A glaring ommission

[alevene]

My Android phone announced a production release of BeyondPod, 4.x and installed the newest version. It's cosmetically attractive, but lacks an important feature that is fundamental to how the system works. Why it was missed, I do not know.

That feature is SmartPlay. SmartPlay allows the system to sort a playlist supposedly in the way you want to hear the podcasts. It doesn't. It is limited to three choices, Latest, Oldest and Random. What's missing the the sort mechanism built into the All Episodes page, the ability to sort by nine different methods. I don't know why all of those sorts are not available in SmartPlay. Why is it useful? Because you can sort by podcast length or other method. In my instance, I listen to a lot of very short podcasts and would like those heard first to remove the episode clutter.

In v 3.x, you could manually sort the list (as in 4.x), but it sadly reverted to random without warning. I hope that the developers fix the sorting and stickiness problemsand allow a variety of addition sorts that STICK. Perhaps they can add to SmartPlay new episodes, length first and after a current podcast is complete, jump to the top of the list.

In my opinion, this is BeyondPod's Achilles Heal.

[juwlz]

I'm not sure what you mean. Apart from the introduction of multiple smartplay lists, nothing much has changed regarding the way that play lists and smart play lists work in BP4.x vs BP3.x

New rules for smartplay are on the ToDo list, which will allow other types of sorting.

All the sort options that were available in the episode list in BP3.x are still there in BP4.x
2014-10-27 11.31.52.jpg

You can control whether or not you want BP to update your play list when you do feed updates in Playlist Settings | Auto Rebuild Smartplay.

You may find that the FAQ on updating will help: http://www.beyondpod.com/cms/index.p...rom-3-x-to-4-x

HTH
Julie

[alevene]

That is the problem. Version 3.x had the same problem. I thought you'd fix it in v4. You haven't.

The Smart Play feature isn't. It has minimal sorting options compared to the All Episodes page. It has nine sorting choices, SP has three. So without more sorting options, especially an automatic sort by podcast duration, it's worthless. Further, that can be enhanced by continued resorting for immediate play or after the current podcast is completed

[juwlz]

Well, as I said, it IS on the ToDo list, but didn't make it to 4.0

[alevene]

Please bump it up the list. The program is more attractive cosmetically, but its functions don't seem to be improved a lot and in the instance of a sortable Smart Play, not at all. Thanks.

[rupertsilva10]

I look forward to having this feature soon. I'm really grateful that your team has been doing their best in listening to our requests and even the complaints. Hopefully, an update on this will be a part on top of your To-Do list. Thanks!