Here are some answers to common questions about feed management. Questions? Contact us at PartnerHubSupport@microsoft.com
Do we need a separate feed for articles, slideshows, and videos?
Yes, different content types have different feed formats on MSN. If you try to send a slideshow through an article feed, for example, the ingestion will fail because Ingestion Services is expecting an article. We do support videos and slideshows displaying in Article feeds as embeds. See Inline Content for more information.
Can I have multiple languages in my feed?
No, each feed URL on MSN must contain content only in the language you associated with that feed when you set it up. See RSS and ATOM Feeds for more information.
What feed formats are supported in the current spec?
MSN’s Content Specification V3 supports RSS and ATOM.
Can I use my own custom format?
No, MSN only supports feed formats detailed in the Content Specifications guide. Mapping of non-standard formats is not supported.
How does MSN’s ingestion process work?
Ingestion Services checks the feed you give us on a cadence, generally about once every fifteen minutes. Any content flagged as new or updated is ingested and the corresponding documents are created in our system. Generally, this process completes in about thirty-five minutes, but times can vary. Usually, partners push new content to the top of their feeds and older content falls off after about 20 items, but at times of high network volume, Microsoft may need to adjust how long items stay in your feeds.
When Ingestion Services checks your feed, it follows this logic:
- Has this Unique ID been ingested before? If no, ingest the item.
- If yes, is the Update Date more recent than the Publish Date? If yes, ingest the item.
- If no, skip.
How do we send updates to our content?
Updated content should have the same content ID as the original and be tagged with new published or updated tags, according to the standards specified in Content Specifications for ATOM or RSS. Updated items that are not flagged in one of the specified ways will be skipped by Ingestion Services. Inline images can be updated but only if they have new image URLs. Articles with updated inline images that have not updated their image URLs will still display the old images.
How do I unpublish my content?
You can remove ingested content manually, or by sending Ingestion Services a takedown signal through your feed.
Unpublish Manually
Select the post or posts you would like to remove on the Content dashboard and click the Delete button. You can also remove posts from your feed by sending takedown instructions via RSS or ATOM.
Unpublish via Your Feed
You can add a takedown request to your feed, identifying the post you would like to remove by its unique content ID. Here is an example code snippet of an RSS takedown request.
<!-- Example of a Takedown request. You must provide a <guid> of anexisting item, a modified date and an expiration date in the past --><item><!-- REQUIRED: You must provide the Unique Identifier of the piece ofcontent you want to take down through the feed.The id must belong to an already ingested document --><guid isPermaLink="false">477649<guid><!-- Use the <dcterms:modified> element to indicate there is a newupdate for this content --><dcterms:modified>2017-10-10T10:00:00+0100<dcterms:modified><!-- You can use this element to takedown a piece of content, byspecifying an "end" date in the past. --><dcterms:valid>end=1990-10-02T10:00:00+0100;scheme=W3C-DTF<dcterms:valid><item><channel>
How do I set videos to expire?
MSN sets expiration dates to 365 days by default. You can add an optional dcterms:valid element with a different value if you would like to set expiration at something other than 365 days.
If you would like your video to expire immediately, refer to How do I unpublish my content? above for guidance.
Do I need to provide a thumbnail for my video?
Video thumbnails are optional for 1PP videos, but generally required for 3PP videos, except for YouTube which is optional. See more about videos in the Content Specifications.
How should we send images, slideshows, video, or audio, or social media embeds with articles?
Many content types are supported as inline embeds in Article feeds. See the content specification for Inline Content and check out some sample code snippets in the RSS and ATOM section of this guide.
If we send video inline in an article, can it also arrive via a separate video feed?
Yes, most MSN partners send us both an article and a video feed. Video sent inline is treated the same way as content sent in the video feed. Ingestion Services can detect whether a video has already been ingested in a different feed. Check out some sample inline code snippets in the RSS and ATOM section of this guide.
Can I use <media:content> within an article body?
No, you can only use supported HTML tags to embed media, such as <img> and <video>.
How should we send related links?
Each page of your content on MSN has a special module at the bottom that displays related links to your other posts. Generally this is handled algorithmically by MS, but if you would prefer to control this manually you can send the related links in your feed itself. See Inline Content for more details.