Here at BillTrack50 we believe one of the reasons our customers like us so much is that we try to respond to requests in a timely fashion. We’ve added lots of little things since the last roundup I did here on the blog, in addition to the bigger items that got their own posts (like the new bill progress filter, sharing bill sheets, searching using “near”, and maps of your bill sheets).
Here are some highlights of what else we’ve added in the last few months:
Plus button/Multiple tracking
You can now add bills from one bill sheet directly to one (or more) other bill sheets. You can use this tool to cherry pick bills to put on a list you’d like to feature with a widget. Or you can use this tool with a bill sheet on a broad set of search terms to sort through and categorize bills to other bill sheets. That way you can set alerts on the broad sheet to get notified when new bills are introduced, but track (or share!) bills on a much more fine tuned basis.
The multiple track list can be accessed from either the new + button on your bill sheet or the track button on the bill detail page.
Highlight search terms
When you click through to read a bill from your bill sheet (which you can now do by simply clicking the bill number, by the way), a new checkbox is available at the top of the bill text: Highlight Search Terms
When you click this box all of the search terms from your query will be highlighted in light yellow to help you quickly identify why this bill was included in your results, and to help you focus in on the relevant sections more easily.
Stakeholder page alerts
If you are the administrator of a stakeholder page you’ll see a new checkbox when you are configuring your page. You can now set the page to alert you whenever anyone writes a comment on your page.
Alchemy API
We have always had a keyword column available on your bill sheet. To access it click on the little gear icon at the bottom of your bill sheet, and then check on “Keywords”.
This column contains keywords as determined by an algorithm. These keywords are very useful to help you brainstorm terms when you are just getting started researching a topic you are not yet intimately familiar with. It’s also useful to filter by.
What’s new here is what we are using to generate the keywords – a local Denver company, Alchemy API. They do amazing work and we’ve been quite happy with the results.
API
We have recently released our own API. If you would like access to bills via our web services you’ll need to establish an account with us, contact us to discuss how you’ll be using the data, and then we’ll give you an API key. Documentation on our API is available here: https://www.billtrack50.com/Documentation/WebServices
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.