Welcome to SharpStream! We're so glad you're here.
To get started with Portal you need to create an account for each team member you wish to have access to your audio stations and streams. This video will show you everything you need to know!
Welcome to SharpStream! We're so glad you're here.
To get started with Portal you need to create an account for each team member you wish to have access to your audio stations and streams. This video will show you everything you need to know!
Portal's dashboard is a glanceable hub for all of the activity occurring on your streams.
This video will guide you through the dashboard and all the features and functions that it yields.
Branches allow you to group your stations and view aggregate statistics across them. You can also add members, supervisors and admins to these branches separately to your station permissions.
In this tutorial you will learn how to set up branches in your Portal account.
In this video we will be looking at how to navigate our way around your Station Page. We will look at how to manage notifications and how to set an email to receive these instant notifications. We will introduce how to view your historical connections and run a single page report of your historical stats and of your reported incidents.
In this video we will be looking at how to access a stream's page. This page will show us how to view realtime and historical connection stats, stream heath, listen links and encoder settings.
Ingest log is where you can monitor the real-time connection between your encoder and our ingest server. You can use ingest log to diagnose any suspected outages or metadata issues.
When you load up ingest log you will see a list of log lines. These indicate either information (INFO) or warnings (WARN). Information could relate to new connections to the stream, metadata changes, or successful encoder connection. Warnings indicate encoder disconnections/instability, attempted connections from other encoders, and any potential faults on the ingest. If your stream is silent but ingest log is indicating a stable connection, this implies that there is silence going into the encoder.
The logs are ordered so the newest logs appear at the bottom of the front page. Auto-scrolling is enabled by default to always show the newest results. To disable this, click the auto-scrolling checkbox in the bottom right corner. To search through older logs, click through the pages indicated at the bottom of the window.
You can filter logs alphanumerically in the search bar in the top right corner. This is handy for searching specific metadata changes, focussing in on warning logs and searching for specific times.
You can export the logs as a .log file (which can be read in any text editor) for your records. The export will display the logs as they appear on the page you are on.
The ingest log filters out certain lines by default to aid faster page loading and quicker troubleshooting. If you wish to see all of the logs, click on the “Detailed” checkbox. (detailed mode may cause slow loading and reduce the number of backdated logs that are returned)
If you have a premium stream with us, the ingest log will have an extra tab which monitors playout data. This is for diagnosing your encoder connections separately from the liquidsoap feed if the stream is not delivering the content you expect. If your ingest tab is reporting as connected, but the feed from your encoder is not playing out, the playout tab will indicate whether this encoder is connected or not. If the ingest tab is indicating that your encoder is connected and the expected content is not playing out this likely means that the audio level on your live stream is too quiet.
Playout tab for Premium Mounts, sections in this image are redacted for security.
To close ingest log, simply click the red close button in the bottom right corner of the window.
All of our streams here at SharpStream are load-balanced for increased stability and reliability. This, in a nutshell, means that you when you send your stream, it is sent to a mount on one of our "ingest" servers (we refer to this as an ingress feed). This is then distributed via multiple identical servers called "edges". Each of your listeners is sent to one of these edges to hear your live content.
To check that you are successfully sending a feed to our ingest server, follow these steps.
1. Navigate to the applicable Station.
2. Select the Stream that you would like to check.
3. Navigate to the Stream Information panel on the right hand side of the stream's page.
4. Scroll down to the Live Listen section of the panel.
5. Click on the red box labelled Ingress.
6. If you can hear audio*, you're good to go! If not, check your encoder is connected and that the settings are correct.
7. If your ingress is audible but the edge is not, please contact support@sharp-stream.com
*For Premium users: ensure the audio you hear matches up with what you are intending to broadcast. As you may have a fallback loop which plays when you are off air.
1. Navigate to your Station Page.
2. Find the "Notifiables" section of the Station Page.
3. Check you have set the correct email or add an email address to your list.
4. If email is correct, ensure you have checked your spam folder and allowed incoming mail from alarms@sharp-stream.com.
If you are an ‘admin’ or 'supervisor' for your station’s Portal you have the ability to edit other users’ ranks and their permissions (up to your own ranking).
On your Station Page, navigate to 'users' and edit each user's rank using the dropdown listed in the 'actions' column.
Member | Supervisor | Admin |
User can see connection stats | User can see connection stats | User can see connection stats |
User can see individual mount information | User can see individual mount information | User can see individual mount information |
User can export incidents | User can export incidents | User can export incidents |
User can add a notifiable for this station | User can add a notifiable for this station | User can add a notifiable for this station |
User can acknowledge an incident | User can acknowledge an incident | |
User can attach members to this station up to its role | User can attach members to this station up to its role | |
User can remove an incident | User can remove an incident | |
User can add streams to this station | User can add streams to this station | |
User can export reports from this station | User can export reports from this station | |
User can delete this station and or any of its streams |
If you are an Account Admin for your organisation. You can create new members yourself. simply click your name in the top right corner of any page in Portal, select "my profile" to access your profile information and under the "Manage Users" tab select "Add User". When you create a new user, a confirmation link will be sent to their email where they can set a password for their new Portal account.
