filtrbox blog

In the past few weeks we’ve added two features to enhance our support of Twitter monitoring within Filtrbox.

1. Tweet This - From within the dashboard, you can now tweet any article in your account. Just mouse over an article and you’ll see the new “tweet this” link on the action bar. This is a super-easy way to share articles found in Filtrbox with the Twitter community. All you need is a twitter account, and as long as you are logged into Twitter in your browser it will work seamlessly.




2. Twitter links in your Daily Briefing - The ability to monitor conversations on Twitter in Filtrbox isn’t new, but the Daily Briefing emails have now been updated to show you who posted the tweet. Its also a live link so you can visit that person’s twitter page very easily. Here’s what it looks like in your daily briefing email.

Let us know what you think!

You asked, and we listened! Log into your dashboard and check out the new features we have just released. Many of these enhancements are the result of direct customer feedback, and we addressed a number of issues that have been nagging us too. If you haven’t logged into your dashboard in awhile, take a few minutes and refine your Filtrs or add a new one and give the new version a test-drive. Details on the enhancements follow;

• Improved Filtrs and live search
• Better charting
• Mark-as-Read support
• Delete article support
• Block source
• OPML file import
• Action bar

Improved Filtrs and live search
The way that Filtrbox runs its searches has been improved to provide more accurate and comprehensive results. You may notice some changes in the articles the system finds for your Filtrs. In almost all cases this should be an improvement, in the case of very general filtrs you may now want to refine them further to get more relevant results.

In order to provide better instant-feedback and a more consistent experience, Filtrbox now runs live searches for your Filtrs as you set them up and provides sample results from a broader range of sources. Click and drag include or exclude terms from the tag cloud or add additional terms yourself and click search to get realtime feedback reflected in new sample articles. Check out this quick screencast to see it in action.



Better Charting
This release introduces a new charting component that looks a bit different, performs better, and will offer more flexibility as we expand the display options. What’s new is the date box and calendar pop-up to control the date ranges, and the “show for the past days” box where you can just type in how many days of data you want. Much easier to use than the sliders that were there before.

Mark-as-Read
After you have clicked on an article in the Filtrbox dashboard, the title of the article goes from bold to regular text. You can mark an article as un-read also if needed.



Delete article
There are cases where you might want to remove an article from your account. Perhaps the article is not relevant to your Filtrs, or it’s a splog that slipped through our defense systems. If you are in PR or web marketing and you are using FiltrFeeds, you can also use this feature to cleanse an article out of a feed that is getting published or shared. Once articles are deleted, they are removed from your account and cannot be recovered. There is no “un-delete” - once its gone its gone!

Block source
Here’s another very handy feature that helps remove articles and content you simply don’t want to see going forward. Perhaps you consistently see articles from a domain you don’t care for, or is of little value to you. Just click “block source” and the domain gets added to your personal blacklist.



You can even modify or remove the blocked domains. Filtrbox looks at the FQDN, not just the domain. This means you can block “notagoodblog.wordpress.com” without blocking the entire domain. If you wanted to block all of wordpress.com, you can add this to the blocked domains list manually. You can also modify a blocked domain or remove previously blocked domains. This is done on the Account/Manage Content Sources tab.




OPML file import
Filtrbox already persistently searches millions of blogs, thousands of mainstream sources, and social networks such as Twitter and FriendFeed, but if you want to ensure the system monitors specific feeds you care about, you can add them to your account. Filtrbox now supports OPML file import to make it easy to add a large number of feeds at once. This can be found on the Account/Manage Content Sources tab also.



Action bar
We cleaned up the dashboard a bit by moving a number of functions to an “action bar” that appears as you mouse over each article. From this bar, you can provide feedback, share the article, delete, or block the article’s source.

In addition to these features there are a number of “under the hood” improvements you shouldn’t see, but from which you will benefit. We hope you like these enhancements, and are hoping to hear from you on what else you’d like to see to help you get even more value from Filtrbox! Just leave us a comment on the blog, or drop us a line at support [at] filtrbox.com.

Hooked on your Filtrbox daily briefing?  Here are three tips to keep them flowing.

1) Always have articles.  If you have very specific search terms, is it possible there will be no new articles in your account.   If that is the case, we will not send you a blank email (remember - it’s all about more knowledge, less noise).

2) Monitor your FiltrRank threshold to make sure you get the right number of articles.  For your daily briefing you set a FiltrRank threshold and we send only articles that meet or exceed that threshold.  For example if your FiltrRank is set to 9 you will only get articles that score 9 or 10.  You adjust this threshold by going to the Accounts tab (top of page) and “Notify and FiltrFeed”  (center of page).  Don’t forget to click save after any adjustments.

3) Tell your spam filter hands off.  Occasionally we will get caught in an overzealous spam filter.  Adding noreply@filtrbox.com to your address book and asking your IT team to add it to your email white list should solve this problem.

If you are still having issues, give us a shout at support@filtrbox.com.

Just created a killer Filtr but not seeing any results?  What gives?  Below are a few suggestions to help you get your result set dialed in.

1) Adjust the Date and FiltrRank sliders

The two sliders at the top of the article pane are designed to help you restrict your view and see just the relevant information.  They work great and any changes are shown immediately but be careful because being too restrictive can leave you with no articles in your view.

2) Select or de-select sources to help control the noise.  The more sources you selected the more articles we will find.  Twitter and Friendfeed can be controlled at either the global or filtr level.  They can both be a bit noisy so include them at your discretion. Sources can be de-selected by clicking on each radio button to uncheck.

3) Selecting Filtrs - Make sure you have only the filtr topics you wish to view enabled by selecting their radio buttons.  In this example I will see only the articles for Red Sox, Mac and money.

4) In the case of too few articles, you may have overly restrictive search terms.  Remember the system is designed to persistently search for the key word or words in your filtr.  In the example below I will only see articles that include all 5 terms biology, marine, whales, dolphins and plankton.  To be more general you could replace the ANDs with ORs in which case you would get articles that have (biology and marine) or (biology and whales) or (biology and dolphins) or (biology and plankton).

5)  Filtrbox is still searching for new articles.  Unlike web search engines Filtrbox performs persistent search.  This means that Filtrbox will continually search for articles that contain your Filtr until you modify or delete it.  Our searches may take a little time to search the far ends of the internet and start bringing results back to you.

If you have tried these adjustments and you are still not seeing the results you think you should, give us a shout at support@filtrbox.com.