Workflow Comparison
To understand how the new search form works, it is helpful to see a side-by-side comparison with the Portal. In this walkthrough, we show the steps of setting up a subscription for JWST program 2733.
Old Service
New Service (as of May 2026)
Subscriptions Interface Access
To access subscriptions in the Portal, you first needed to log in, using the login panel in the upper right.
The process is virtually identical in the updated interface; however, your first name is displayed instead of your last name. Note that the option to create a subscription will appear on all search forms, regardless of whether the corresponding mission is eligible for subscription creation.
You can click the "subscriptions" drop-down menu to reveal two options: the first to create a new subscription, and the second to manage existing subscriptions. Clicking the "create" option is equivalent to visiting the MAST subscriptions homepage.
Selecting a Mission
After selecting the "add subscription" button, you would be presented with a single menu for creating a subscription. "Mission" was one of the generic fields.
In the new form, the mission must be set before you can set additional filters.
Creating a New Subscription
In general, the new form has feature parity with the old version. Since there are several selections, we break them down into sub-steps below.
Subscription Category
[no equivalent concept exists in the portal]
There is no "category" of subscription in Portal. This functionality was handled by the metadata matching features.
In the new form, you must select between all data for a program and specific datasets before entering additional information.
JWST Only
For JWST only, there is an option to be notified for the first data from a program. For other missions, a workaround is to subscribe to all data, then delete your subscription after the first notification.
Notification Type and Frequency
In the Portal, you could select between email and direct notifications in the Portal. The frequency at which notifications were delivered ranged from "fast" to monthly.
In the new form, there is no notification type selection because only email notifications are available. "Fast" notifications are now delivered hourly.
Subscription Triggers
A note on the "trigger" nomenclature: these are the changes that you want to trigger a notification. For example, to be notified when data from your favorite JWST program are marked public in the database. This is a change from the previous nomenclature of "subscription type".
In the Portal, there were three options (four for JWST): new, reprocessed, and public. "New" data are newly arrived into the archive, "reprocessed" have undergone processing and calibration with an updated version of software, and "public" data were previously limited to the PI's team under an exclusive access period.
This functionality is reproduced exactly in the new form.
JWST maintains the option for "first data", but this must be selected as the subscription category at the top of the form.
Metadata Matching
You could use the proposal ID, observation ID, and data calibration level to filter on specific results in the Portal.
In the new form, this functionality is handled by slightly different components. You can still filter on the proposal ID, and now be even more specific by including observation and visit numbers.
The "observation ID" field is more intuitive in this update: after setting the category to dataset, you can specify a mission-specific ID. For HST, this is the IPPPSSOOT while for JWST it is the dataset ID.
Naming a Subscription
[no equivalent concept exists in the portal]
Naming subscriptions is a new feature that makes managing a subscription easier! By default, the name is a combination of the mission, metadata, and cadence you've selected. For example, jwst-program-2733-obs1-visit2:weekly. You can also set custom values for this field like "jwst2733", as shown in the image at right.
Managing Subscriptions
Each type of subscription had its own line, requiring them to be managed separately. Editing, pausing, and deleting was handled by the icons in the 'actions' column.
Subscriptions are aggregated by program to make management easier. They can be deleted by selecting the lines and clicking the trash can icon. To edit the cadence or type, mouse over the field you want to change and click the pencil icon. A new window will open, enabling you to make updates.