Access Groups

Access Groups enable content owners to provide license controlled access to one or multiple content items for group members. Although it is possible to use the shop for selling a group membership, the actual group feature works stand-alone and does not depend on the existence of a shop.

Typically, the group feature is used in one of the following scenarios:

You want to provide access to certain content which might change (content items are added or removed) during the usage time frame.
You want to give known users free and super simple access to the content. Invited users can join with a single click on a link as opposed to redeeming an unlock code or go through a shop using a gift certificate.
You want to give unknown users - all or limited to certain email domain(s) - quick and free access to certain content via self-signup, which can be embedded on any page. Users can simply register and confirm their email as opposed to redeeming an unlock code (which they would need to get somewhere first) or going through a shop using a gift certificate (which they also need to get first).
You want to provide access to content without requiring the user to pay for it (and using the shop with gift certificates or redeeming a code is too complicated)

In addition to the above, using access groups make sense in the following scenarios:

You want to make a larger number of content items available to users and look for a lower priced option without per item cost.
You have a list of pre-existing users to whom you want to grant access, in which case you can use the CSV based batch import function.

License Control

Every access group has one associated DRM license, which controls access of all group members to all content items in the access group.

If the license includes time span limitations (e.g. 6 months runtime), these are based on the date/time of the user joining the group. In addition, a license might include a fixed time limitations (e.g. a certain end date), which applies independent of the join date.

By defining the license, just as with every other license, it is also possible to control all other rights to the content, such as the ability to use the content on multiple devices, burn to DVD-R, export, etc.

It is also possible to set a group membership end date individually per group user.

Content Access

Group members access all content assigned to the group via the secure players (apps or web based). Content added to a group is dynamically listed in all group users' devices and content removed from a group is dynamically removed from the devices.

Access to the content is controlled by DRM licenses. If a user is removed from the group, access to the group content is no longer possible.

Usage Tracking

The Flickrocket Admin Panel allows detailed tracking of all user activities related to users and content, such as:

The data can be accessed via the Flickrocket admin interface or downloaded for further analysis.

Who was active and accessed content?
Which content was accessed? How long and how often?
Where (geographically) was the content accessed?
From which devices (OS versions) was the content accessed?

Optional Shop Integration

Although access groups work perfectly fine without a shop, it can make sense to combine them with a shop if you want to sell access to a group for a one-time payment. Depending on the license assigned to a group, the customer purchases time limited or permanent access to all items in the group - which might also be updated later.

Note: If you want to charge recurring payments, you should use the subscription system instead.

Managing Group Content

Access Groups can contain any number of content items of any type. You can assign any product uploaded to Flickrocket as a content item to an access group. If content items are assigned to categories, these categories are used to categorize the content also in player.

When a new product is uploaded, this product can directly be added to an access group by using the upload wizard from both the desktop Flickrocket Content Tools and the web versions.

Get Started with Access Groups

The Access Group functionality is available under any plan. However, under BASIC and SILVER the Access Groups App needs to be purchased first. Also, not all features are available and certain limitations apply under the BASIC and SILVER. For details see our price list.