The elves, or maybe our developers — our development elves? — have been hard at work making improvements suggested by our awesome customers. In case you haven’t noticed, here are some new features you might want to check out:
1) It’s old news now, but federal bills are available and return in your results, with a state code of “US”. When chosing a state(s) to search from the list, you can include or exclude federal by scrolling down to “US” and turning it on or off. Many and continuing thanks to GovTrack!
2) Speaking of new bills, pre-file data is starting to come in. Before the session(s) officially start you’ll see the most recent session, plus any pre-file bills, both appear in your default results. After the session officially begins in each state the default will be to show you the current session only. You can always view older bills (2010 forward) by checking “include historical sessions” on the query tab.
3) Once you get a bill sheet just how you want it – the right columns visible, set to the right size and order, and any custom columns added – you can save it as a template on the manage tab. From then on your bill sheets will be created using those settings, which of course you can still tweak at any time. You can also apply a new template to old bill sheets; after saving a template, go to the bill sheet you want to update, go to the manage tab, and apply the template. Templates make it quick and easy to make your bills sheets all look the same, which is important for our next new feature:
4) You can now roll up several bills sheets into a “combined bill sheet” view. On your home screen go to the Bill Sheets tab and notice there is now a checkbox next to each bill sheet. Check however many bill sheets you want to combine, and then push the “combine selected” button. If all of the bill sheets are identical, either because they use the same template or because you otherwise made them the same, then your custom columns will appear in the rolled up sheet. If any of the sheets you are combining doesn’t match the others, then your combined bill sheet view will only include our default settings. (See above in item 3 for how to easily make all your bill sheets match). The combined bill sheet also includes your bill sheet name as the first column, to remind you where a particular bill came from. You can use this combined view to sort and filter (for example, to find all of your priority 1 bills across different bill sheets), and you can also export the combined view like any other bill sheet.
5) You have always been able to share a simple bill feed with the public, using our friendly, lightweight widgets. Now we’ve added the ability to share full bill details, and your comments about them, using our new Public Stakeholder Pages. When creating a Stakeholder Page you now have the option of setting the page to be public. For each page you can choose whether or not the public should be able to read the associated discussion forum. Only users you have explicitly invited to the stakeholder page will be able to leave comments in the discussion forum (assuming you’ve granted them permission to do so). When you set a stakeholder page to be public you’ll be given a special URL to use to share the page on your website, facebook, twitter, blog; really wherever you need to.
6) Another exciting new way to share information with the public is our Legislative Score Cards, which we’ve developed in partnership with Visible Government Online. Rate bills as good or bad, and we’ll rank legislators based on their votes, and give you some sweet interactive tools you can drop onto your website to inform and engage your readers. To see the tools in action you can watch this video, or try it for yourself at http://vgdevsite.com/ (username legi password score) and navigate around using the menu choices at the top. You can also read more details on our press release or in this recent blog post.
7) We have also been hard at work on some ways to help you better understand and use our various features. See this overview video for a quick tutorial, and this product comparison grid to answer all your questions about the difference between our different levels of membership.
8) Don’t forget our fun Session Starting Promotions! And follow this blog, sign up for our newsletter, like our facebook page, follow us on twitter, and subscribe to our new YouTube channel, to be the first to hear about the next new exciting data or feature we announce!
Happy Holidays, and Merry Session everyone!
About BillTrack50 – BillTrack50 is a user friendly free service that provides legislation research in all 50 states and federally. BillTrack50 also offers legislation and regulation tracking across the nation with tools to help organization stay on top of changes (bill sheets and alerts) and share legislation they are tracking with key stakeholders (legislator scorecards, widgets and stakeholder pages). If you are interested in learning more about how BillTrack50 saves organizations time and money, sign up for a demo and try it out BillTrack50 Pro for a month, for free.