# Potential Use Case for Watcher - is this just wrong?
**URL:** https://discuss.elastic.co/t/potential-use-case-for-watcher-is-this-just-wrong/161494
**Category:** Elasticsearch
**Tags:** elastic-stack-alerting
**Created:** [December 19, 2018, 10:42am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/potential-use-case-for-watcher-is-this-just-wrong/161494 "2018-12-19T10:42:02Z")
**Posts on this page:** 3
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@ndtreviv](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/ndtreviv)
#### Post date: [December 19, 2018, 10:42am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/potential-use-case-for-watcher-is-this-just-wrong/161494/1 "2018-12-19T10:42:02Z")
**ADMINS** : Please feel free to move this to X-Pack. I can't seem to create topics in the X-Pack category, and the description of it says:
> For X-Pack related questions, please go to the Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana or Beats categories and use then tag your topic with the related functionality.
but there are no Watcher or X-Pack tags available when I create a topic here...
# Setup
I have an elastic deployment that contains billions of pieces of data that my users may or may not be interested in. Currently I provide a search interface so that my users can access this data.
I want to provide a "Saved Search" capability for my users - they create a search, save it and decide how often they want updates. I then make sure that their search runs every interval and sends them information on new data.
# Idea
It is conceivable that when a user creates/updates a saved search I could create a watch configured with their desired watcher.
The user is only interested in new data, and I'd want to format it nicely etc, so maybe I could setup a transform that hits my application, compares the new data with the last data, formats a nice email etc.
# Question
Is this just wrong? When I first found out about it, it felt like it was the wrong use case for Watcher. But the more I learn about watches, actions, transforms etc, the more it feels possible to make it handle my saved searches idea.
Should I expect any problems if I attempt this?
I'm sort of expecting people to come back and say it's wrong....but I thought it was worth asking this in case I'm surprised.
Let me know what you think!
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### Author:  [@ndtreviv](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/ndtreviv)
#### Post date: [December 19, 2018, 10:50am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/potential-use-case-for-watcher-is-this-just-wrong/161494/2 "2018-12-19T10:50:16Z")
Actually, all of this may be moot. I don't think we can afford the Alerting module on Elasticstack Features ðŸ˜
It's actually cheaper for me to develop my own saved-search system than it is to buy it from elastic. #NotWorthIt
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### Author:  [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)
#### Post date: [January 16, 2019, 10:50am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/potential-use-case-for-watcher-is-this-just-wrong/161494/3 "2019-01-16T10:50:21Z")
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