What does auto-publishing mean?
If your content has auto-published, it has successfully been ingested and meets all baseline requirements to be published on any of our Microsoft Start canvases.
Content that has auto-published is available for selection by our AI based auto-curation system. However, this does not guarantee it will be selected for display on the homepage, info-pane, or vertical pages. This is because our AI engine delivers each of our users with a personalized selection of content that matches their preferences and interests. While this can temporally influence SOV, we believe this more personalized approach will increase user engagement and therefore may increase total page views longer term, resulting in more revenue.
What are the requirements for content to auto-publish?
Check out our Auto-Publishing Requirements document which lists all auto-publishing rules applied to content when ingested.
Our auto-publishing rules are used to check if:
- Content meets the structural baseline properties required to be auto-published (e.g. Min/Max No. Of Characters, Min/Max No. Of Slides, Document Size, Validity of Hyperlinks etc.). These checks are in place to ensure content can be properly rendered and displayed on our canvases
- Elements of the content such as text, images, video keyframes and audio are safe to be viewed as per Microsoft News standards
How much of my content is auto-published?
For Publishers with access to FMTA (Feed Management Tool) you can see how much of your content is auto-published. The tool provides you with valuable auto-publishing data from three perspectives:
- Statistics: Displays data related to the auto-publishing pass rate (i.e. Percentage of documents passed, number of documents passed and number of documents failed)
- Timeline: Displays a visual representation of the number of documents that have passed or failed over a certain timeframe
- Failures: Displays data related to the auto-publishing rules failing for a certain timeframe
How do I know which auto-publishing rules my content failed?
In Microsoft Start Partner Hub / Content Management, you will see your content status. If a content has been rejected, click on 'see details' to get additional information.
In FMT (Feed Management Tool), search for the name of the partner, brand or feed you are interested in. For partner and brands, scroll down to the "Auto-Publishing results" section and click the "Failures" tab. For feeds, you will have to click the "Auto-Publishing" tab in the left-hand side menu to see this section.
Once you have navigated your way to the "Failures" section, you will be able to see the list of auto-publishing rules that failed under the "Validation Name" column and the number of document that failed that rule under "Failed Document Count".
How do I know which specific documents failed an auto-publishing rule?
In FMT (Feed Management Tool) search for the name of the feed you are interested in. Click the "Auto-Publishing" tab on the left-hand side menu. On this page, in the "Failures" section, you will be able to see the list of auto-publishing rules failed. If you click on the rule, it will expand to show you a list of all documents that have failed that rule.
If you click on any of the rows in the expansion, it will show you a preview of that document in the "Failed document preview" section on the right. This preview will provide you with the following data:
- Document ID: The unique ID used to track the document
- Title: The title of the document
- Source: The source URL of the document which links back to the partner's site
- Provider: The name of the provider/brand that published the document
- Feed:** The name of the feed that published the document
- Locale: The name of the market from which the document is from
- Validation Result: The auto-publishing result
- Auto-publishing Failures: Provides a summarized list of all auto-publishing rules failed by the document
What should I do if a document has failed one or more auto-publishing rules?
If a document has failed one or more auto-publishing rules, you have the option of fixing the document on your side to ensure it meets all of our requirements and resending it to us.
Prior to sending to Microsoft Start, please use this Auto-Publishing Requirements document to see what requirements content must fulfil to auto-publish.
What happens if a document has wrongly failed auto-publishing?
As some of our auto-publishing moderation rules are machine-learning based, it is possible for documents to incorrectly be flagged for violating our standards. To validate our failures and ensure that incorrectly failed documents do not get blocked from auto-publishing, we send them to one of our teams for human review.
Documents will only be sent for human review if it has failed one or more of the following auto-publishing rules (those that may produce false positive results) in a certain market:
- Adult Image Detection (All markets except CN, EG, HK, MY, SA, SG, AE)
- Racy Image Detection (All markets except CN, EG, HK, MY, SA, SG, AE)
- Gore Image Detection (All markets)
- Text Profanity Detection (English and French only)
If you believe a post has been rejected in error, you can flag it for manual review by pressing the Appeal button that shows up on the dashboard next to rejected posts. This will open up a form where you can write a short explanation of the issue. The moderation team will either approve the post or send an update clarifying what must be edited to bring the post into compliance.
In the case where a document is incorrectly flagged, it will be approved by the team and returned back to the available pool for publishing. If manually rejected, it will remain unpublished.
Who are the human review team?
This is a team of people who manual review documents that have failed auto-publishing and decide if it should be approved or rejected as per Microsoft Start standards
Can I work with the human review team to get content published?
Partners can contact PartnerHubSupport@microsoft.com if any question. We are working on updating our tools with an 'appeal' capability that will enable you to appeal on a decision directly from the content flagged as failed to our moderation team.
How long does it take for a document to be manually reviewed?
If the document is sent for review, it will usually take the team few hours to manually review and approve/reject a document after it has failed auto-publishing.
How do I know if a document has been reviewed and approved/rejected by the human review team?
In Microsoft Start Partner Hub, you can see if a content is 'under review', 'published', 'rejected'.
In FMT, we are working to update the FMT Auto-Publishing UI to display this information.
As a temporary workaround, you can see if a document has been manually approved by the team if the "Validation Result" equals "Passed" in the "Failed document preview" section in the Auto-Publishing tab of a feed record in FMT.
Is there someone at Microsoft Start I can work with to help resolve any additional questions or issues I may have?
If you have any further questions or issues you need to resolve, please reach out to partnerhubsupport@microsoft.com