Zimbra's Built-in RSS/ATOM Feed Reader

The good news: many vendors are adding feed reader capabilities to their client platforms.

The bad news: many vendors are adding feed reader capabilities to their client platforms.

If you are an enterprise organization and looking at feed readers across varies collaboration, portal and content systems - remember - there are a lot of architectural and infrastructure issues to consider in terms of security, network management, feed management, etc. There are also some really important user needs as well - including synchronization of feeds across multiple client user experiences, including read/unread marks, etc. If you are committed to a Windows client, then look to see if the vendor is integrating with the Windows RSS Platform. If you are using a more complete end-to-end XML Syndication systems (e.g., Attensa, KnowNow and NewsGator), then make sure that the vendor providing the client reader is able to integrate with those vendors as well.

What you really want to avoid is a potpourri of clients all handing RSS/Atom feeds differently (each well in its own right but chaotic when viewed as a collection of feed services).

Concerning Zimbra, the implementation is pretty clean. Although I'm personally not a big fan of receiving feeds into an e-mail client (probably because I have over 350), many people will find that option valuable. It also lowers some adoption barriers since users are already familiar with an e-mail client and a folder metaphor. As they get more advanced I imagine they will progress into a more dedicated client that is either browser-based or a stand-alone client application. I've tried RSS feeds into an IM client and the problem I have with that alternative is simply the screen size of an IM client. But I can see certain RSS feeds that are alert-centric being well-suited for an IM user experience. Feeds will show up everywhere - portals, workspaces, content management systems as well as in collaboration tools and even line-of-business applications (all the more reason to fully comprehend the user and technical design issues and plan accordingly).

Adding A Feed

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Many different sites offer RSS Feeds. A good place to get feeds is http://www.rssfeeds.com/ They offer a directory of feeds that you can add to Zimbra.

Adding a feed to Zimbra is as easy as creating a folder. Just right click on the parent item of where you want the feed to be displayed and click "New Folder".

If you want the feed folder to be displayed inside of the "Inbox" folder, then right click on "Inbox". If you want it to be a "Top Level" folder (which means that it is along side the inbox), then right click on "Folders" located on the left hand side.

When you right click and choose "New Folder" you will receive a dialog box asking you some information about the folder you wish to add.

Because we're adding an RSS Feed, we've checked the "Subscribe to RSS/ATOM feed" box. When you do this, another field will appear asking you for the URL of the feed.

Give the folder a name. In this case we've subscribed to the Yahoo Top Stories Feed, and we've located the URL for the feed and pasted it into the URL field.

At this point, you are given another change to indicate where you want to place the feed folder. Remember that the folder you select will become the parent of the feed folder.

Click "OK" when finished.

Source: Zimbra's Built-in RSS/ATOM Feed Reader

Comments

[Agence de casting pour enfants]

Really interesting post!

Never stop iterating and don’t fear failure. Choose well-understood conventions where they will do to the most good , shortcuts you might take will cost you more to fix later than to try to get right up-front today.

Thanks , Zoli Juhasz