Feeds Overview - Create, Edit, and Type Details

Feeds pull streams of content from websites or social networks into your program. Connect X (formerly Twitter), Pinterest, or any site with a standard RSS Feed.

Set a feed to auto-publish the content if you want all content to appear to users as it becomes available. Or, you can require review by a Studio user of content in a feed before the content is published.

Create a New Feed

Known Issue Note: There is a known issue with custom URLs generated by Sprinklr. If the source of your Firstup feed will be content with URLs generated by Sprinklr you may see error messages in Firstup when the post is pulled into your program. This is due to how Sprinklr resolves redirects for custom URLs.

1. In Studio, open the Feeds page by selecting the top left menu and navigate to Publish > Feeds.
   
   
   
   
2. Click on the Add Feed button in the top right corner of the Feeds page. This will open a sidebar with the new feed's details.
   
3. Select the Type - X, RSS Feed, or Pinterest.
   

   

4. Depending on the selected Type, enter the Username or URL of the content source.
   • You can only add a specific feed once. You cannot create two feeds using the same username or the same URL.
   • You cannot edit the username or URL later. Once a specific feed is created you can only archive or activate that feed.
   • You can edit the other fields (Nickname, Topics, Publishing Rules) at any time.
5. If you want to give the feed a new name, enter a Feed Nickname.
   • The nickname is optional and can be edited later. If you do not enter a nickname, we will name the feed based on the content source. For example, content from @firstup_io would say published by '@firstup_io'. In our Firstup program, we prefer the nickname 'Firstup X'.
6. Under Topics, choose one or more topics.
7. Under Publishing Rules, select the boxes to apply the desired settings. The Publishing Rules will apply to all content in the feed by default. Individual posts can be edited to change the Shareable or Published status of that specific content.
   
   • Allow content to be shared
     • On - content in this feed will have Shareable set to on by default.
     • Off - content in this feed will have Shareable set to off by default.
     • Note, whether this setting is on or off studio users can edit the Shareable setting of individual posts. The setting only affects the default setting.
   • Automatically publish content
     • On - new content in the feed will automatically be published to the designated topics. In Studio the new content can be found in the published status.No action is required to make the new feed content available to members.
     • Off - all new content in the feed must be manually reviewed before the content will become available to Members. In Studio, the new content will appear as needing review until a Studio user publishes the content. The content must be published in order to make the content available to members.
   • Expand articles
     • Only available if configuring an RSS Feed.
     • If you check the box next to 'Expand articles,' posts from this feed will open in-app, just like internal content such as articles, rather than launching the external URL as a link post.
     • If you don't enable this setting, posts from this feed are opened via the external URL (the link passed through the RSS feed).
   • Template
     • Only available if 'Expand articles' is selected.
     • Apply a specific template to the internal content. These templates match the templates applied to Article posts.
   • Appended Hashtag
   • Only available if 'Allow content to be shared' is selected.
   • On - leave the program-level appended hashtag(s) or specify a different hashtag to be suggested to employees when employees share posts from this feed.
   • Off - no hashtag will be added to the user's Share Message. This will override a program-level setting - if there is a program-level appended hashtag, turning appended hashtag off prevents that program-level hashtag from appearing to users.
8. Click Save to activate the new feed. The first sync will start automatically.

Managing Feed Posts

All posts pulled into the program via feeds will appear on the Planner page.

Auto-Published Feeds

• Posts from auto-published feeds appear with published status and are assigned to the topics the feed is assigned to.
• You can filter the Planner page by topic and feed type (i.e. RSS, X, etc.) to view posts from specific topics and feed types.

Needs Review Feeds

• Posts with automatically publish content set to off will appear as needs review.
• Admins can take action on these posts that need review in 2 ways:
• For more details about managing feed posts that need review, refer to this article.

Edit Feeds

You can edit a feed's settings at any time from the Feeds page. Click on the pencil and paper icon next to the feed to edit the settings. Change the feed Nickname, add the feed to more topics or remove the feed from certain topics, and edit the Publishing Rules. Make sure to click the blue "Save" button to save your updated preferences.

Changes will only apply to new content. Changes will not be applied to content that has already been pulled into the program.

Note the username/URL cannot be edited - if you need to pull content in from a new source, you will need to create a new feed.

Feed Synchronization

We'll pull all new content from your newly added feeds as well as some past posts depending on the network:

• X: Varies due to X’s API. approx. 10-30 (re-tweets are excluded)
• RSS: As many as are included in the RSS feed. Most display 10 posts.
• Pinterest: As many as are included in the Pinterest RSS feed (Pinterest appears to include 25)

Most feeds take about 1-2 hours to automatically refresh. You can request an on-demand refresh for a feed by clicking the refresh button for that feed on the feeds page.

X feeds may take a few hours to refresh, because X rate-limits the number of requests allowed per 15 minute period and there are a large number of feeds connected system-wide.

Feed Type Details

X (formerly Twitter)

Format - @username

RSS Feeds

Format - https://blog.com/feed

Requirements

• The RSS feed must be public, or the URL must include the necessary credentials (e.g. username and password) in the case of a non-public feed.
• RSS feeds must follow formatting standards. You can check that a feed is properly set up here: https://validator.w3.org/feed/
• Firstup pulls in the following elements from RSS feeds in order to build cards:
  
  • <title>
  • <description>
  • <pubDate>
  • Image
    • In order for an image to be included in a card, the image must be at least 400 x 200 px.
    • For best results, images should be included in the CDATA of the <description>, like the example below.
      • CDATA example:<description><![CDATA[<img src="https://nitrocdn.com/EfZGQlYONTeoltwDzsrzgAyokpxpMQoj/assets/static/optimized/rev-be81caf/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/sf_hq.jpg?quality=80&w=840&h=485&crop=1"><p>90 percent of employees would rather hear bad news than being kept in the dark; 60 percent of workers say they are more productive when they know more about the business</p>]]></description>
    • If no image is included in the RSS feed itself, the application will run the link through embed.ly to look for an available image.

Youtube RSS Feed Example

Create an RSS Feed from a YouTube channel with the following steps.

1. Go to the YouTube channel you want to add
2. View the page’s URL
3. Look for the code after /channel/ in the URL
4. Copy the code (it’ll look something like UCBcRF18a7Qf58cCRy5xuWwQ)
5. Replace that value into this URL:
   https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=UCBcRF18a7Qf58cCRy5xuWwQ

Pinterest

Format - pinterest.com/pagename