Add a tender feed

ScoutTide reads many official procurement portals for you. If a portal you bid on is missing, you can add its RSS or Atom feed yourself. Its notices then join your Tenders list, matched against your products like every other tender.

Before you start

• Only a manager can add feeds. On the Individual plan, that is you.
• Find the portal's feed address. Many portals publish an RSS or Atom feed of new notices: look for an RSS icon or a "subscribe" link on the portal's search results.
• Your plan sets how many feeds you can add. See Plans and the free trial.

Steps

1. Open the menu under your initials and choose Organisation.
2. In the settings rail, under Feeds, choose Tender feeds.
3. Under Add a tender feed, you can press a button next to Start from, such as UK Crown Commercial Service, to fill the form with an example. It fills the form only, so you can check it before anything is added.
4. In What to call it, type a name you will recognise.
5. In Feed address (RSS or Atom), paste the feed's address. Paste the feed itself, not the web page that links to it.
6. In Keywords: an item is kept only if it contains one of these, type words separated by commas. Every notice in the feed is checked against them before it reaches your queue.
7. Optionally, in Ignore anything containing (optional), type words that rule a notice out, such as appointment or vacancy.
8. Press Add feed.

What happens next

ScoutTide reads the feed before it adds it. It is kept only if the read finds a feed with notices in it:

• If it works, you see that it was added, with how many items it found and how many match your keywords.
• If the address returns an error, is a web page rather than a feed, or has no items right now, nothing is added. The message says which, and what you typed stays in the form so you can fix it.
• If the portal limits how often it can be read, or answers slowly, the feed is kept and checked on the next sync.

If ScoutTide already reads that feed, it tells you there is nothing to add. If you already follow it, it tells you under which name.

New notices from the feed join your tender queue and are matched against your products.

Check, switch off or remove a feed

Under Last feed added, you see the newest feed and whether it is working. Press Check now to read it again and see the result.

Your earlier tender feeds are listed under Your other tender feeds. They keep running. A failing feed is marked failing, and the list opens by itself when one needs attention.

• Press Turn off to stop reading a feed. What it already found stays in your queue. Press Turn on to read it again from the next sync.
• Press Remove to delete a feed and everything it brought in, including any work recorded on those notices.

Read your feeds now

Feeds are read automatically through the day. Press Fetch now to read all of them straight away. New items appear as they arrive.

If your plan has lapsed, your feeds are paused until you subscribe. They start again on their own as soon as a plan is active.

Ask us to add a portal

If you would rather ScoutTide read a portal for every customer, use Missing a source? at the bottom of the page. Fill in Source name or address, and optionally the country and notes, then press Request this source.

Related

• Add a social feed
• Your tender queue
• How matching works
• Report a problem