News feeds (RSS)

News feeds post new items from any site with a feed into a channel: a trade paper’s articles, a partner’s status page, a supplier’s release notes or your own company blog. Freesbe checks each feed for you and posts what’s new as a card, so your team reads it where they already talk about it.

Each card has the headline as a link to the article, a short summary, the article’s picture when it has one, and who wrote it. The cards post under the feed’s own name and icon, so they’re easy to tell apart from people, and anyone can reply in a thread to talk about the story.

Add a feed

Only owners and admins can add feeds.

1. Open Workspace settings → Integrations & apps → Integrations → News feeds and click Add feed.
2. Paste the feed’s address, or just the website’s (like blog.acme.example): Freesbe finds the feed the site links to. Click Find feed to see its title and newest items.
3. Pick the channel it posts to, and change its name if you like.
4. Optionally, fill in Only post items about (see Keywords).
5. Leave Post the newest item now on to see a card right away, and click Add feed.

Freesbe reads RSS, Atom and JSON Feed. Everything already in the feed when you add it counts as seen, so the channel isn’t flooded with old articles; from then on, each new item posts once.

To post the same feed into two channels, add it twice.

Keywords

A busy feed can post only what matters to the channel. In Only post items about, list words separated by commas, like singapore, maintenance. An item posts when one of them is in its title or summary, whatever the capitals; the rest are skipped. Leave it empty to post everything.

How often feeds are checked

• Freesbe checks each feed every 15 minutes, and asks the site for changes only, so a feed that hasn’t changed costs it almost nothing.
• Quiet feeds are checked less often: each check that finds nothing waits twice as long, up to every 2 hours. As soon as something new posts, it’s back to every 15 minutes.
• At most 5 cards post from one check. When more came out at once, one more message says how many, with a link to the site.
• To see a new item sooner, open the feed’s ⋯ menu and click Check now.

When a feed stops answering

When a site is down or its feed moved, the feed shows Not answering in settings with the reason, and Freesbe tries again less and less often, up to every 6 hours. After 3 days without an answer it’s paused (Paused: not answering) and says so once in its channel. Fix the address on the site’s side, then Check now or save the feed to try again. If the feed moved for good, delete it and add the new address.

Turn a feed off or delete it

From the feed’s ⋯ menu:

• Edit changes its name, channel and keywords.
• Turn off stops checking it until you Turn on again. Items that came out in the meantime post when it’s back on, up to 5 at once.
• Delete stops it for good. Cards already posted stay in the channel.

How many feeds you can have

Plan	Feeds
Free	2
Business	20
Corporate	100
Enterprise	500

Settings show how many your workspace has used. See Plans.

Questions

Does the site see who’s reading? No. Freesbe fetches the feed itself, as FreesbeBot, so the site only sees Freesbe. Pictures on the cards load from the site, like any image on the web.

Can I add a feed that needs a password? Not yet. Freesbe reads public feeds only.

Where do I find a site’s feed? Most blogs and news sites have one, often at /feed, /rss or /atom.xml. Pasting the site’s own address usually works, because its pages link to it.