How integrations work
All twelve tchop integrations compared: what each one accepts as a source, its extra settings, and the gap worth knowing. Plus the shared rules on sync interval, backfill, auto-publish and status.
An integration connects one external source to one mix and creates a card for every new item it finds. Set it up once, then the feed fills itself.
Twelve sources connect without a developer. This page compares them, then covers the rules that are the same for all of them. Each source also has its own page with the exact format and its own quirks.
The twelve sources compared
Source | What you paste | Extra settings | Worth knowing |
|---|---|---|---|
| Include reposts, include replies. Both off by default | A thread arrives as several cards, one per post | |
| None | Original posts only. Handles are domains and can move | |
| None | Reels and carousels do not come across yet. Stories never will | |
| None | Public pages and public groups only. The most restrictive platform | |
| None | Cards link out, and TikTok is blocked on many corporate devices | |
| None | Documents, carousels and polls do not come across | |
The person's profile URL | None | Agree it with the person first, and review it when they leave | |
The channel | Teaser image style | Shorts arrive as article cards, not video cards. No live streams | |
The show page on | None | Read through the public Apple listing. Unlisted shows need RSS | |
The feed URL | None | Feed length caps your backfill, usually at 10 to 20 items | |
A section page of a website | Card type, source name override | Highest maintenance. A redesign can break it | |
The URL of a search you ran on | Teaser image style | Paywalled results are included and cannot be filtered out |
Two patterns run through that table. Every social source needs the account, never a single post. And every source is public content only: protected, private, members-only and closed sources cannot be read.
Anything beyond these twelve, from SharePoint to an internal CMS to a partner API, is still possible through the tchop API or a workflow tool such as n8n. That is a project, not a self-service setting.
One source, one mix
That pairing is the whole model, and it gives you room:
Connect five sources to the same mix to build a combined feed.
Connect one source to two mixes in different channels to serve two audiences.
Keep each source in its own mix when the formats do not belong side by side.
Integrations are configured per channel. A source connected in Channel A does not appear in Channel B. Either add it there as well, or connect it once and distribute the mix with a read-only or sync mix. See Syncing mixes.
The settings every integration has
In the dashboard under Integrations, pick a source type, then Add integration.
Mix. The mix that receives the cards. Chosen once at creation and fixed after that. Moving a source to another mix means deleting the integration and creating it again.
Name. An internal label, shown only in the integrations list. Use something you will recognise in six months: "Corporate channel", "CEO posts", "Partner: Bosch".
Source. What to watch. See the table above for the exact form each type accepts. Each type rejects the rest, which is why every one has its own page.
Fetch last cards. How many existing items to import on the first run: 0, 2, 5, 10, 15, 20 or 50. Set once at creation and not editable afterwards.
0for a clean start. Nothing historic, only what appears from now on.2or5when you want the feed to look alive on day one.Higher when you are building an archive mix. How many actually arrive depends on how far back the source lets us read.
Auto-publish. On means new cards go live in the mix as soon as they are created. Off means they arrive unpublished and an editor publishes them by hand.
Own account, trusted output: on.
Third-party or partner sources: off. You want a look before it reaches your audience.
Regulated or works-council-sensitive environments: off, and note the review step in your editorial guidelines.
Choosing a source when several would work
Your own website. RSS first. Web scraping only if there is no feed.
A publisher you follow. A section feed via RSS beats a site-wide feed, and both beat scraping their homepage.
A topic rather than a publisher. Google News. Test the search on news.google.com before you connect it, because a broad term produces dozens of cards a day.
Your own social output. Connect the network you actually maintain, not all of them. Cross-posted accounts produce duplicate cards.
A podcast. Apple Podcasts if the show is listed there. RSS if it is not.
Video. YouTube for full videos. If your channel is mostly Shorts, know that they arrive as article cards and users leave the app to watch.
Everyday operations
How fast new content shows up. Every source is checked roughly every 30 minutes, the same for all types. Something published on the source appears in your mix within about half an hour, not within seconds. For anything time-critical, create the card by hand and let the integration catch the rest.
Pause instead of delete. Every integration has a pause control. A paused integration keeps its configuration and stops creating cards. Use it during a campaign freeze, a holiday period, or while you sort out a problem on the source side. It does not backfill what it missed while paused.
Deleting keeps your content. Removing an integration stops the sync. The cards it already created stay in the mix and behave like normal cards.
Read the status. The list shows Active, Paused or Error per integration, plus the source URL, the target mix and who created it. Filter by status to see what needs attention.
One source per mix. Adding the same source to the same mix twice is rejected. That prevents double cards.
Editing. Name, URL, auto-publish and the type-specific settings stay editable. Mix and backfill do not.
Limits worth knowing before you start
The source is not yours to control. Every automated source belongs to someone else. Accounts get renamed, made private, rate-limited or deleted. The integration then switches to Error and records the reason. Check your list after any rebrand on the source side.
Errors are silent by default. Nothing pings you when an integration fails. Someone has to open the integrations page and look, so put it on a weekly routine. For sources you genuinely depend on, we can set up an email alert on request. Keep that for the few that matter, otherwise the alerts become noise nobody reads.
Metadata comes as it is. Titles, text and images are taken from the source. A weak headline on the source becomes a weak card title. Any card can be edited after creation, but the fix is per card, not per integration.
Backfill is a one-time event. Fetch last cards runs at creation only. Setting it too low and noticing later means adding cards by hand or rebuilding the integration.
Deleted items leave dead cards. Something removed on the source side leaves a card pointing at nothing. Worth a spot check, especially on sources you do not own.
Not every format survives the trip. See the last column of the table. Each platform has content types that arrive thin, and some that cannot be brought in at all.
Auto-publish is a decision, not a default to ignore. Left on for a source you do not control, it publishes whatever that source publishes, straight to your audience.
Rights are yours to sort out. Automating the transport of someone else's content does not automate permission to republish it. Before you connect a source you do not own, make sure you are allowed to reproduce what it publishes.
Questions people ask
Can integration cards be pinned, tagged, pushed and synced? Yes. They behave like any other card. See Card types.
Do integrations ever remove or reorder what I curated? No. They create cards. Nothing else in the mix is touched.
How many integrations can one channel have? No practical limit. What limits you is how much a feed can carry before it stops being readable.
Can I get notified when one fails? Not by default. Ask us to set up an email alert on the specific integrations that matter.
Can I change the mix later? No. Mix and backfill are fixed at creation. Everything else stays editable.
Can I connect something not on the list? Through the tchop API or a workflow tool, yes. Talk to us about the source and we will tell you what it takes.
In short
One source feeding one mix, checked every half hour. Choose the mix, paste the source in the form its own page specifies, decide on backfill and whether items publish themselves. After that the job is a weekly glance at the status list, because sources break quietly and nobody gets told.
