Profiles for Cloud Monitors
Heads up!
Profiles have been deprecated in favor of Dedicated Cloud Devices.The Starter plan and above include Profiles.
Our browsers keep track of our identity using cookies. Browsers save these cookies in browser profiles on our PC. When you use Distill’s browser extensions to monitor any page for changes, the browser automatically uses the cookies to access the page and monitor its content.
When monitoring a page in cloud, Distill doesn’t have access to the profiles saved on your personal computers. It uses a blank profile instead. If the page requires cookies, let’s say for remembering an older choice or for authentication, it doesn’t work with an empty profile.
A Profile for cloud makes it possible to monitor such pages for Distill’s paid customers. Distill counts each check done using a profile as two checks for accounting purposes.
Related: How to Monitor Password Protected Pages for Changes
Create a Profile
To create a new profile, follow these steps:
- Go to your Watchlist. Click the hamburger icon ☰ in the toolbar and click Profiles.
- The Profiles list appears. Enter a new profile name and click the Add New Profile button.
- A remote browser opens. Go to the page that you need to monitor. If you need to accept a cookie or save a setting, perform that action. If you need to sign in to a website, go to their sign-in page and fill out the forms to do so.
- Click Save cookies and close.
This saves cookies that were created while browsing the pages using Distill’s remote browser. You can choose to discard the cookies in this session if you need to start over.
How to use Profiles?
When you are adding a new monitor, click on the Profiles-<none> button. In the dropdown, select the profile you have created for the specific webpage.
If you have already created a monitor:
- Go to the Watchlist
- Click the caret icon and select Edit Options.
- The Options page opens. Here, next to Devices, click on Options.
- Click on the button showing Profiles-<none>. A dropdown opens; select your respective profile from here.
Once you add the corresponding Profile to the Monitor, it will use the cookies saved on Distill’s remote browser. You can select Manage Profiles from the dropdown to access Profiles, create new ones, and reset cookies by clearing and saving fresh ones.
Using profiles to monitor password-protected web pages in cloud
Limitations
If a cookie for a saved page expires, you will need to re-save it by clicking the ‘Open Remote Browser’ button for that profile.
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