While the term source can have a variety of bespoke meanings depending on its application, a Vable Source is any individual web page or RSS feed tracked within the platform as well as Curated Feeds, which host a collection of articles handpicked by Administrators. This article will outline in more detail what types of Sources can be added to the platform as well as best practice advice when adding new content to Vable.
What is a Source?
In the most common instance, a Vable Source is any URL which contains a series of updates in the form of articles/content items on an individual web page or RSS feed. It is important to understand that a Vable Source is not an individual article or an entire website, although we may be tracking multiple pages or feeds from a website, each of which is a Source. The articles which are brought into the platform by a Source are then available to be searched against and used in Topics and Newsletters.
Secondarily, a Vable Source can also be a bespoke collection of articles, known as a Curated Feed, added from among those on the Articles page in Vable or uploaded to the platform by an Administrator. Article uploads can include files imported from your computer (e.g. PDF, Word, Excel documents) or article URLs from external websites.
Tips about the types of URLs to add to Vable
We recommend tracking content found on RSS feeds (as opposed to web pages), where possible, as the formatting conventions allow for the most consistent experience and you will see content in Vable sooner due to the setup requirements for web pages. RSS feeds also are less likely to be subject to problems when websites are redesigned.
Website home pages should not be added as Vable Sources unless the content you wish to track is only available from that single location. Blogs, for example, will typically always update new posts on the home page and thus are an exception to the standard. In most instances, however, you will likely be drilling down into the website to find a structured set of data such as the ‘news’ page.
Web pages which do not display links to individual articles/content items are not trackable nor are pages which contain static links which will never update (e.g. an "About Us" page).
If there is more than one page or feed on the website you want to track, for example the Technology News page and the Financial News page, add each URL to the Vable platform separately. This is also true for websites which list all available RSS feeds on a single page - the individual feeds should be added to the platform separately rather than adding the page which displays the list of feeds.
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Source Visibility: Public vs. Private
The Vable Source library contains both publicly available RSS feeds and web pages (added to the platform by the Vable team and clients) as well as private Sources, visible only to your own organization.
Administrators have the ability to mark a Source private to their own organization when adding it to the platform, and each submission is reviewed for accuracy by the Vable team.
Those Sources which should be marked private include any URLs which are only available to your organization such as custom links from subscription-based resources, websites which generate URLs for a specific search such as Google Alerts, and any other URL which includes identifying information. Additionally Curated Feeds and any content routed to the Vable Inbox are always private to your organization.
To quickly filter by private or public Sources, click the +Add Filters option on the Sources list view and select Private from the dropdown menu. Within the dialog, select Yes to view only private Sources or No to view only public Sources, then select Apply.
Sources can only be added, viewed and managed by Administrators of the platform. End Users will only see content from these Sources as they are used in a Topic or Newsletter to which they are subscribed or if your organization’s subscription includes access to the MyVable self service platform.
Further Reading: