In this article, we’ll run through how our clients can generate public web feeds for displaying their content held on Reward Gateway elsewhere.

What is a Feed?

On the World Wide Web, a web feed (or news feed) is a data format used for providing people with frequently updated content. Content distributors syndicate a web feed, thereby allowing users to subscribe a channel to it. 

Making a collection of web feeds accessible in one spot is known as aggregation, which is performed by a news aggregator. A web feed is also sometimes referred to as a syndicated feed.

What types of Feeds do Reward Gateway support?

Reward Gateway supports the set up the following types of feeds:

• RSS

• Atom

• JSON

How do clients enable a feed for their content?

To enable a feed, log into Reward Manager, go to the Integration Dashboard and search for one of the feed types mentioned above (RSS, Atom or JSON) under the “Explore Integrations” tab. 

Select the integration and turn it “On” using the toggle button in the top right-hand side. 

Step 1: Give the Feed a name

The name a client gives to their feed might be displayed publicly on certain web feed readers, so they should be sure to set up a meaningful name.

Step 2: Select their Content

Now clients can select the content they want their feed to display. Reward Gateway currently supports creating two types of web feeds. 

1. A web feed of the Social Recognition Wall -> displaying social recognition moments

2. A web feed of the Blog Content -> showing company news/ updates etc

Step 3: Select the Refresh Rate

This defines how often clients would like Reward Gateway to refresh the content on the feed. Clients can choose between 5-30 mins or to never refresh the data.

Where can the feed created be found?

Once the feed has been set up, clients will be displayed a public url on the top of their integration page. This is ready to be used.

How can clients secure their feed?

Feed content is meant to be public. However, we understand that clients might want to keep this secure and secret. Therefore, once the feed is created it is given a unique token which no one will know publically.

Clients can choose to change this token routinely by selecting the re-generate security token option on screen. Please note this will also change your public feed url. 

There is also rate-limiting on these urls preventing anyone from trying to scrape information from it. 

What are the benefits of creating a feed for my content?

All of the supported feed formats by Reward Gateway are web standards and are widely used on the internet. Feeds can be setup so our clients can get all of their information in one place using feed readers (i.e. Feedly.com) and are automatically updating proving invaluable for the reader.

Feeds can also be used to show the content of your program on a clients intranet platform for example. If their intranet supports reading RSS for example, they can display their Social Recognition wall for their company to see publically on the intranet to boost visibility.  

Here are a few other places where a feed can be displayed:

• Web Feed Readers (Feedly.com, Feed.co etc)

• Feed Readers on Browser (Browser extensions to read feed content)

• Embed feeds on any public web site (Intranets)

• TVs (Most Smart TVs support reading feed content directly)