Busby Workflow

There is no “one size fits all” MAM/workflow system available on the market in our opinion. There are many small systems which could provide parts of a workflow e.g. transcoding and language dubbing, and several “end-to-end” MAM solutions which claim to be an out of the box solution to do everything that your business needs and much more. We believe that something which fits in the middle of small or large broadcast systems, as well as providing interfaces to crucial systems, is a good compromise. Busby workflow, built on the messaging and monitoring capabilities of Busby core, provides you with a system you can use to create and deploy workflows using a mixture of our components, third party systems which you own, and custom in house processes you might have developed. A Kanban style user interface provides users with a simple to-do based task list, and steps can be either automated, manual, or a mixture of the two.
In keeping with our mantra, Busby workflow is deployed as a set of microservices.

Busby workflow engine

At the heart of Busby workflow is the Busby workflow engine. This is a lightweight workflow orchestrator, built upon the foundations of Busby core, which runs on one or more servers or VMs to hold state information of items in any given workflow. Busby workflow engine can be deployed in a main/backup redundant arrangement, with state information persisted into a Postgres database. Because Busby workflow engine is built upon the Busby core toolkit, it is easy to add new adapters to third party software and systems.

Busby workflow steps

Busby workflows are divided into workflow steps. Each step can be either automatic or manual, and the workflow state is updated as items move in and out of steps, depending on the outcome of each step. A simple workflow might look like the following:

Built in steps

Busby workflow has the following steps built in, as well as the ability to integrate with many third party systems and services to perform workflow steps:

  • Drop folder monitoring
  • FTP site monitoring
  • Manual QC
  • Manual job registration
  • Automatic job registration
  • Metadata entry
  • File transfer (FTP, CIFS, NFS)
  • File deletion
  • Big data querying
  • API query/HTTP GET
  • Audio file normalisation and manipulation
  • Video file conversion
  • Video file re-wrapping
  • Subtitle extraction and conversion
  • Schedule file conversion
  • Asrun file conversion

    • Busby Boards

    We discovered that some of our customers were using Kanban like tools for example Trello to manage their workload. This had advantages in that it was easy to use and share with other users, but meant all workflow steps had to be reflected manually on a website. Because of this, we created Busby Boards. Busby boards is a Kanban style UI for Busby workflow engine. Busby Boards can be customised as to which workflow states show on a particular board, as well as restricting permissions to users, or groups of users.

    Busby Big Data

    Busby workflow seamlessly integrates with Busby Big Data. Busby Big Data keeps a record of information sent to it in a Cassandra database. For more information on Busby Big Data, please click here.

    Third party systems

    Busby workflow seamlessly integrates with third party applications and systems using Busby ESB adapters. These include the following:

  • Harmonic ProMedia Carbon
  • Telestream Vantage
  • FFmpeg
  • Brightcove Zencoder
  • Telestream Cloud
  • Amazon Elastic Transcoder
  • Interra Baton
  • Vidcheck
  • Tektronix Cerify
  • Screen Systems Mediamate

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