User can "subscribe" to a particular feed - either RSS or email

[robertocarroll]

Each list has an RSS and email button, e.g.

1. Click on the RSS to subscribe to a feed. Anything necessary to improve UX? Feedburner, etc?
2. Click on email to sign up to email alerts: when a new article is published in that particular feed the user will receive an email. Does Sharepoint 2013 have this feature built in?

[robertocarroll]

We also need to add this functionality to the top of the search-sort-filter template, so a user can subscribe to updates there:

[robertocarroll]

Does anyone have any experience with Sharepoint 2013 alerts and RSS?

It seems there is the ability to subscribe to a list - using the "alert me" link, but I'm unclear if this can be used on the front end for a user to subscribe to a particular list. Any ideas?

[kyleschaeffer]

@robertocarroll, alerts in SharePoint can only be used by authenticated users, so they aren't much use to anonymous website users.

RSS, on the other hand, is accessible by anyone. You can generate an RSS feed from different sources, but the most common is search results (there is an RSS icon on the search results page) and content query web parts (there is an option in the web part settings to turn on an RSS feed). In either case, we can share the long and ugly URL with users if desired.

Example: http://sharepoint13vm.cloudapp.net/sites/icc/_layouts/15/srchrss.aspx?k=lubanga

[robertocarroll]

Thanks for the information. So it seems the RSS feeds are fine by getting an RSS for each list.

With regard to the email alerts, you're saying we can't use the out-of-the-box Sharepoint alerts. Two possible approaches come to mind:

1. Create some kind of alerts service based on the RSS feed: parse the feed and push an email when there's an update.
2. Create some kind of alerts service based on the Sharepoint REST API: similar to above just a different source for the update.

Anyone have any thoughts on this?

[robertocarroll]

Quick sketch of what's required:

1. Email icon is on the bottom of each list, e.g. court records on a case page. It is also on the top of the search, sort and filter template. User clicks on the email icon to subscribe.
2. Email alert subscription. You are subscribing to alerts for court records from the Lubanga case. Please enter your email address. Submit.
3. Sign up form. Email (from point 2). Frequency of emails. Password. 3.1. Sends welcome email. 3.2. Sends particular subscription detail email (Every email has links to manage preferences and to unsubscribe completely)

4.1 Preferences - user can change email address, change password and frequency (same as 3 above). 4.2 Subscriptions - list of current subscriptions with checkboxes to unsubscribe.

[simmigaba]

As Kyle also mentioned Email alerts for anonymous/public users is not supported out of the box in Sharepoint but we might be able to implement the functionality by developing a custom solution. I am investigating the possible options, will soon update the issue with the findings.