RSS / Structured Feed

RSS / Structured Feed integration

RSS Feed Overview

RSS (Rich Site Summary), uses a family of standard web feed formats to publish frequently updated information. An RSS document (or “feed”) includes full or summarized text, and metadata, like publishing date and author’s name.

RSS feeds enable publishers to syndicate data automatically. A standard XML file format ensures compatibility with many different machines/programs. RSS feeds also benefit users who want to receive timely updates from favourite websites or to aggregate data from many sites.

Once users subscribe to a website RSS removes the need for them to manually check it. Instead, their browser constantly monitors the site and informs the user of any updates. The browser can also be commanded to automatically download the new data for the user.

Specifically for Oleeo vX, when RSS feeds are configured for a system the candidates can get automatic emails when new vacancies go live on the system. Clients can also use the RSS feeds we produce to provide a live snapshot of the vacancies they have posted on the ATS directly on their website.

Configuration Notes

There are two types of RSS feeds, Simple & Structured. RSS fields are limited to 255 characters.

Simple RSS feeds will show on the system’s job boards and are visible to candidates, allowing them to subscribe. They are controlled via table layouts and each job board can use different layouts for their feeds.

Structured RSS feeds are not visible on the candidate interface. They are designed to be hidden from candidates so that they can include information about vacancies that is for internal use. Clients can use a third party tool to feed this information to various internal applications such as mobile apps.

Standard Feeds

To enable simple RSS feeds make sure the system’s configuration value candidate.seo.rss.disabled is set to 0. Setting it to 1 will disable the simple RSS feed. Once this configuration value is set, a “Latest Opportunities” link will appear on all of the system’s job boards, that candidates can click to be taken to the RSS feed.

Simple RSS feeds can be configured to display information that is set in table layouts. The table layout’s object type must be set to Posting

Once you have created your desired layout, simply select the layout from the Job Board’s configuration screen. (Job Board > Vacancy/Talent Bank Job Boards > Search Engine Results > RSS/Feed Layout listing)

If the RSS/Feed instant apply URL option is ticked, it will automatically take the candidate to the registration screen, as though they have clicked “Apply”, rather than taking them to the vacancy overview. Structured Feeds A basic structured RSS schema example

Structured Feeds

Structured RSS feeds are enabled by default, but must be created via the 3rd Party Integration settings in the system.

  1. To set up a structured RSS feed, go to Advanced Configuration > 3rd Part Integration > Schema Configuration

  2. Check the list of schemas in the system, if there is a schema already in the system named SchemaOrgBusinessEvent, use that schema and skip to step 5.

  3. Create a new schema. Set the Schema Name to SchemaOrgBusinessEvent & set the Schema Version to 0.97

Please Note: The feed will not work if these fields are not set to exactly those values.

  1. Set/edit the title and description appropriately.

  2. Within the schema, in edit mode, navigate to the “fields” tab.

  3. Create the fields you would like to include in the RSS feed, following these guidelines: Field property Description Field order This sets where the field appears in your list of items. Mapping Key This is the name of the field which appears when viewing the list of fields in the ATS. It also shows when viewing the RSS feed in it’s raw format. Description This is what appears before the field’s value when viewing the RSS feed through an RSS viewer (for example, Firefox’s inbuilt RSS reader.) Mapping Value This is where you type out the datapath for the value you’d like to pull through. Output Format Can be used for values that will be in date or time format. You can use strftime formatting.

Once the schema is complete, you can access it by adding /structured to the simple RSS feeds URL. If simple RSS feeds are not enabled, you can construct the RSS feed URL like this:

https://system-name.tal.net/candidate/jobboard/vacancy/ID/feed/structured

ID should be replaced with the job board ID. Adding query strings to an RSS feed

Occasionally, a client may ask for an RSS feed to be filtered to only match specific criteria. The clients web developers should already be able to do this on their side, however, if the client is insistent that they cannot, there are ways that we can change the URL to filter the results.

Simply go to the job board and add the search criteria you want to add to the feed, apply the search, and copy all the parameters in the search url (all after ‘?’ (including ‘?’)) and paste them into the RSS url.