How to Set Up Distill.io Alerts for Indian University Admission Notices

Use Distill.io to check an official university, counselling authority, or government admissions page for changes and notify you. Open the notice yourself after an alert: a page change does not confirm that a notice is authentic, applies to your course or admission year, or remains current.

The basic workflow is: find the right official notice page, monitor its notice list (or the whole page), choose where checks run, add an alert action such as email, and verify the monitor in Distill’s Watchlist.

1. Choose the official page to monitor

Start with the official page for the institution, course, and admission cycle you care about. Notices may be published on a university site, a state or national counselling portal, or a government admissions portal; there is no single page for every institution. For example, JoSAA publishes news and public notices on its official counselling portal, Punjab’s admission portal carries UG and PG admission information, and the Government of India’s admissions portal lists counselling bodies and notifications.

1. Navigate from the institution or government body’s official website where possible, and confirm that the page belongs to the authority responsible for your course.
2. Find a page with a notice list that changes when new announcements are published.
3. If notices link to PDFs, monitor the listing where a new notice title or link appears. Open the linked PDF yourself after an alert. Monitoring a listing does not guarantee that every PDF or dynamically loaded portal will be detected.
4. Record the admission year, program, and authority you expect the page to cover. This makes it easier to reject unrelated changes later.

2. Add a monitor with the browser extension

Distill’s browser extension can monitor a whole page or a selected part. A selected notice list often produces fewer unrelated alerts from navigation, rotating banners, and other page areas.

1. Install and open Distill in a supported browser, then open the official notice page.
2. Click the Distill toolbar icon and choose Monitor full page or Monitor parts of page.
3. For a partial monitor, select the notice-list area with the visual selector. Review the selection preview to make sure it contains the notice titles or links you need.
4. Save the selection. Set a recognizable monitor name, the device that will run it, a schedule, and an alert action.
5. Save the monitor and check that it appears in your Watchlist.

Distill’s visual selector stores a CSS or XPath selector for the chosen content. A redesign can change the page structure, so revisit the selection if the preview becomes empty or starts including unrelated content. See Distill’s guides to the browser extension and visual selector.

3. Add a monitor in Distill’s web app

1. Sign in to the Distill web app and choose Add monitor, then choose Web Page.
2. Enter the official notice page URL.
3. Select the notice-list region if practical, or choose full-page monitoring. Save the selection.
4. Configure the device, schedule, and actions, then save.
5. Open the monitor in the Watchlist. Review its preview and change history to check what Distill records.

Distill’s web app workflow is documented in Using Web App to Track Webpage Changes. The web app defaults to cloud monitors; extension and desktop-app monitors default to local according to Distill’s local versus cloud documentation.

4. Choose local or cloud checks

Choice	Where checks run	What to consider
Local	Your browser or desktop app	Your computer and the relevant app must be running for checks to happen. Distill’s current comparison lists local checks as unlimited with a five-second minimum interval.
Cloud	Distill’s servers	Your computer can be off, but check frequency and total usage depend on your plan. Distill’s comparison lists a two-minute minimum interval on the Flexi plan.

Those intervals are plan-specific details from Distill’s current documentation, not a promise for every plan or account. Confirm the options and limits shown in your account before relying on a schedule for a deadline. A portal that requires a login or depends on cookies may need separate configuration for cloud checks.

5. Configure email alerts

1. Sign into Distill and open the monitor’s options or actions.
2. Add Email, choose a configured address, and save the action.
3. If you add another recipient address, complete Distill’s verification for that address before expecting alerts there.
4. Confirm the email action is attached to the monitor and check the Watchlist after saving.

Available actions can depend on your account or subscription. Follow Distill’s instructions for email alerts if the action or address settings differ in your account.

6. Verify and maintain the monitor

• Check the saved selection preview and confirm it includes the notice titles or links you expect.
• Review the Watchlist and change history when you receive a notification.
• Open the original official source and inspect the notice itself, including its publication date, admission year, program, deadlines, and any linked PDF.
• If the page is redesigned, the selection is empty, or alerts become noisy, edit the selected area and compare the updated preview and change history.
• Keep the official page bookmarked. An alert is a signal to check the source, not an official confirmation or personalized admission advice.

