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FAQ   


There are two filtering mechanisms within the application. One of them is a broad filtering capability via Interests, and the other is exact matching to a set of user-defined keywords, or Triggers.

Trigger keywords or phrases allow exacting specificity and the highest degree of relevance to incoming alerts based on your specific personal interests

By default, whenever one of your Trigger entries exactly matches the identical word or phrase within a given headline, article description, or body text of an incoming news or information release, an Alert Popup Window instantly appears on your computer display, regardless of what you are doing at that time.
 


Editing Triggers


To edit your Triggers, click the Edit Triggers button found in the lower left portion of the form. This will activate the Personal Triggers text fields used to add, delete, or change Trigger entries within your Trigger list.


Triggers can be edited directly by typing within the individual fields, in addition to selecting more from the Predefined Trigger Lists which are defined by KOMO-TV.

Up to twenty (20) unique keywords or phrases (Triggers) are supported within the active Trigger list per each user's computer.

  • Keywords can be single words or phrases

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  • Capitalization is ignored, but exact spelling is required for successful triggering to occur

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  • Entering a full word instead of a partial word is suggested (example, using "wine" will not trigger a story where the word "wines" is used). Consider using all likely variations as Trigger entries

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  • Phrases (multiple keyword Triggers) are order dependent relative to the individual keywords, and as such, are generally very specific

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  • Boolean AND operations are supported within a single Trigger, and will match on any two specified keywords, regardless of their ordering or separation by other words. The Boolean AND operator must be capitalized (and will be automatically converted) to be recognized as a Boolean function. Only one Boolean AND operation is allowed per Trigger entry.

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Tool Tip: Deliberate thought and care need be applied when employing Trigger phrases. The exacting nature of their specificity is highly constraining to the Trigger itself.

Examples:

  • The Trigger phrase Sun Microsystems would match all news / information releases containing these exact words, in succession, ignoring capitalization. Any alerts referring to Sun workstations or SUNW, etc., would NOT trigger as they do NOT exactly match the specified Trigger phrase.

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  • Trigger phrase expects AND beats would match headlines such as:

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    • Company X beats expectations and expects better fourth quarter.

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    • FDA expects many problems with drug and beats the drum to warn others

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    But would fail on "Company X beat expectations and expects a turnaround", due to both keywords within the Trigger phrase not matching exactly.


Trigger Highlighting


Alerts received as a result of matching your Trigger keywords or phrases in the headline and/or description text will reflect the match as highlighted in yellow.

For example, assume we have set a Trigger entry using the Boolean phrase: "Bush AND speech" — which would result in the following displayed when broadcast.


Warning / Stop Words


A number of Warning and Stop words are defined externally, which if allowed to remain within the active Trigger list, would cause either ineffective matching or an overabundance of Trigger matches. Notification of their inclusion within the current Trigger list comes in the form of a popup message when attempting to Save Changes to the Triggers tab.


Warning words differ in severity from that of Stop words, in that their inclusion typically results in ineffective matching and will not prevent saving of the edits within the Trigger list form.

Stop words would result in too many matches, however, and must be removed or altered prior to saving the Trigger form.


Examples of Warning words may include: "incorporated" (shown), "Corp", "Corporation", etc.

Example of Stop words may include: "the", "." (dot), etc. Note special characters (non-alphanumerics) will be replaced with a space upon saving the Trigger entries.


Predefined Trigger Lists


Predefined Trigger Lists are named collections of Triggers that can be used to augment the active Trigger list defined by the user.

To view or select entries from the predefined Trigger lists, first select the Edit Triggers button then select one of the available Predefined Trigger Lists from the pulldown.

For each possible list of interest, click on the View List button to view the associated content with the selected Predefined Trigger List.

Once a selection has been made Close the View List table of entries and select the Save Triggers button.