AP Exchange Community Blog

Design our new navigation!

Later this year, we'll be redesigning the way news is organized in the left column of AP Exchange. We have some great ideas and would like to hear from you as well. Please have a look at the left column of the homepage and send us your ideas on a better way to organize the content. What Essential AP categories are missing? Is Sports organized effectively? How can we speed up access to the wires you need?
Send all your ideas to talkback@ap.org.

Year End Content Made Easy

If you'd like a quick way to find all year end content, run the following search in AP Exchange:  slug="ye"

Be sure to use the quotes!

New Concept Searching Guide

Our Concept Searches are certainly popular! Here's the user guide to help you understand this type of searching. It is a huge time-saver and great for building special sections in the paper or creating special sections online. Download concept_searching.pdf

Faster Photo Searches in Exchange

We've made some changes to the way we store and retrieve pictures in AP Exchange and the net result is faster performance when scanning through photos. We hope you've noticed a difference!

Next on the agenda is to structure our text content in the same way we modified our photo material. We are planning this for later this year.

Manage Your User Accounts in AP Exchange

We have introduced the ability for certain staffers to manage, delete or create AP Exchange accounts in the newsroom. This feature will ensure that no errant accounts are active and that your AP content is protected from unauthorized access. If you would like to nominate a colleague in your newsroom who will manage this process, email us at talkback@ap.org.

Sharing Searches in Your Newsroom

We've added a new feature that allows you to share saved searches with colleagues in the newsroom. It may be that someone is very good at creating a saved search and that person can help others. It may be that one person creates a critical search and shares with colleagues in a department. Any number of workflow issues could call for this. It's a simple process that is outlined in the Saved Search cheat sheet which you can grab right here. Download saved_search.pdf

Preventing Duplication in the Paper or Site

  We've added a feature in Exchange that allows editors to see if anyone else in the organization has already downloaded a story, photo or graphic. In the center column, click on the small icon. It will do a scan of the database and tell you who else downloaded the item and when.

Scanning for Graphics

Need a good way to scan for graphics in AP Exchange? Try this search.

1. At the very top of the site press in the Graphics button.

2. Type this into the search field in the upper left corner: category=(a or e or s or i or f)

3. Run the search and then save it. This search will give you all graphics but will leave out weather.

4. You can also click the ALL link in the various Essential AP categories to see just Sports graphics or just Entertainment graphics and so on.

Using AP Exchange to find Local News

Here are some ideas for saved searches in AP Exchange to surface local news from the AP wire. Scanning slugs and headlines is a time consuming, inefficient way to look for local content. We have seen editors around the country find locally relevant news using the following searches. So, try these:

Set up saved searches for:

1. All towns in your publishing area

2. All local newsmakers

3. All local employers

4. All local topics, and try using our new Concept searches. More info on this here.

Once you save the search, check in frequently or as a backup email the saved searches to yourself so you don't miss any of the content.

For help saving a search, here's our 1-page cheat sheet.Download saved_search.pdf

New Cheat Sheets are Here!

Download ap_exchange_cheat_sheet.pdf Download ap_exchange_content_page.pdf Download ap_exchange_user_mgmt.pdf Download essential_ap.pdf Download my_local_companies.pdf Download quick_start.pdf Download saved_search.pdf Download Watchlist.pdf Download Search.pdf We have a new version of AP Exchange coming out on November 14th. The revised Cheat Sheets are here and ready for download.