BillTrack50 is designed to help you stay on top of any changes that happen to bills you are tracking. Daily alerts and the alerts page are a key way to do that.
Setting Up Daily Email Alerts
First, a reminder. When you set up a bill sheet, by default email alerts are switched off. To switch them on, go to the Alerts tab on your bill sheet and check the boxes to determine what changes you want to know about. Do you just want an email when a new bill is added to your sheet, or do you also want to know when there are new votes or any progress with the existing bills? Don't forget to click Save. Any changes to the bills will now appear in your daily email.
The Alerts Page
Click on Alerts on the left to see all the changes that have happened to bills in your bill sheets over the past 24 hours. Note: all your bill sheets that have had any changes to their bills over the past day will appear here, regardless of whether you have checked the boxes to get daily email alerts.
The grid shows, for each bill sheet, how many new bills have been added, how many bills have new versions, how many have new actions and so on.
There are three sections - Bill Sheets, Regulation Sheets (if you have them) and Amended Bill Sheets (any bill sheet which has a hidden bill that has been amended). You can click the sections to filter the list to that particular category.
Clicking the name of the bill sheet will take you to that bill sheet.
If you click the Detail link at the right of the alerts grid, you will be taken to a different grid which lists the bills on the bill sheet and a check mark showing what changes have happened to the bill. You can click the bill number to be taken to the bill page.
It can be useful to periodically check your alerts page to see which bill sheets are changing most. You may well want to then check that you have the correct daily email bill alerts and event alerts set up in your bill sheets so that you don't miss anything important.
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