Automation

In version 2.4.0, a new system for automatically configuring article settings based on taxonomy terms was introduced, called Automation. Automation replaces the Sections functionality from previous versions, and Sections settings will be automatically migrated to the new Automation feature on version upgrade for existing users.

The Automation feature enables publishers to automatically configure certain settings for articles on publish based on taxonomy terms (such as categories and tags) that are applied to a post. The following settings can be configured using Automation:

• Section
• Theme
• Slug
• isHidden
• isPaid
• isPreview
• isSponsored

To configure an Automation rule:

1. Navigate to Apple News > Automation in the WordPress admin.
2. Select the taxonomy that the term belongs to which you want to target (e.g., category for Categories, post_tag for Tags, or any custom taxonomies you have added).
3. Once you have selected the taxonomy you want to target, start typing in the Term field to search for a term in that taxonomy.
4. Select from the list of suggestions to pick the term you want.
5. Choose a field to target. The available values in the 4th column are dependent upon this selection.
6. Choose a value for the field in the 4th column. For Sections, this will be a dropdown list of all of your channel's available sections. For Themes, this will be a dropdown list of all currently configured Apple News themes on your site. For Slug, you can enter whatever text you like. For the is* properties, a toggle switch will appear.
7. Click Save Settings to save your changes.

You can reorder rules by clicking and dragging. You can delete rules by using the delete button on the row corresponding to the rule you want to remove. Additional rules can be added by clicking the Add Rule button. Remember to save your changes.

Note that rules are applied in the order that they are specified, and rules that appear later on the list that affect the same field will override rules specified earlier. For example, say you have a rule that applies a slug of "News" to any post with a category of "News," but you also have a rule lower down in the list that applies a slug of "Exclusive" to any post with a tag of "Exclusive." If you had a post with both the category "News" and the tag "Exclusive," the slug for that post would be "Exclusive," because the tag rule is lower down on the list, and affects the same field, so it overrides the previous match.

QA Notes on Automation

Apple only updates articles when you push an updated version of the article to Apple News. Making changes to automation rules, themes, customizations, etc. will not be retroactive. To apply changes to older articles, you need to send updated versions of those articles to Apple.

Some information like section is not included in the downloaded JSON but is part of the larger API request sent to Apple on publish/update. To check mappings for information like section, examine what is sent in the API request metadata, not just the article contents.