Add personalised content | NAGRAVISION Documentation Portal

The Personalised menu items allow you to populate the rail/section with user-specific content, recommendations, or search results.

User Specific

Enables you to populate the rail/section with user-specific content types, based on your selections:

Section	Description
Continue Watching	Content that the user has started watching but not finished
My List	VOD content or channels that the user has favourited
Favourite Type	The type of favourites to display in the section: VOD or channel
Network Recordings	Content that the user has recorded
Recently Watched	Content that the user has recently finished watching
User Purchased TVOD	Transactional VOD (TVOD) items that the user has purchased. Can be sorted by expiry date or purchase date
User Purchased PPV	Pay-per-view events that the user has purchased. Can be sorted by expiry date or purchase date
User Subscribed Channels	Broadcast channels that the user is subscribed to

Recommendations

Enables you to populate the rail/section with content from the configured recommendations engine, based on your selections:

Field

Description

Recommendation Context

The recommendation context determines the type of content that will populate the rail section.

There is a large selection of default contexts provided by NAGRAVISION, some of which have their own specific options that are displayed after you select the context. (For example, if you select the Actor Spotlight Recommendations context, an Actor Name option appears that allows you to select the actor.)

These contexts include:

Time-based contexts, such as New Release and Trending Now
Personalised contexts, such as User’s Top Picks and Live Tonight, both of which are based on the user’s viewing history
Live/time-sensitive contexts, such as Currently Airing and Upcoming Live Sports & Events
Mood-based contexts, such as Short and Easy Watches
Node-based contexts, which limits recommendations to content from the specified node
Legacy contexts

See the table below for detailed information about each default context.

In addition to the default contexts provided, you can create your own contexts to meet your own requirements.

There are ten standard filters that you can use:

Actor
Category
Director
Genre
Subgenre
Writer
Producer
Provider
Product
Age rating

The Other filters available column (below) lists exceptions – that is, when available filters for the context differ from the standard ones.

The recommendation engines referred to in the table below select content as follows:

Custom score engine – “Give me content that matches these rules/filters.”
Selects content using configured rules, filters, and scoring logic. Typically used for metadata-driven, category-driven, or availability-driven recommendations rather than learned user behaviour.
Statistical engine – “Give me content with good stats (highly-rated, trending, popular, etc.).”
Selects content based on aggregate statistics such as popularity, ratings, watch counts, trends, or recency. It looks at what the audience as a whole is doing.
Similarity engine – “Give me more content like this.”
Starts with a specific piece of content (a "seed") and finds other content that is similar to it based on metadata, relationships, or similarity models.
Blended preference engine – “Give me content that the user is likely to enjoy.”
Selects content using a user's learned preference profile. It ranks content according to what the user has historically watched, liked, or shown affinity towards. It can blend recommendations from multiple content sources.

