Roku Direct Publisher

[jrichmond27]

Is anyone else having problems getting the "Chronological Order" item sorting within a category working correctly? 

I have checked the pubDate values in my MRSS feed, and they're all correct, but Roku is not displaying the items in that order. Instead, they're showing up in what looks like a completely random order. Every time I load up the channel on a Roku device, the items are in the same order, but it's definitely not chronological. The item dates jump all over the place.

Here's my current feed (which may change as I'm working on this): 
http://thewellcommunity.org/podcasts/sermons/rss/media

[jrichmond27]

Has anyone else come across this issue? All of my "chronological" categories are still listed in random order, and I have not been able to get a response from anyone at Roku.

[matt8282902]

I'm having the same problem; with the category set to 'chronological' the order is random. 

I have also tested a second feed that was produced by a third party, and their feed also suffered from the same problem. It appears that Roku's chronological order is broken.

I have emailed Roku about this 3 weeks ago and have not heard back from them. If Roku support reads this, please contact me and I can provide more information. 

[jrichmond27]

I hope you have better luck than I have. I've been emailing them since October 2016, and only recently got them to even understand what the actual issue is. They sometimes go weeks or months without responding, and often come back with responses that are identical to previous responses that I already told them didn't have anything to do with this issue.

I think they finally understand now, but they still don't seem to know what's causing the random order. I haven't seen any indication that they've been able to replicate the bug (or even tried to for that matter.)  

Sorry you're dealing with this too, but I am glad I'm not the only one now.

I'll update this thread if I ever find a solution.

[jrichmond27]

I'm not sure what address you emailed, but I've had the most luck with partnersuccess@roku.com.

[jrichmond27]

Just heard back from Roku support. Sounds like they do consider it a bug, but it won't be fixed until July at the earliest. He did suggest a workaround though. Apparently JSON feeds don't trigger the bug like RSS feeds do, since you can specify the sorting in the JSON feed.

Here's the response I received: 

At this time, we have an open bug report on the issue you reported regarding categories not displaying in chronological order. We will continue to track the bug, but at this time it is uncertain when it will be resolved.

Thankfully, your content will continue to display within your channel, albeit out of order. If you were to convert your feed to the JSON feed format, then you could configure a "playlist" within your feed. Essentially, a playlist acts as any other category in your channel, but it allows the publisher to control the order that the content appears in. This is one potential solution for you to fix the display of your category.

If you do not convert to JSON, then I suggest that you check-in with us again early next quarter to see if there have been updates on this ticket.

Guess I better get started on building the JSON feed!  😕

[matt8282902]

@ jrichmond27 - thanks a lot for the follow up and for posting Roku's response!

[mitchstein]

yes the bug is in the json feeds as well... I even went as far as to order my json files in the episode order and they appear in a different "random" order everytime I upload an updated json file. It's amazing how this "bug" is ok in a public channel, but a shitty graphic file is not, I guess there's more to, make it look good over "make it work" modern philosophy I keep seeing everywhere..

[jrichmond27]

"mitchstein" wrote:
yes the bug is in the json feeds as well... I even went as far as to order my json files in the episode order and they appear in a different "random" order everytime I upload an updated json file. It's amazing how this "bug" is ok in a public channel, but a shitty graphic file is not, I guess there's more to, make it look good over "make it work" modern philosophy I keep seeing everywhere..

That's disappointing. I'll post an update when I'm able to get my JSON feed built, to let you guys know if I was able to get it working or not.

[jrichmond27]

I just finished converting to a JSON feed, and it looks like the category sorting is working for me. Are you using playlists in your JSON, @mitchstein? Instead of selecting "Chronological Order" for my categories in Direct Publisher, I selected "Use Playlist Order", and made sure the video IDs in my JSON playlists are sorted in the order I want them.

I'm going to try switching one of my categories to "Chronological Order" and see what happens. I'm guessing you're right, and chronological sorting is broken for JSON too. They were just telling me to use playlists as the workaround.

Here's my current JSON: https://thewellcommunity.org/podcasts/sermons/json/roku