How it works

Follow these 2 simple steps to start saving RSS feed articles directly to your database for easy searching and analysis

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New RSS Feed Item
App connector: RSS • Time to complete: 2 minutes
Why this matters: This trigger monitors your chosen RSS feed every 15 minutes and kicks off the workflow whenever new articles are published, ensuring you never miss fresh content.

You'll need to provide the RSS feed URL for the website you want to monitor. Most sites offer RSS feeds at /feed or /rss (like https://example.com/feed), or you can look for the orange RSS icon on their blog page. The trigger automatically checks for new items every 15 minutes and captures essential article data like title, author, publication date, description, and link. Once configured, this step runs completely on its own and passes each new article's information to the database creation step.

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Create Record
App connector: Data • Time to complete: 0 minutes (Auto-configured)
Why this matters: This step takes each new RSS article and stores it as a structured database record, making it searchable and analyzable alongside all your other saved articles.

The action automatically creates a new row in your "rss_feed" database table for each article, organizing the data into clean columns: author, createdAt (publication date), title, description (with HTML tags removed for clean text), and Link. You'll need to specify which database and table to use - MESA will create the table structure automatically if it doesn't exist yet. The step processes the raw RSS data and formats it appropriately, like stripping HTML from descriptions to ensure clean, readable text in your database.

Make it your own

Customize this workflow even further:

Schedule digest emails
Set up daily or weekly email summaries of saved articles by connecting your database to email actions, perfect for staying updated without constant monitoring.
Filter content by keywords
Add condition steps to only save articles containing specific terms or topics, helping you focus on the most relevant content for your industry or interests.
Connect to content planning tools
Link saved articles to project management or content calendar tools to automatically populate research materials for your editorial workflow.
Deploy AI for content analysis
Use AI agents to categorize articles, extract key insights, or generate summaries, turning your RSS collection into an intelligent content research system.

Frequently asked questions

Will this save duplicate articles if the RSS feed republishes old content?
The workflow saves each item it detects as "new" from the RSS feed, so if a site republishes or updates existing articles with new timestamps, you might get duplicates. Consider adding a condition step to check for existing titles before creating records.
Can I monitor multiple RSS feeds with the same workflow?
This workflow handles one RSS feed at a time. To monitor multiple feeds, you'll need to create separate workflows for each feed, or duplicate this workflow and change the RSS URL in each copy to build a comprehensive content monitoring system.
What happens if the RSS feed goes offline or becomes unavailable?
The workflow will continue checking every 15 minutes but won't create any database records when the feed is inaccessible. Once the feed comes back online, the workflow will resume normal operation and catch up on any articles published during the downtime.
What is a template?
MESA templates are fully pre-configured workflows built and vetted by Shopify Experts. Unlike competitor templates that provide basic scaffolds requiring extensive setup, MESA templates come with all data variables properly mapped, required fields configured, and steps ready to activate. You can turn them on immediately and start automating.
Can I customize a template?
Absolutely! While our templates work out-of-the-box, every step can be personalized to match your exact business requirements. Add conditional logic, integrate additional apps, or build more sophisticated workflows. MESA's templates provide a solid foundation that you can expand as needed.
Are templates free?
Yes! Our entire library of expert-built, production-ready templates is free to use. Unlike platforms that charge for premium templates or provide only basic scaffolds, MESA gives you access to hundreds of fully-configured, vetted workflows at no additional cost.

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