How to… · How-to guide
Follow a search and manage your updates
Preview a watch, create it with your email address, and manage or stop its updates.
Step 1 — Set the topic and place
Open Following with JavaScript switched on. Under What do you want to follow?, choose a topic such as Contracts and RFPs. Under Where?, choose a borough or Any place. Open Narrow it down to add a keyword or agency. For contracts, open Match more precisely to include any or all of a few words, treat an entry as an exact phrase, or exclude words. Example: include software, exclude maintenance, preview the awards, then tighten the exclusion if a useful record such as a Greenway project was removed because its body mentioned maintenance vehicles. Frozen award examples are published awards, not currently open bids. The selected choices describe an unsaved watch. No account or password is needed. This is separate from the city's own account system.
Public meetings use the same Match more precisely control. The board, place, and upcoming-event window you already chose stay the boundary. Extra wording only narrows it. Exact Council-matter watches and other topics do not offer these controls.
Step 2 — Check the preview
Press Preview matches below the choices. Read the rule sentence in Watch summary, then check Watch criteria and the records under Preview. A preview is not a subscription: nothing is saved and no email is sent. Change a choice and press Update matches to revise it.
The message No matches now — still watch for new means the loaded preview is empty. You can save a watch for future records, or widen a criterion and preview again. If the preview is not ready, use its retry control. The current matches are unknown.
Step 3 — Create the watch
Under Email frequency, choose Daily (on days with matches) or Weekly (Monday digest). Under Create this watch, enter Email address and press Create watch. The watch exists as soon as the request succeeds. There is no confirmation email to click.
Check for You're subscribed — we'll email you. Manage or unsubscribe anytime. Keep the welcome email's manage link. If the page reports an error, use its retry instruction. An error does not confirm enrollment.
Step 4 — Change or stop updates
Open the manage link in a CityScroll email. On the watch's row, change the frequency and press Save, or choose Pause, Unpause, or Delete watch. Check the row's resulting state. Edits apply to the next digest, around 9am Eastern. Unsubscribe all watches stops all updates immediately, so use it only when that is what you want.
When saved watches are unavailable
Under Your watches, an unrecognized browser asks you to open a CityScroll email. Use that email's manage link. A link reported as invalid or expired needs replacing with the link in a recent email. If saved watches cannot load, use the offered retry. That failure does not mean they were deleted. A watch link reported as unrecognized has saved nothing: choose a topic on Following and start again.