The History of the OATC

After the release of the OMAP spec in 2012, the OATC created a Usability Working Group whose mission was to improve the consumer experience. The working group makes recommendations on ways to improve the consumer experience by adopting common iconography, naming conventions and approaches to building a consistent visual experience for the user. OATC collaborated with CTAM, the marketing arm of the Cable TV industry, and this led to work on user testing and recommended practices published by CTAM and an Error Messaging recommendation which was released by OATC In 2014. In 2014 additional working groups were formed and work began on Extended Authentication Session Experience, Home Based Authentication, TVE Content Search & Navigation, Social Login, Authentication Measurement, and Authentication Error Handling. The Extended Authentication Session Experience “Ease” working group focuses on recommendations around extending the TTL (Time to Live) of the initial authentication tokens and how the distributors and content owners should handle a user who was previously authenticated but their token has expired. The Home Based Authentication “HBA” working group deals with recommended practices for distributors who want to auto-authenticate users who are accessing content provider portals from within their home network. HBA also recommends how to handle the in-to-out-of-home transition. The TVE Content Search & Navigation working group’s mission is to create recommended practices to standardize the metadata and description of content and how that content can be used (which platforms it can be distributed on). This is for content exchange between content provider(s) and distributors rather than the consumer. The Social Login for MVPDs working group recommends practices for MVPD’s who want to can use Social Networks logins to improve the TV Everywhere user experience for their customers. The Authentication Measurement working group has defined a set of metrics/funnel steps for the authentication process as it pertains to a Content Programmer’s TV-Everywhere site/app. Subsequent goals include adding representative data to each of the steps to better understand where the biggest problems are and to create a set of reference implementation guidelines. Future updates will focus on second screen authentication use cases and Social ID use cases. The Authentication Error Handling working group recommends standardized Text messages and Error codes for use by MVPD’s when authentication or authorization calls return with an error(s) message, in order to enable consistent reporting across sites from multiple companies and a consistent experience for consumers.