Octopus Newsroom

Octopus is a powerful newsroom system for television, radio, sports and broadcasting organizations. The platform facilitates collaboration between members of the news team at all stages of news writing and production up to full and advanced management. Octopus Newsroom also provides the tools to publish the content to online and social media from a single platform.

Octopus runs on Linux, Windows and Apple OS X. In addition, apps are available for Android and Apple iOS. Octopus Newsroom can be used by a small regional channel with limited news coverage up to major news networks.

Manage scripts and summaries

Total end-to-end management

From creating the synopsis, based on a template or from scratch, to final storage or archiving, Octopus Newsroom offers the most flexible and dynamic features broadcasters are likely to need.

Quick story creation buttons

As live production can be a very stressful job with minimal reaction time, Octopus 8.1. features quick story creation buttons which are available for each news source.

Accurate time management

In the schedule, Octopus 8.1 offers all the required information, including scheduled duration, actual duration, back-time, hit time, countdown and many other options. Customizable slug, status and form colors are available to all users.

Double column scripting

The Octopus story script is split into two parts to visually separate the technical details from the script itself.

script history

Identify script changes using the history so that users can easily compare two versions of the same script and see the differences highlighted.

Spam Library

A list of unwanted terms/words can be defined in Octopus Newsroom along with recommended alternatives that users can choose instead of using the unwanted terms.

Workflow planning and management

Assignment schedule

Octopus 8's assignment desk helps organize and assign tasks to one or more users, based on a modern scheduling calendar.

Flexible and customizable news feeds

Octopus can be easily configured and adapted to meet the workflow requirements of any broadcaster, regardless of size, language or other factors. In case the workflow requires changes in the future, the system can easily be easily reconfigured without any special development.

Manage contacts and visitors

Octopus includes efficient contact management that allows users to store and manage all their contacts in a secure, central location. Access rights and usability can be set for each contact individually.

Approval of editorial workflows

The system can ensure that all scripts, videos, CG and other content posted in a current series, social media or website are approved according to the requirements of each news outlet.

Manage all incoming sources

Octopus 8.1 helps you collect all incoming news feeds from various sources such as: news agencies, email, journalists and many other sources. The system can handle and display text and images as well as video and audio material in the same view.

Connect “anything to anything” easily

Octopus 8.1 supports easy drag, drop and link of any elements within the system. Users can attach wires to topics, archived active topics, media files to an assignment, URL, images or PDF files to a contact, etc.

Social media, internet and reporters

Collaboration across multiple platforms

Octopus 8.1 enables multiple users from multiple and diverse teams to collaborate on various topics, regardless of production platforms (TV, radio, social media, web CMS, etc.)

Social media integration

Octopus integrates with the most popular social media platforms in both directions, meaning users can search for content on those platforms and follow hashtags and keywords. They can also post to one or more accounts on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other platforms. Octopus 8 Social Media Hub also tracks feedback from followers.

Website CMS connectivity

Octopus 8.1 connects directly to web content management tools (web CMS) such as Joomla, WordPress or CoreMedia, allowing broadcasts and articles to be uploaded to web portals.

Journalist application – Octopus Journalist App

Off-site users as well as in-house journalists can enhance their experience and access the system from their mobile phone or tablet using the Octopus Journalist App.

Friendly technology

Same work environment everywhere

Thanks to the system design and web-based technologies, users will always work in the same environment, regardless of whether they are in the newsroom, at home or outside.

Cross-Platform client & server

Octopus is designed to run on any operating system, be it Windows, Apple Mac OS X or Linux. There is no need for a parallel operating system, additional licenses and remote connections.

Support for all languages

The Octopus system supports all languages (Unicode). Even the interface can be translated into any language. Simultaneous operation in multiple languages is also supported.

Flexible licensing model

Octopus system licensing is based on concurrent user logins. Instead of per-job licenses, customers only need to purchase the number of licenses needed to support concurrent users.

Compatible with MOS

Octopus 8 fully supports the award-winning MOS technology to ensure that the system can be integrated into any environment and workflow that supports the same protocol. It fully supports placeholder workflow, thumbnails, proxy preview, item status, channel assignments and many other commands.

HTML5 and MOS ActiveX plug-ins support

As a MOS-compliant system, Octopus 8 supports not only ActiveX technology, but also the latest HTML5-based plug-ins. As ActiveX is being deprecated due to its limited compatibility, HTML5 plug-ins are OS and platform agnostic, offering support for Windows (including Windows 10), OS X, Linux computers, tablets and mobile devices.

PostgreSQL database

Octopus uses a powerful SQL database to store data. This offers many benefits such as better data security and maintenance, data consistency and of course speed and efficiency.

REST API & exports

Octopus 8 provides an easy-to-use REST API, available over HTTP. This interface allows customers to create their own applications, which can communicate and exchange certain data with the newsroom system. Octopus 8 also supports manual and automatic exports and imports.