My Websites
Channels can be used for many different things, but one particular use case is to create a My Websites channel to manage and track publications of particular interest to you. You can then use the channel in Dashboards, as a filter for a specific Widget, or as a general News Feed of interesting articles.
Today's tip involves managing this special channel, and ways that it can be used.
Creating the My Websites Channel
You can use the easy channel setup capabilities to set up a channel (see previous tip of the day) or create a channel directly by clicking on Create Channel in either the Top Menu at any point in the application or from the Left Menu when viewing a channel. See Creating a Channel for detailed instructions on using the Channel Editor. Adding sources is exactly the same as adding entities. Click on ADD at the bottom of the Channel Stage Box to add a new source and then start typing the name to find your source. Click on it to add it to the Channel.
Channel Order Management
The Channels you set up are put into the various menus in alphabetical order by the channel name you create. This gives you the ability to manage your top channels in ways that allows you to get to them quickly. I utilize numbers as an easy way to force the order of my channels. For me, I put my top five channels in order by numbering them 1 - 5. I then group my channels using a common prefix to the name to let me know what type of channel I am using. An example is that I will group all of my index based channels under an 'Index - channel name' structure. In that way, the Dow Industrials, FTSE 100, NASDAQ 100 all fall into the same grouping. In the case of My Websites, I would group it near the top if I wanted it to be available quickly, or if I am only interested in it as part of a dashboard/widget definition, I would group it near the bottom (possibly with a Z - prefix).
Contributors and Sources
Setting up a sources channel involves understanding the different types of Sources. There are three levels of sources. Starting at the top are Contributors which are the actual top level publication. As an example, The Wall Street Journal is a contributor. Each contributor has one or more sources that make it up, so continuing with the same example, The Wall Street Journal has multiple sources that roll up to the single contributor. Examples are The Wall Street Journal / Opinion and The Wall Street Journal / Europe are individual sources that roll up under The Wall Street Journal. You can add whichever level makes sense. If you want everything from a particluar publication, use the Contributor, but if you want a specific section, add that section only.
The third level is Authors. FTS Apollo™ tracks authors along with the publications they write for. If you like a particular Author, you can add them to a channel as well, although that may be too granular for this particular use case.
Using My Websites
You can use the My Websites channel directly by clicking on it in the Top Menu or Left Menu. That will give you a News Feed that can be filtered (see Tip of the Day based on information you need to find. You can also include My Websites as a channel within a larger dashboard setup using the Channel Widget.
The My Websites channel is more powerful used within a Dashboard. Possible uses include, looking at a specific Entity (Company, Person, Region, Topic) using My Websites as the set of sources to be used. Another use case is to create a Top Entities Widget using My Websites as the source of the news to be analyzed. Then you can look at which companies are being mentioned, along with which people, topics, regions, etc. When used within a Dashboard, Top Entities can be set to only look back for a day, a week, a month or a quarter. I find looking back a day of particular interest as you will then see companies (or people, topics, etc.) show up in the feed as new, at which point, I can research why they are in the feed and what is going on with them.
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