RSS is an acronym for really simple syndication. ChaiTrack supports a number of feeds for your data to allow you to show selected information on another web site or in a feed reader.

Supported feeds include upcoming birthdays, anniversaries, yahrzeits, new members, and recent deaths. In most cases you can specify the time window to look forward or backward. The exception is the recent deaths feed, which follows Jewish tradition of showing the name throughout Sheloshim, the 30-day period of mourning for most individuals, and 11 months for a parent.

You'll find links to the RSS feeds on the Members, Life Cycle Events, and Yahrzeits pages - just click the orange RSS icon on those pages to open the feed in a new window.  You can then copy the address from the browser address bar and paste it into your feed reader.

You can modify your feeds.  To start with, you'll need to know the address of the feed. Get that by clicking on the RSS icon for the feed you're interested in.  A complete feed address looks like this:

http://www.chaitrack.com/chaitrackfeeds.aspx?uniqueidentifier=123ab839-4e22-4590-a822-2253ed68e4ab&feedname=yahrzeits&time=30

To break the address into its parts:

• The primary url is http://www.chaitrack.com/chaitrackfeeds.aspx
• Next, your congregation is identified using the unique identifier found on your congregation settings page as:
  ?uniqueidentifier=123ab839-4e22-4590-a822-2253ed68e4ab. 
• Next, specify which feed you want as: &feedname=yahrzeits (or birthdays, anniversaries, newmembers, or recentdeaths)
• Next, specify how many days to look forward or back to fill the feed as: &time=30 for 30 days

Note, there are no spaces or quotation marks, and everything is on one line. If you omit the time parameter, ChaiTrack will use the default time of 14 days.

Most modern web browsers will display RSS feeds - just paste the feed address into your browser's address box and hit enter. This will allow you to preview the data and be sure you've got the address constructed correctly!

 If you use the URJ's RJ-WebBuilder program, follow these steps to add a feed to your page:

1. Log into your web site as a page editor or webmaster.
2. Put the page into edit mode from the Current Page menu.
3. Click the Add Program button to add a content program to the target region of the page, and select where in that region to place the program.
4. Select RSS Viewer as the program type.
5. Select the container type and enter a title for the program (e.g. Upcoming Yahrzeits).
6. On the web page you'll now see your new program on the page, but it will indicate "There are no feeds to display."
7. Right-click on the new program and select Change Options from the context menu.
8. In the RSS Feed URLs box, enter or paste your feed address, select from the options for update time, etc., then click the Update Options button.
9. Your feed should now appear.

The RJ-WebBuilder feed viewer allows you to specify more than one feed in the URL box, separated by commas, but the viewer will not sort the items together - one list will appear after the other, so it's better to use a separate program for each feed you want to show.