Context name	Filters applied by default	Other filters available	Personalised	Available content types	Recommendation engine(s) used
Actor Spotlight Recommendations	Filtered by the specified actor	All except Actor	No	VOD Live event Deep-link	Custom score engine Returns content featuring the specified actor.
Binge Worthy Series	Includes only series with a time window of the last year	All standard filters	No	VOD Live event Deep-link	Statistical engine (`bestRated`) Returns highly-rated series.
Coming Soon	Includes only content that will become available in the next seven days	All standard filters	No	VOD Live event Deep-link	Blending preference engine (`upcomingContent`) Typically used to combine recommendations from multiple subscriber profiles and balance their contributions intelligently. But here it is used as a container for recommendation logic that is driven by a time-based availability window filter.
Currently Airing	Includes only live events that are currently being broadcast	All standard filters	No	Live event	Custom score engine Returns live events that are currently on air.
Director Spotlight Recommendations	Filtered by the specified director	All except Director	No	VOD Live event Deep-link	Custom score engine Returns content directed by the specified director.
For the Whole Family	Filtered by the selected broad categories and specified viewing age	All except Category	No	VOD Live event Deep-link	Custom score engine Returns content that matches the specified categories and viewing age.
Live Tonight	Includes only live events that are starting in the next few hours	All standard filters	No	Live event	Custom score engine Returns live content that is airing today between 18:00 and midnight.
New Releases	Includes only content that has been added in a specific time window (last two days)	All standard filters	No	VOD Live event Deep-link	Statistical engine (`latestArrivals`) Recommends content that has been recently added to the platform, regardless of the user's viewing history or preferences.
Node Tree Recommendations	Includes only VOD content from the specified node(s) of the VOD catalogue	All standard filters	Yes	VOD	Primary: blending preference engine (`from-node-tree`) – gives personalised recommendations from the specified node. Secondary: custom score engine – selects content through configured filters – provides additional, non-personalised content if the primary engine cannot provide enough recommended items.
Real Time Buzz	Includes only content that is currently trending	All standard filters	No	VOD Live event Deep-link	Statistical engine (`trending`) Recommends content with high user engagement in the last 15 minutes.
Related Content	None	All standard filters	No	VOD Live event Channel Series Season Deep-link	Similarity engines (`mainSimilarity`) Returns recommendations that are most similar to the specified content.
Short and Easy Watches	Includes only content whose duration is shorter than the specified time	All standard filters	No	VOD Live event Deep-link	Statistical engine (`MostPopularShorts`) and custom score engine (`MoodBoost`) Returns recommendations for content that is popular, with a high “lightness” score, and that are shorter than the specified time.
Third Party Trends	Includes only content from the specified provider	All standard filters	No	VOD Deep-link	Statistical engine (`trending`) Recommends content showing strong recent audience engagement trends within a specified content provider's catalogue.
Trending Now	Includes only content that is trending now	All standard filters	No	VOD Live event Deep-link	Statistical engine (`trending`) Recommends content experiencing strong recent engagement during the last four hours
Trending Now in Genre	Includes only content from the specified genre(s) that is trending now	All standard filters	No	VOD Live event Deep-link	Statistical engine (`trending`) Recommends content from the specified genre(s) that is experiencing strong recent engagement during the last four hours
Upcoming Live Sports and Events	Include only live events that match the specified category and that are scheduled for the next seven days	All except Category	No	Live event	Custom score engine Returns live events happening in the next seven days.
User’s Favourite Directors	Includes only content directed by the user’s top three favourite directors	All except Director	Yes	VOD Live event Deep-link	Primary: blending preference engine – gives personalised recommendations based on directors that the user likes. Secondary: custom score engine – selects content through configured filters – provides additional, non-personalised content if the primary engine cannot provide enough recommended items
User’s Favourite Stars	Includes only content that includes one of the user’s top three favourite actors	All except Actor	Yes	VOD Live event Deep-link	Primary: blending preference engine – gives personalised recommendations based on actors that the user likes. Secondary: custom score engine – selects content through configured filters – provides additional, non-personalised content if the primary engine cannot provide enough recommended items
User’s Genre Mix	Includes only content from the genres that the user frequently watches or engages with	All standard filters	Yes	VOD Live event Deep-link	Primary: blending preference engine – gives personalised recommendations based on genres that the user likes. Secondary: custom score engine – selects content through configured filters – provides additional, non-personalised content if the primary engine cannot provide enough recommended items
User’s Live Interests	Includes only live events that are starting soon or that have just started and that match the user’s preferred sports or event types	All standard filters	Yes	Live event	Blending preference engine Returns live events that are starting soon or have just started based on the types of content the user watches most frequently.
User’s Live Picks	Includes only live contents that are starting soon or that have just started and that match the user’s interests or viewing habits	All standard filters	Yes	Live event	Primary: blending preference engine – gives personalised recommendations for live events that are starting soon or have just started based on the user’s interests or viewing habits Secondary: custom score engine – selects content through configured filters – provides additional, non-personalised content if the primary engine cannot provide enough recommended items
User’s Movie Suggestions	Includes only movies that match the user’s viewing preferences or habits	All standard filters	Yes	VOD Live event Deep-link	Primary: blending preference engine – gives personalised recommendations for movies based on the user’s interests or viewing habits Secondary: custom score engine – selects content through configured filters – provides additional, non-personalised content if the primary engine cannot provide enough recommended items
User’s Quick Picks	Includes only content that matches the user’s viewing habits and whose duration is less than the specified value	All standard filters	Yes	VOD Live event Deep-link	Primary: blending preference engine – gives personalised recommendations for content that is shorter than the specified duration, based on the user’s interests or viewing habits Secondary: custom score engine – selects content through configured filters – provides additional, non-personalised content if the primary engine cannot provide enough recommended items
User’s Series Suggestions	Includes only series that match the user’s viewing preferences or habits	All standard filters	Yes	Series	Primary: blending preference engine – gives personalised recommendations for series based on the user’s interests or viewing habits Secondary: custom score engine – selects content through configured filters – provides additional, non-personalised content if the primary engine cannot provide enough recommended items
User’s Top Picks	None (all types of individual content are included)	All standard filters	Yes	VOD Live event Deep-link	Primary: blending preference engine – gives personalised recommendations for all individual content types (that is, not series or seasons) based on the user’s interests or viewing habits Secondary: custom score engine – selects content through configured filters – provides additional, non-personalised content if the primary engine cannot provide enough recommended items

Asset Types

The type(s) of asset to include in the recommendations (e.g., VOD, live events, deep links, etc.)

Optional Filters

One or more filters that limit the recommendations that are included

For example, you can add filters for Genre, Actor, Provider, Age Rating, and so on.

Number of Items

Number of content items to include in the rail

Search

Enables you to populate the rail/section with content from a search, based on the search term provided by the client and your selections (see Set up a search template).

You can toggle Enable advanced search to switch between regular and advanced search, which are explained in the tables below.

Regular search

Field	Description
Engine	The search engine to use
Query	The search term to use. This query is applied in addition to the query provided by the user (via the client application).
Provider	The content provider to search within
Only Playable	Return only playable content
Genre	The content genre
Actor	Only show content starring the actor
Number of Items	Number of content items to include in the rail

Advanced search

Field

Description

Engine

The search engine to use

Advanced search

You can either:

Type a Lucene search term in the search box.
Click to open the visual query editor. Construct your query by selecting a field, an operator, and a value, and optionally additional criteria.

You can also click to see a preview of the search results.

This query is applied in addition to the query provided by the user (via the client application).

Number of Items

Number of content items to include in the rail

If there are duplicate items in the search results, they will be de-duplicated according to the configured rules and priorities – see Managing search.