Did you have a chance to read yesterday’s exciting product news announcing the release of Bamboo Rating? No? If you have a minute, jump on over to the announcement of Bamboo Rating. We think you will be impressed.

Good to go?  Great!  Now that you are hooked on Bamboo Rating, did you know that Bamboo Rating fits like a glove with SharePoint Video Library? That’s right… with Bamboo Rating custom column you can now add strategic rating options to your existing Video Libraries.

With Bamboo Rating, you are able to promote top videos sorting and/or filtering on the average rating value, or display the most popular articles based on number of ratings submitted.  These sorting options are available using out-of-the-box functions with library views!

If you are unfamiliar with SharePoint Video Library, this is a custom document library created Bamboo Solutions.  With SharePoint Video Library, you can store video and audio files in SharePoint allowing your users to view the videos or listen to the audio directly from their browser.  You might be asking yourself, “Doesn’t SharePoint 2010 provide this functionality in their new Asset Library?” Yes, SharePoint Server 2010 does include a similar library, however there are a few things to note:

• Asset Libraries are only available in SharePoint Server 2010.  SharePoint Video Library, on the other hand, is supported on all SharePoint 2007 and SharePoint 2010 platforms.
• An Asset Library can only play video in the browser using Silverlight which requires a local installation of the Silverlight plug-in.  SharePoint Video Library supports BOTH Silverlight and Windows Media Player.
• With Asset Libraries, you need to manually upload thumbnail images to associate to the video files.  SharePoint Video Library automatically generates the thumbnail and associates it to the video file.

For a complete comparison chart, view the post Feature Comparison Chart: Bamboo SharePoint Video Library vs. Asset Library in SharePoint 2010.

Follow these simple steps to download the installation packages of fully-functional 30-day trials for both products:

1. Open the product page for each product listed below:
   1. Bamboo Rating
   2. SharePoint Video Library
2. Click the  button for each product.
3. Once you complete the Checkout process you will receive an email with details on downloading the installation packages.
4. For installation, configuration and usage instructions, view the Online Documentation for each product:
   1. Bamboo Rating
   2. SharePoint Video Library

It’s that simple!  Happy downloading and a quick reminder that both products work on all SharePoint 2007 and SharePoint 2010 platforms.