Introduction
Subscribing to Information
Viewing and Managing your Subscriptions
Accessing Web Feeds
Web Feed Formats
Administering the Subscriptions Feature


Introduction

The Subscriptions feature allows you to subscribe to the CATSWeb information (queries, searches, task lists, display parts, records, etc.) that is most important to you, and monitor it from a central location. When you access your subscriptions, CATSWeb checks for changes in the information and generates new items for you to view. Subscriptions may be accessed at any time via the My CATSWeb page.

If your system licensing allows it, you may also access subscriptions as Web feeds by using a feed reader (a.k.a. aggregator or news reader). This capability requires that the Web Feeds option is installed. Or, choose to have new items automatically sent to you via E-mail, if the E-mail feeds option is installed. In internet vernacular, accessing items in any of these ways is known as "reading a feed".

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Subscribing to Information

To subscribe to information, look for a Subscribe link near the bottom of the Hot List, query results, or other object (if subscribing to a record, the Subscribe link is in the Utility Links section). Click the Subscribe link to open the Add Subscription form. Subscription settings include:

• Title - An arbitrary title for the subscription. You will use this to discern one subscription from another if you have many subscriptions.
  
  
• Detect Changes To - This setting will be present when you subscribe to Display Parts that contain dynamic, graphical content (ex: Charts, Meters, etc.). It allows you to specify the types of changes that will cause a new subscription item to be generated. Choose from:
  • Graphic - New items will only be generated if the graphical part of the display part changes, such as indicating a new value, showing different chart items, etc. This is typically the best setting for these types of subscriptions.
  • Data - New items will only be generated if the underlying data for the Display Part changes. Note that any change to the underlying data will cause a new item to be generated. For example, if a user edits one of the underlying records and submits it without actually changing any values, a new subscription item will still be generated.
  • Graphic and Data - Combines both of the above so that any changes to the graphic or the data will cause a new subscription item to be generated.
    
    
• Feed Type - The feed type specifies how subscription items are grouped into feeds. Each user has a Combined feed that contains items from all subscriptions designated as Combined or Both, with the items ordered by the date and time they were created. Reading the Combined feed is often the easiest way to monitor CATSWeb information, as the information flows in a single "river of news" to the user. The Separate option means that the items are grouped into their own feed for the subscription, and must be accessed on a subscription by subscription basis.
  
  Note that the Feed Type setting is ignored when items are sent to you via E-mail. When you receive items via E-mail, all new items from all subscriptions are combined into a single E-mail message.
  
  
• Send Via E-mail - If the E-mail Feeds option is installed and your Employee record contains an E-mail address, this checkbox will be present. Check the box to have new items from the subscription periodically sent to you via E-mail.
  
  
• Highlight Changes - This option will be present when subscribing to records (Issues/Actions/Subtasks) if the Record Archiving option is installed in your system. If enabled, the records that appear in the items will have change highlighting enabled in the HTML, just as if you were viewing the record in CATSWeb and clicked the Highlight Changes or View All Prior Field Values links.
  
  Keep in mind that the Highlight Changes option causes changes relative to the prior record version to be highlighted. Since subscription items are created and stored at a point of time, the highlights may not reflect the current state of the record, especially if you are viewing an older subscription item.

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Viewing and Managing your Subscriptions

You may view and manage your current subscriptions by clicking the View Subscriptions link near the top of the My CATSWeb page. A summary of your current subscriptions will appear. To view or manage a particular subscription, click its Subscription ID. If you wish to delete one or more subscriptions, check the Delete box click the Submit button.

The following actions (links) are available when you view a subscription record:

• Edit Subscription - Enables you to change the settings in your subscription, or to delete it.
  
  
• View Items - Enables you to view the current set of items for the subscription. CATSWeb will generate new items, as needed, just before showing the items. When viewing items, you may use the Delete Item Below link to delete items that you have already read.
  
  Note that deleting an item does not delete the information that the item is based on, such as a record or query. Subscription items are copies of the information created at points of time. You can see when the item was created and when its underlying information last changed by looking at the Item Created and Content Changed values near the bottom of each item.
  
  
• Delete Items - Click this link to delete all the current items for a subscription. As described above, deleting items does not delete the underlying data that the subscription is based on. If you use this link to delete items, CATSWeb will immediately generate a new item when you next view items, whether the underlying data has changed or not. CATSWeb does not immediately generate a new item if you instead delete individual items using the Delete Item Below link while viewing items.
  
  
• Reset Subscription - Resetting a subscription has two effects:
  • Information change tracking for the subscription is reset so that CATSWeb will immediately generate a new item when you next view items.
  • If the Send Via E-mail setting is enabled (checked) for the subscription, all existing items will have their "have already E-mailed this item" flag cleared. This causes all of the items to be E-mailed to you again, during the next periodic E-mailing of items.
    
    
• View Live Content - Click this link to navigate directly to the current (live) information that the subscription is based on. For example, if the subscription is for a query named Audit Findings, you will navigate to the live results page for that query.
  
  
• View All Subscriptions - This link enables you to navigate back to the summary page showing all of your subscriptions.

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Accessing Web Feeds

To access Web feeds, the Web Feeds option must be installed in CATSWeb, and you must have a feed reader capable of reading feeds in either Atom or RSS 2.0 format. Navigate to the Subscription record and look in the Web Feed Information section. A link to access the Web feed will be present next to a icon. If you chose Both for the Feed Type setting, two links/icons will be present, one for the Combined feed and one for the Separate feed. Copy/paste the URL in the link to your feed reader. Or, click the icon or link to open the Web feed, then copy/paste the URL from your Web browser's address line to your feed reader.

When viewing subscription items in CATSWeb, you can also access the Web feed from a similar link and icon near the top of the View Subscription Items page. This provides an easy way to access your Combined feed, even if you have not yet created any subscriptions: click the View Combined Feed Items link near the top of the My CATSWeb page.

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Web Feed Formats

Most feed readers support both Atom and RSS 2.0 format. If your feed reader supports only one or the other, you may choose a specific format for all your feeds via the Web Feed Format setting on the My CATSWeb page. AssurX recommends choosing Atom if possible. If you change this format after subscription items have already been generated, the new format will only be applied to newly created items. Items created prior to your change will remain in the prior format, and will be automatically excluded when the feed reader next requests the feed items.

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Administering the Subscriptions Feature

Here is a summary of the managerial tasks relating to the Subscriptions feature that system administrators may perform:

• Establish system settings such as Web Feed Format, Item Lifetime and Dynamic Image Lifetime in the Subscriptions section of the Database Properties page.
• Establish permissions for users in the Subscriptions section of the Employee and Personality pages.
• Set Subscription-related preferences (Web Feed Format, Item Ordering) for new users in the Initial Preferences section of Personality pages.
• Adjust the Subscribe Link setting for Display Parts, as needed, to allow or disallow subscriptions to particular Display Parts.
• If you wish to disallow users from subscribing to records in particular forms, add Subscribe functional restrictions to the forms.

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