Filters / Alerts

DTN.IQ News Help

Filters / Alerts Help

You can customize DTN.IQ News by adding filters and alerts. You use this features to mark headlines for articles that match criteria you choose. For example, you can be alerted to all articles about technology stocks such as Microsoft (MSFT), Dell (DELL), Compaq (CPQ), and IBM (IBM), or articles that are only from the news sources you specify. Headlines for articles about the specified symbols have a red exclamation mark!.

  • On the Alerts tab a red exclamation mark ! Appears next to all headlines.
  • You can choose to have your filters/alerts show a pop-up dialog box when a story matches your criteria, or play an audio file or read the headline to you using Text –to-speech.

Tip: You can select Watch Lists and be alerted to all headlines for symbols in the Watch Lists.

Sample Headlines with Alerts

To be alerted to articles for specified criteria:

  1. From the DTN.IQ SmartBar, click on the News icon.
  2. Select the Filter button on the toolbar.
  3. Click the radio button next to New Filter and enter a name for your new filter in the text box.
  4. Select the news sources you want to monitor for your criteria:
  • click each source individually to highlight the sources you are interested in.
  1. Under Word enter individual keywords that the filter will search for within the title of articles (such as Microsoft, or Earnings, or Wireless, etc)
  2. Under Symbol enter a list of symbols that will be searched for to trigger your filter/alert.

Tip: To be alerted to stories for any company in your watch list, just choose the watchlist name under the Watchlists area..

  1. Click on the Show message box checkbox for a pop-up box to inform you when articles matching your criteria become available.

Tip: The default message displays the headline of the story that matches your criteria.  You can choose to customize the pop-up message by using our Custom Variables and any other text you choose to enter.

Custom Variables: 

  • %HEADLINE% displays the headline
  • %DATE% displays the article date
  • %TIME% displays the article time
  • %SYMBOLS% displays all ticker symbols associated with that article
  • %SOURCE% displays the long form of the news source the article came from
  • %SOURCESHORT% short 3 character representation of the news source the article came from
  1. Click on the Play Sound checkbox to have your computer play a sound or use the Text-to-speech engine to read information to you when articles matching your criteria become available.

Tip:  The default sound will play a beep.  You may choose a custom .wav file on your computer to play for each individual alert, or use a Text-to-speech (TTS) engine to have your computer read information to you about the filter/alert.  For Text-to-speech to work, you must install a Text-to-speech engine

Custom Text-to-speech Variables:

  • %HEADLINE% reads the entire headline
  • %DATE% reads the article date
  • %TIME% reads the article time
  • %SYMBOLS% reads all ticker symbols associated with that article
  • %SOURCE% reads the long form of the news source the article came from (recommended for TTS)
  • %SOURCESHORT%  reads the short 3 character representation of the news source the article came from (not recommended for TTS)
  • %PAUSE% will pause the reading for 1 second.  This is good to separate text between sentences, the date and time, and headlines.
  • %PAUSEX% will pause the reading for X seconds (replace X with a number).  Allows you to choose how long of a pause while reading your filter/alert.
  1. Click on Save and Exit.

When articles matching your filter/alert criteria come in, a message box will display if you chose that options, and your computer will play the selected alerts sound (or TTS) if that option is selected.

To remove filters/alerts:

  1. From the DTN.IQ SmartBar, click on the News icon.
  2. Select the Filters/Alerts button.
  3. Select an existing filter/Alert.
  4. Click Delete.
  5. Click on Save and Exit.

To edit filters/alerts:

  1. From the DTN.IQ SmartBar, click on the News icon.
  2. Select the Filters/Alerts button.
  3. Select an existing filter/Alert.
  4. Make changes to the filter/alert.
  5. Click on Save and Exit.

To search News Services by symbol:

  1. From the DTN.IQ SmartBar, click on the News Icon
  2. Select the Search button
  3. Enter the symbol to search for
  4. Enter the date range to search for (optional – default searches all dates)
  5. Click on OK
  6. Double-click on a headline to display the article.

A list of headlines for the symbol will be in the Top Right Pane.