Reducing RSS size to avoid email alerts from Zapier

Hi ​@Dr Electron 

You can use AI to summarize the content.

Zap action: AI by Zapier - Analyze and Return Data

https://zapier.com/apps/ai/integrations#help

Hi there, ​@Dr Electron 👋

Have you had a chance to give that AI by Zapier action Troy suggested a try yet?

Keep us posted on how it goes, want to make sure this gets sorted! 🙂

Thanks, Sam, for your continued support :)

I’m currently using the free service so, sadly, adding actions is not possible.

What sems odd is that the in-zap option, specifically designed to truncate messages to 10KB, doesn’t appear to result in rss messages smaller than 10KB.

Hi ​@Dr Electron,

If RSS items in your Zapier feed exceed the 10KB limit despite using the "Truncate to 10KB" option, consider these factors: encoding overhead from emojis or special characters, extra data from titles or custom fields, or hidden HTML inflating the size. Also, sometimes cached data or unrefreshed Zaps can cause inconsistencies and retesting or republishing the Zap may help.

Let us know if you need further assistance. We're here to help.

Thanks, JammerS, for you superfast response.

Yes, I have wondered about what might be causing the RSS messages to be over 10KB despite applying truncation. My problem is that I can’t do anything about it.

I do appreciate that any zap is a module, so you can’t know exactly how it will be used or what its specific input will be. I also realise that no ‘solution’ is going to be perfect for all users. However, as far as I can see, the only reason to use the ‘truncate’ button is to prevent the whole RSS message from being over Zapier’s 10K limit, and it doesn’t achieve that in a significant number of cases.

I suggest it would be useful to have:

1. a more aggressive truncation to, say, 8KB, to catch more offending messages, or
2. two options for truncation, so the user can choose between, say, 10KB and 5KB, or
3. A drop-down menu to offer a range of truncation between 10KB and 1KB

Because I am getting so many ‘RSS is too large’ alerts from Zapier, and have no way of changing the truncation applied, I’ve simply directed these alerts to spam but, clearly, that is far from ideal and does nothing to achieve Zapier’s aim of reducing file size.

Do you think it is feasible to implement any of my suggestions above?

Hi ​@Dr Electron,

Welcome to the Community.

Thank you for sharing your thoughtful feedback on Zapier's RSS truncation feature. You highlighted the ongoing issue of RSS messages exceeding the 10KB limit even after truncation and proposed functional improvements, such as more aggressive truncation options and customizable size settings. While implementation would require evaluation by the product team, you're encouraged to submit your suggestions through official channels such as Zapier support. In the meantime, filtering or externally preprocessing RSS content may help manage message size. Your proactive approach is appreciated and contributes to enhancing the overall user experience.

Feel free to reach out if you have any more questions or need further assistance.