

A lot of our customers are streaming hosting providers and they use Wowza Media Server to provide quality services for their clients. So obviously those clients need to see what they pay for, and hosting providers do their best trying to give proper reporting user experience. They find it at WMSPanel.

WMSPanel for media streaming hosting with Wowza Media Server.

Let's go through basic features which may be useful for Wowza customers from end-user perspective.

Please also read WMSPanel streaming reporting summary page.