Common problems and fixes

Problem	Likely cause	What to do
No alerts arrive	The monitor is paused, the local browser/device is off, the schedule has not run, or the email action is missing or unverified.	Check the monitor’s status, device, schedule, and Actions. For an additional recipient, complete email verification.
Too many unrelated alerts	The monitor includes page areas that change independently of notices, such as banners or navigation.	Select only the notice-list region and review its preview. Adjust the selector if the page layout changes.
The selection is blank or misses new notices	The page structure changed, or notices load dynamically and the saved selection no longer matches the content.	Reopen the page, select and verify the notice area again, then inspect the monitor preview and history. If the content still does not appear, use the authority’s other official notice page or check it manually.
A notice alert points to an unexpected item	A page change is not necessarily an admission notice for your course or cycle.	Open the source and verify the authority, date, year, program, and linked document before acting.
A cloud check does not work with a portal	The portal may require authentication or browser state that is not available to the cloud monitor.	Review the cloud monitor’s configuration and Distill’s current guidance. If it cannot access the relevant page, use a suitable local monitor or check the official portal directly.
The monitor checks less often than expected	Cloud frequency and usage are plan-dependent; local and cloud intervals differ.	Check the current plan limits and schedule in your Distill account. Do not infer a response-time guarantee from the minimum interval listed for one plan.

Performance, reliability, and cost considerations

Monitoring one focused notice list is easier to review than tracking every changing element on a large portal. A shorter schedule may detect changes sooner, but the available frequency and check allowance depend on the device and plan. Local monitoring depends on your computer and browser or app being available; cloud monitoring runs on Distill’s servers, subject to account limits and the page’s accessibility.

This setup does not establish that a notice is genuine, current, or relevant. Treat Distill as a change detector, and confirm deadlines and instructions against the issuing authority’s page and the notice document. Distill’s platform overview describes monitoring as opening a page on a schedule, reading its HTML, and notifying you when something changes; see Supported Platforms for its platform information. Review Distill’s current plan details before choosing cloud frequency or estimating usage.

Or skip the browser setup

ScreenshotNeo is a website screenshot API and MCP server for developers. It can capture a page as PNG, JPEG, WebP, or PDF, with options including full-page capture, CSS element capture, waits, custom cookies and headers, and async jobs. Its clean-shot steps can accept cookie banners and remove more than 60 known consent platforms, newsletter popups, and chat widgets before capture, and each step can be turned off. Bot checks, blank pages, failed loads, timeouts, and cache hits are not billed; response headers identify the page verdict and billing status. Its MCP server gives AI agents tools to take screenshots, get page information, and capture PDFs. Use it to capture and inspect a notice page when you want a visual record; a screenshot is not a replacement for Distill’s scheduled change alerts or for checking the official notice.

Example one-call capture with cURL:

curl -G "https://api.screenshotneo.com/v1/shot" -d access_key=YOUR_API_KEY --data-urlencode url=https://josaa.admissions.nic.in/ -o shot.webp

Python:

import requests

r = requests.get(
    "https://api.screenshotneo.com/v1/shot",
    params={"access_key": "YOUR_API_KEY", "url": "https://josaa.admissions.nic.in/"},
    timeout=90,
)
open("shot.webp", "wb").write(r.content)

Node.js:

const q = new URLSearchParams({
  access_key: 'YOUR_API_KEY',
  url: 'https://josaa.admissions.nic.in/',
});
const res = await fetch(`https://api.screenshotneo.com/v1/shot?${q}`);
if (!res.ok) throw new Error(`Screenshot request failed: ${res.status}`);
await Bun.write('shot.webp', new Uint8Array(await res.arrayBuffer()));

See the ScreenshotNeo API documentation for request options. ScreenshotNeo has 1,000 free screenshots per month with no card; paid plans start at $5 for 3,000 screenshots. Learn about ScreenshotNeo.

Sign up for 1,000 free screenshots a month, with no card required.

FAQ

Can Distill tell me whether I am eligible for an admission round?

No. It detects page changes. Read the official notice and eligibility rules for your course and admission year.

Should I monitor a PDF directly?

Monitor the official listing that publishes the PDF link when possible, then open the linked document after an alert. A listing change is easier to interpret as a new notice.

Can I rely on cloud checks while my laptop is off?

Cloud monitors run on Distill’s servers, but their frequency and usage depend on the plan and whether the portal is accessible to the monitor. Check your account’s current limits.