As an Eploy customer with a career portal or vacancy pages, you will have access to a data feed. This feed can be shared with job boards and other websites, allowing you to advertise roles automatically, as and when they are added to Eploy. You will also be able to use the vacancy search handler to query your vacancy pages for live vacancies that meet a certain criteria. The arguments used within the data feed and search handler are interchangeable.

Your data feed and vacancy search handler both sit within the web domain that your portal is assigned to, e.g. https://careers.customer.com. During the implementation phases, whilst your web domain is not live, the pages will be available on the eploy.net web domain (e.g. https://customerweb.eploy.net) but it is important to bear in mind that this will not be available once you go live, so any links you configure externally to use the data feed or search handler will need to be changed during the transition to go live. For the remainder of this guide, we will refer to all links using https://careers.customer.com as the base URL. Simply replace this with your own domain to apply these examples.

URL Variables

This guide describes variables that can be applied either to the data feed or to the vacancy search handler. Variables can be appended to the end of the URL for either of these.

The first variable needs to be applied with a question mark, e.g. https://www.customer.com/feeds/datafeed.ashx?Format=xml sets the data feed format to XML.

Any subsequent variables can then be appended using an ampersand ,e.g. https://www.customer.com/feeds/datafeed.ashx?Format=xml&BusinessAreaID=1 shows an XML feed of all vacancies within business area 1. You can link as many variables as you need, using ampersands for each.

The same is true for the vacancy search handler, e.g. https://www.customer.com/vacancies/vacancy-search-handler.ashx?IntApp=true&BusinessAreaID=1 queries the vacancy page for jobs that are internally advertised and within business area 1.

Please note the variables are not case-sensitive. Case is used in these examples to make for easier reading.

Data Feed

The data feed is available here:

https://www.customer.com/feeds/datafeed.ashx

This can be used to retrieve live vacancy information, newsletter / blog data or additional information needed for searching.

Format

The feed can be delivered in RSS or XML format using the ‘Format’ variable. This variable accepts the values ‘rss’ or ‘xml’. The feed will default to RSS if this variable is not defined.

RSS: https://www.customer.com/feeds/datafeed.ashx?Format=rss

XML: https://www.customer.com/feeds/datafeed.ashx?Format=xml

Featured Vacancies

If you use the featured vacancies functionality, you can use the ‘Featured’ variable to show the featured vacancies in a feed. The variable accepts a ‘true’ value. The feed will default to show featured and non-featured vacancies if this variable is not defined.

Show featured vacancies in XML feed: https://www.customer.com/feeds/datafeed.ashx?Format=xml&Featured=true

Internal and External Jobs

If you advertise vacancies internally, you can use the ‘IntApp’ and ‘ExtApp’ variables to show vacancies that are advertised internally, externally or both. Both variables accept a ‘true’ or ‘false’ value. The feed will default to show only externally advertised vacancies if neither variable is defined. If only IntApp is defined as ‘true’, ExtApp is assumed to be ‘false’. Please note, once IntApp / ExtApp have been defined, this remains in the browser session, meaning that you need to set ExtApp=true&IntApp=false if you need to return a session to the default.

Show internally advertised vacancies only in XML feed: https://www.customer.com/feeds/datafeed.ashx?Format=xml&IntApp=true

Show internally and externally advertised vacancies in XML feed: https://www.customer.com/feeds/datafeed.ashx?Format=xml&ExtApp=true&IntApp=true

Show external vacancies only in XML feed (default): https://www.customer.com/feeds/datafeed.ashx?Format=xml&ExtApp=true&IntApp=false

News RSS Feed

If your careers site uses Eploy’s news articles feature to content manage news elements, you can define the ‘Type’ variable as ‘News’ to show news articles. The feed will default to show vacancies if the this variable is not defined. Please note there is no XML option for the News feed, and other variables shown in the examples here will not work with it.

