What is the difference between "Existing" and "New" Destinations in my Switchboard Cloud Account?
While going through the steps of building up a destination group with social channels, you are presented with the option to add a New or Existing destination.
- An "Existing Destination" is a destination you have added to your Switchboard account through direct authorization with 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 perform this one time 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 to their channel until the season starts back up. 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. You can find it safely stored with the rest of the save destinations in your Switchboard account.
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 display; select their YouTube channel from the list to 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 for adding 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, and it 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 learn how to verify if a destination is already being used in a separate group or workflow.
However, you can create multiple copies of a destination and add them to any group or workflow of your choosing.
How to create multiple copies of a destination
Navigate to the destination group to which you want to add the extra copy and go through the add new destination process.
1. Press the green Add Destination button.
2. Choose "New Destination" from the menu.
3. Select the destination type from the menu and follow the authorization prompts.
4. Repeat the New Destination process for every destination group or workflow 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, there are times when 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. It is good practice to verify the connection of a destination with Switchboard if it's been a while since you live-streamed to that destination.
Check out these resources