Add or Edit an RSS Source

A Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feed is a file that includes information about content that a site has published, and will allow a user to keep track of the updates to those sites. An RSS source allows members of the Administrators and Content Managers built-in groups to add the content of an RSS feed to a Coveo organization.

Coveo indexes RSS feed content so that it’s searchable by all users of the Coveo organization, or only by the source creator.

The availability of old and new RSS feed items depends on the RSS feed configuration contained in an XML file.

If the XML feed file contains OpenSearch information, your RSS source uses it to include all available items in the feed as far in the past as possible.
If the XML feed file doesn’t contain OpenSearch information, the RSS source doesn’t retrieve old feed items, only new ones that are published.
The indexing process of RSS sources keeps items in your source even when they’re filtered out of the RSS feed as new items are published. The filtered-out RSS feed items are however deleted from the source when you perform a source rebuild or rescan.

A technological website RSS feed is configured to provide only the last 100 articles, therefore previous articles aren’t accessible. When you create, rebuild, or rescan your RSS source, you get the last 100 RSS articles available on this site at that time. The next day, five articles are published and your source ends up containing 105 articles.

Six months later, it may contain a thousand articles as long as you don’t rebuild or rescan the source, in which case it will only contain the last 100 articles.

Source Key Characteristics

Features		Supported	Additional information
RSS feeds version		RSS 1.0, RSS 2.0, and Atom 1.0
Searchable content types			RSS feeds (or channels) and RSS items
Content update operations	Refresh		Takes place every hour by default. A rescan or rebuild is required to take account of deleted items. The last update time of each RSS feed item must be available for indexing. Without it, the source sets the default minimum value, making a rescan or rebuild necessary to retrieve item changes. Depending on the RSS feed format, the following property must be defined for each item: Atom 1.0: <updated> RSS 2.0: <a10:updated>
	Rescan
	Rebuild
Content security options	Determined by source permissions
	Source creator
	Everyone

Add or Edit an RSS Source

When adding or editing your RSS source, follow the instructions below.

“Configuration” Tab

On the Add/Edit an RSS Source subpage, the Configuration tab is selected by default. It contains your source’s general and content information, as well as other parameters.

General Information

Source Name

Enter a name for your source.

Use a short and descriptive name, using letters, numbers, hyphens (-), and underscores (_). Avoid spaces and other special characters.

Corporate-RSS-Feeds

Feed URL

Enter the web addresses of RSS feeds that you want to index in the file:///, http://, or https:// format.

Ensure that your RSS feed is in one of the following supported formats:

RSS 1.0
RSS 2.0
Atom 1.0

http://rss.cnn.com/rss/cnn_tech.rss

As you start typing the first RSS address, another field appears under the one you’re already typing into. This is to remind you that you can add more than one RSS feed address in your RSS source.

Character Optical Recognition (OCR)

Check this box if you want Coveo Cloud to extract text from image files or PDF files containing images. OCR-extracted text is processed as item data, meaning that it’s fully searchable and will appear in the item Quick View. See Enable Optical Character Recognition for details on this feature.

Index

When adding a source, if you have more than one logical (non-Elasticsearch) index in your organization, select the index in which the retrieved content will be stored (see Leverage Many Coveo Indexes). If your organization only has one index, this drop-down menu isn’t visible and you have no decision to make.

To add a source storing content in an index different than default, you need the View access level on the Logical Index domain (see Manage Privileges and Logical Indexes Domain).
Once the source is added, you can’t switch to a different index.

“Authentication” Section

Enter the Username and Password of the RSS feed website account that has access to the RSS feed content you want to include. See Source Credentials Leading Practices.

“Content Security” Tab

Select who will be able to access the source items through a Coveo-powered search interface. For details on this parameter, see Content Security.

“Access” Tab

In the Access tab, determine whether each group and API key can view or edit the source configuration (see Resource Access):

In the Access Level column, select View or Edit for each available group.
On the left-hand side of the tab, if available, click Groups or API Keys to switch lists.

Completion

Finish adding or editing your source:
- When you want to save your source configuration changes without starting a build/rebuild, such as when you know you want to do other changes soon, click Add Source/Save.
  
  To add the source content or to make your changes effective, on the Sources page, you must click Start initial build or Start required rebuild in the source Status column.
  
  OR
- When you’re done editing the source and want to make changes effective, click Add and Build Source/Save and Rebuild Source.
  
  Back on the Sources page, you can review the progress of your source addition or modification.
Once the source is built or rebuilt, you can review its content in the Content Browser.
Optionally, consider editing or adding mappings.

You can only manage mapping rules once you build the source (see Refresh, Rescan, or Rebuild Sources).

What’s Next?

Adapt the source update schedule to your needs.