Show the News RSS Feed: https://www.customer.com/feeds/datafeed.ashx?Type=News

In addition, can also use the ‘ID’ variable to define a specific news article ID or a comma delimited list

Show the News RSS Feed article ID 1: https://www.customer.com/feeds/datafeed.ashx?Type=News&ID=1

Client Data Feed

In order to obtain information about the Industries, Positions, Vacancy Types and Locations available in your system (and how many active vacancies are live relating to each of these), you can define the ‘Type’ variable as ‘ClientData’ to show client data. The feed will default to show vacancies if the this variable is not defined. Please note you can combine this with the ‘Format’ variable to define it in XML format, which is most likely to be the requirement.

https://www.customer.com/feeds/datafeed.ashx?Format=xml&Type=ClientData

The Client Data Feed is particularly useful if you need to build a quick search into an external careers site to return vacancy results either as a feed or a search on the vacancy listing within the portal. See Filtering Feed Results or Applying Searches section below for more info.

2019 Release 1

2019 Release 1 introduces the <OrderID> field into the client data feed. This numeric value can be used within Eploy to affect the order in which items in a drop down list show (from lowest to highest value). Its value can be any number, and it may be negative and/or a decimal number. The default order id is 0, so if the order IDs are not set the items in the drop down list will show in alphabetical order. If you need to, for example, put UK at the top of the list of Countries, you can set the OrderID to -1, which would make it appear above all entries with an OrderID of 0.

Domain Redirects

NOTE: If you have a domain that redirects to another i.e. www.customer.co.uk redirects to www.customer.com then you have to apply the query string to www.customer.com as it is lost when redirecting.

Querying languages

If your Eploy Candidate Portal has multilingual functionality, you can use the ‘culture’ query string to filter for vacancies based on the ‘Languages to display for’ field (allowing you to restrict vacancies to show based on the language selected). This will display the vacancy fields in the selected language.

https://www.customer.com/feeds/datafeed.ashx?culture={CultureCode}

Culture codes are listed on the Microsoft Developer Network, accessible following this link.

Example: Show only German vacancies in XML Feed:

https://www.customer.com/feeds/datafeed.ashx?Format=xml&Culture=de-DE

Multiple websites/career portals/modes

If your Eploy Candidate portal has multiple modes, the results in the feed will reflect the mode you last visited the site in, and only show vacancies where ‘Websites to display on’ is set for your current mode.

Example: If you visit https://www.customer.com?mode=2 and then go to the feed https://www.customer.com/feeds/datafeed.ashx - the feed will only return results for mode 2.

If the modes are linked with domains you can use each domain to view the vacancies for that mode. This is the preferred method.

Example:

http://www.customer1.com/feeds/datafeed.ashx

http://www.customer2.com/feeds/datafeed.ashx

http://www.customer3.com/feeds/datafeed.ashx

Could each return separate results if the three domains are linked to three different modes.

Filtering Feed Results or Applying Searches

In order to provide a quick search on your site you will need to use the following data feed:

http://www.customer.com/feeds/datafeed.ashx?type=clientdata&format=xml

This will provide you with the values needed to search i.e. position and location etc. The feed shows useful counts on Total Candidates, Total Companies, Total Placements, Companies / Departments with Vacancies (Live / not live). It also shows lookup data on department (industry), position, vacancy types and location.

For each item there is a live flag set as 1 or 0 which indicates if there are any live jobs with this setting. This can be used to hide options that would generate zero results in a search.

Using this data you can either filter your feeds or apply searched on the Eploy powered career portal. Each item after the “applyquery” is NOT mandatory i.e. you can pass one or more items for searching.

In order to filter the data feed for jobs you need to form a link in the following format:

http://www.customer.com/feeds/datafeed.ashx?LocationID=1&IndustryID=1,2,3&PositionID=1&VacancyTypeID=1&BusinessAreaID=1&DepartmentID=1&CompanyID=1&IncludeHierarchy=true&Keywords=skill1,skill2,skill3,skill4&KeywordSearchType=ALL&Postcode=DY117RA&Radius=30

Vacancy Search Handler

The Vacancy search handler can use the same parameters as the data feed, as well as the intapp/extapp variables to apply a filter to the vacancy search results page on your candidate portal.