Alternatively if the person has already created an account (For more information on how to do that, click here.) you can add them as a user directly on your station page(s).
Navigate to “Users” on your station page and click the green “+” button. From here, type in the email that your new user used to register and determine their user level (See User Permissions). Your new user is now all set up to use Portal for your station!
Our statistics register a successful connection once the user disconnects, that way we can collect all the relevant information on how long the connection was. For scenarios where a connection has been continuing for an extended period (for example your stream being played in a hotel lobby or played in the background in an office on a smart speaker) this could mean that the disconnection happens after your logs update for the day.
If you were to run another report the next day (when the database has rebuilt), the figures would retroactively reflect this connection as a listener for the previous day (or whenever the connection began).
If you would like to place filters on your statistics to rule out long connections and get a better idea of your individual listeners, don’t hesitate to contact us.
Silence and instability can be reported for a number of reasons.
To monitor your ingress/ingest, navigate to the affected mount under “mounts”. This will bring up information relating to your mount. At the bottom of the box it gives you two options of audibly monitoring your stream, labelled “Ingress” and “Edges”. The ingress allows you to monitor the audio that our ingest server is receiving from your encoder, the edges allow you to monitor what your listeners are receiving from our edge servers.
Notifiables can allow your team to receive notifications via SMS, Email or Slack if there are any incidents reported by your ingest, giving you peace of mind that you won't miss any issues with your stream, wherever you are.
To set them up, head to “Notifiables” on your station page and click the green + button. You can set thresholds to determine how long of an outage/silence triggers a notification.
When your stream is connected you'll need a listen link to share your content with your listeners, and perhaps to send to third-party apps and sites such as TuneIn and RadioPlayer.
We recommend using a "listen-" link, which we can customise for your station. This link will look something like the link below (where the sections in red are replaced with your own station/mount information):
https://listen-station_name.sharp-stream.com/station_mount
In light of recent updates to Chrome that prevent mixed content on webpages, it is best practice to use our "listen-" link with https to ensure compatibility with most sites. If you have set up a custom DNS (which doesn't include "sharp-stream.com") you may experience difficulties with mixed ssl certificates, we would strongly advise to revert to a "listen-" link instead.
If you have joined us recently, you will have received this link from the agent that set your account up.
If you are using a listen link that looks different to the one above, or have any questions about the links you are using to stream with, please contact support@sharp-stream.com or raise a new ticket on our support portal. Our agents will be happy to assist.
This GIF page will remind you of how to create and log in to your Portal account, and what to do in the event that you forget your password.
Signing Up To Portal:
Head to portal.sharp-stream.com and click "Create an Account". Fill in your details and click 'sign up'. Make sure to verify your account via a confirmation email.
If another member of your team has access to your station's Portal account, they can add you as a user via the stations' User Tab.
Logging In and Logging Out:
To Log in, head to portal.sharp-stream.com and put in your username (not email address!) and password.
To log out, click the log out icon (pictured) in the top right corner of the window.
Resetting Your Password:
If you forget your password, click the blue 'here' under the 'Forgot Your Password?' section of the login page. You will be prompted to enter the email address you used to create your account and you will receive a password reset link via email.
This page will remind you how to generate a Single Page Report of your selected date range.
Head to your station page and head to the 'Report' tab. Set the date range by filling in the date boxes and click the search button under 'Run A Historical Report'. If you don't see this button, please contact us.
This will generate a detailed report of your listener statistics over the specified period.
This GIF will remind you on how to view your live stats and manipulate the data.
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Please Note: To view realtime data please see the article titled 'Stream Page'. This page only looks at the historical report of live connections.
If you would like to just view present connected listeners, then please see the teal/blue "Listeners" box at the top RIGHT of your Dashboard page, and on the top LEFT of your Station page, as shown below:
Dashboard:
Station Page:
This GIF will remind you of how you can manage your stations (showing you how to delete them) and how to view and manage any incidents that may have occurred.
This GIF will show you how to configure the settings for your "Notifiables", where you can create alerts to be sent to any email address or phone number that respond to the threshold and out of hours settings.
Notifiables:
This GIF will remind you on how to navigate to and around your "Stream Page", where you can view realtime listener information, connection status, test you streams path (ingress server and public server), find your encoder details - in the event that you need to configure your encoder from scratch and view your player link that you can put up on your website.
Stream Page:
