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Watchers are the core of DocketStream’s Smart Alerts system. Once you create a watcher for a person’s name, it runs continuously in the background — scanning every connected Georgia county for matching booking, release, and bond change events, and notifying you the moment a match is found. You don’t need to run manual searches; your watchers do the work for you.

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Watcher Limits by Plan

If you’re on the Starter plan and need more than five watchers, upgrading to Professional gives you unlimited watchers along with CSV exports and priority support. See pricing for details.

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Create a Watcher

1

Navigate to Alerts

Click Alerts in the top navigation bar. This is your central hub for managing all active watchers.
2

Click New Watcher

Click the New Watcher button in the top-right corner of the Alerts page to open the watcher creation form.
3

Enter the person's full legal name

Type the individual’s full legal name — first and last name at minimum. Using the name exactly as it appears in official records gives you the most accurate matches.
Use the most complete legal name possible. If you only know a nickname or a partial name, results may include more false positives. For common names, consider adding a county filter in the next step to narrow your matches.
4

Optionally specify a county

If you know which Georgia county to monitor, select it from the County dropdown. Leave this field blank to monitor all connected counties statewide.
5

Choose your notification delivery

Select Email as your notification delivery method. Notifications are sent to the email address on your account. Enterprise users can also route notifications through webhooks — see Alerts & Webhooks for setup instructions.
6

Click Save

Click Save to activate the watcher. It starts running immediately and will notify you as soon as a matching event is detected during the next data refresh.

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Edit a Watcher

To update a watcher’s name, county, or notification settings, click the pencil icon next to the watcher’s name in your Alerts list. Make your changes in the edit form and click Save to apply them.

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Pause a Watcher

If you need to temporarily stop receiving alerts for a specific watcher without deleting it, use the toggle switch to the right of the watcher name. Toggling it off pauses the watcher — it remains in your list but will not fire notifications until you re-enable it.

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Delete a Watcher

To permanently remove a watcher, click the trash icon next to its name. A confirmation prompt will appear. Click Delete to confirm. Deleted watchers cannot be recovered, but you can recreate them at any time.
Deleting a watcher also removes its alert history from your Alerts feed. If you want to keep the history available, consider pausing the watcher instead.

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Understanding Watcher Notifications

Each notification email contains everything you need at a glance:
Watcher notifications fire when DocketStream refreshes its data, which occurs on a 30–60 minute cadence. Alerts are not delivered in absolute real-time but reflect the most recent available data from connected county sources.