The base URL for the search handler is http://www.customer.com/vacancies/vacancy-search-handler.ashx

In order to search your career portal for jobs you need to form a link in the following format:

http://www.customer.com/vacancies/vacancy-search-handler.ashx?LocationID=1&IndustryID=1,2,3&PositionID=1&VacancyTypeID=1&BusinessAreaID=1&DepartmentID=1&CompanyID=1&IncludeHierarchy=true&Keywords=skill1,skill2,skill3,skill4&KeywordSearchType=ALL&Postcode=DY117RA&Radius=30

Available Parameters

The parameters below can be applied to the Vacancy Data Feed or the Vacancy Search Handler to return the desired results and can be combined with any of the other variables discussed in this document.

LocationID = One or a CSV of IDs

IndustryID = One or a CSV of IDs

PositionID = One or a CSV of IDs

VacancyTypeID = One or a CSV of IDs

BusinessAreaID = One or a CSV of IDs

DepartmentID = One or a CSV of IDs

CompanyID = One or a CSV of IDs

IncludeHierarchy = true/false – used in conjunction with CompanyID to define whether vacancies relating to company records below those specified should be returned. Default is ‘false’.

Keywords = One or a CSV of words

KeywordSearchType = All / Any – used in conjunction with Keywords to define whether vacancies that contain any of the words should be returned or whether all word need to match.

Postcode = A valid UK Postcode in which vacancies are advertised (by the address associated to the vacancy, the company that the vacancy is associated to or the first company up in the hierarchy that has a postcode defined).

Latitude / Longitude = Latitude and Longitude variables can be specified instead of a postcode.

Radius = 0-100 - used in conjunction with Postcode or Latitude/Longitude to return vacancies within a specific mile radius of 0 to 100 miles. Values outside 0 – 100 are ignored.

NOTE: “All” puts an AND between keywords, “Any” an OR

HINT - Looking to create a search handler on any other fields? We can now do this based on any custom questions you have, so contact Eploy Success for more info on how to do this.

2019 Release 1

The following features are introduced in Eploy 2019 release 1:

Searching on questions

Questions with the following Data Types can be passed within the Data Feed:

• Drop Downs
• One to many options
• Booleans

To pass a question you have to prefix the ID of question with ‘Q’ and then csv of values to search on. E.g Q33=100,101,102

Your Implementation Manager will be able to provide you with a list of the custom questions that have been set up on your system.
http://www.customer.com/feeds/datafeed.ashx?format=xml&Q33=100,101,102

RecordLimit

You can limit how many results are returned by the feed

RecordLimit={Number of vacancies to return}
http://www.customer.com/feeds/datafeed.ashx?format=xml&RecordLimit=10

Also the XML node has a Count attribute on it. This is number of vacancies in your search filter. It ignores the record limit passed e.g RecordLimit=10 but filter contains 20 results, Count will be 20 in that case.
Will be available after the next update.

OrderBy

There are two options you can pass in the order by latest or closest – Default is latest if not passed
- Closest only works if you have passed Latitude+Longitude or Postcode & Radius options as well.

http://www.customer.com/feeds/datafeed.ashx?format=xml&Postcode=DY117RA&Radius=25&OrderBy=closest

http://www.customer.com/feeds/datafeed.ashx?format=xml&Latitude=52.368530&Longitude=-2.241960&Radius=25&OrderBy=closest

Adding Sources to Data Feeds

We can add ‘&source=XXX’ to the data feed that we provide to customers, as this will ensure that the source is tracked correctly, without the recipients needing to make changes.

For example, if we are providing a customer the data feed to pass onto Indeed (for auto posting), then adding &source=indeed will allow us to include the source in the URL for every vacancy in that data feed. The same logic can be applied whenever a data feed is being passed to directly to the job board / source.

Doing this means that the job board does not need to append the URL of each vacancy at all.