How does Degreed gather metadata information on content? – Zendesk

Description:

When adding an item to Degreed or marking an item as complete via the Degreed Button (extension), some information is auto-filled in fields such as title, duration, or image. How does Degreed do this?

Answer:

Degreed uses a metadata scraper to retrieve information from the content URL, such as title, description, duration, image, etc.

Note that since Degreed relies on the information available on the website's page metadata, this may result in inaccurate information if the page does not offer data or offers incorrect data. Degreed can only reflect the data available, never creating information from scratch.

When an item is added via file, it overwrites any information provided (or left blank) in the uploaded file.

When content is behind any type of firewall, such as a login screen, the scraper is unable to gather information about the content. As firewalls work as a security barrier, it does not allow the scraper to acquire information. This can result in "Sign In" or "JavaScript" being added as the title or skill of an item when adding content. This is because Degreed scans the title and description of the content and attempts to match it to existing popular skills. For more information, visit the article Why am I seeing a 'sign in' message in existing content or when adding content in Degreed?.

Additional Note:

As a best practice, we recommend editing the Title and Description of the content as it is being added to Degreed to avoid unwanted text in the Title or Description. For curators and administrators, we recommend adding the content to the Internal Catalog to allow future edits.