What is the difference between "Existing" and "New" Destinations in my Switchboard Cloud Account?
While following the steps to build up a destination group with social channels, you can add a New or Existing destination.
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An "Existing Destination" is a destination you have added to your Switchboard account through direct authorization (email password credentials) or as a custom RTMP destination.
- When you remove a destination from a group on a workflow page, the destination is moved to the destination page. The destination page lets you view all the existing social channels and platforms saved to the Switchboard Account.
New Destinations
When you select New Destination from the menu, you create a new instance of that destination. You typically only need to do this once because Switchboard will keep the authorized connection for that specific destination.
For example, let's say you are responsible for live streaming your local soccer team's games to their YouTube channel. Now that the season is over, you won't be live streaming until the season starts back up, so you remove the soccer team's YouTube channel from the destination group.
When you remove a destination from the destination group, it isn't deleted and still exists in your Switchboard account. It is safely stored with the rest of the saved destinations.
Existing Destination
The soccer season starts back up, and you are ready to begin live streaming your local soccer team's games to their YouTube channel. In this scenario, when you add their YouTube channel to the destination group, select "Existing Destination" instead of "New Destination" from the menu. A list of available destinations will be displayed; select their YouTube channel from the list and add it to the destination group.
Selecting an existing destination is a time saver because you won't need to go through the extra authorization steps required to add new destinations. Switchboard keeps the authorization for destinations.
Are you not seeing one of your saved destinations?
Suppose you are trying to add an existing destination to a destination group that is not showing up as listed. In that case, you may already have it listed on a different encoder workflow or destination group.
Destinations can only exist in one destination group at a time. Check out this reference to verify if a destination is already used in a separate group or workflow.
However, you can create multiple copies of a destination and add them to any group or workflow you choose.
How to Create Multiple Copies of a Destination
You can just navigate to the destination group to which you want to add the extra copy and go through the add new destination process.
- Directly click a social icon or select the yellow add new destination button.
- Repeat the New Destination process for every destination group or workflow in which you want to add copies of the social.
Why would you select New Destination from the menu?
1. Anytime you add a destination to your Switchboard account for the first time.
2. Anytime you want a specific channel to exist on multiple destination groups simultaneously.
3. Special scenarios- for example, when you want to run multiple live streams simultaneously to the same destination from different encoders. You must create multiple workflows and add the social channel to each workflow.
Read this resource to learn how to set up multiple workflows in your Switchboard account.
Some things to keep in mind
On rare occasions, destinations can become unauthorized. This can happen due to platforms making internal changes or someone logging out and changing their password on a social platform. If it's been a while since you live-streamed to a destination, verifying the connection with Switchboard is good practice.
Check out these resources