BillTrack50 is a service for tracking state legislation as it moves through the legislative process. One of our sharing tools is called a Stakeholder Page, which helps you see what bills have been introduced, where they currently stand, and keep discussion about the bills in one organized location. This post will explain the basics for using your Stakeholder Page to view bills and share comments.
Step 1 – Claiming your Account
If you are reading this post you probably received an invitation email along these lines:
BillTrack50 Company Account Invitation
{Someone you know} from {a company you know} has invited you to participate in legislation tracking with BillTrack50.
You can contact {that person you know} at {that person’s contact info} for more information about this invitation.
To complete your registration please click on this link and a browser will take you to a registration page.
This email means you’ve been invited to a private Stakeholder Page. Congratulations! Someone believes your knowledge and opinion is critical and they’d like to keep you in the loop. The link in the email will take you to BillTrack50 where you will be asked to create a password for use with the system. If you didn’t receive this invitation or it has gotten buried or lost in your inbox, you can simply go directly to BillTrack50 and register here. You will automatically be connected to our account and the Stakeholder Page once you verify your email address.
Step 2 – View the Stakeholder Page
When you first log in to BillTrack50 you will be presented with a dashboard summarizing all activity from yesterday. This page may or may not contain any topics for you to review; if it does, you can glance through the latest information if you are interested. To access your Stakeholder Page(s) go to the stakeholder tab (highlighted in orange in the picture below).
You will be shown a list of stakeholder pages you can view as well and additional information about each page so you can see if there are any new posts to read.
Click on the name of the page you are interested in to be taken to that stakeholder page, which will present you with a list of bills and a few tools to work with them.
You can sort the grid of bills by any column, such as State or Bill Progress by clicking on the name of the column. (You may have a completely different set of columns.) You can also filter a column by using the magnifying glass underneath the list of bills or click the map bubble to see a map of the bills. You can read any bill by clicking on the bill number, which will take you to a page showing all details of the bill text, action history, and vote history. Notice on the bill page you can also click on the bill sponsor to see details about the legislators, too. Here’s a link to the above page for you to experiment with.
Step 3 – Leave Comments (Optional)
Some Stakeholder Pages also include comment threads below the bill grid.
You can click on any thread to read the existing comments and reply, or you can click “new thread” to start a new thread of your own. If there are a large number of threads you can sort or filter to find the thread you are looking for.
Leaving comments is straightforward, and you can even copy and paste bill text from the bill detail page directly into your comment. When first creating a thread you do have one additional tool available:
Notice that you can add a list of the specific bills you are commenting on into a box at the bottom of the screen. Simply type HB or SB and a list of bills will drop down to choose from; you can keep typing or you can choose the bill from the list at any time. If you add bills to the Associated Bills box then links to those bills will be available at the top of the comment thread so that others can easily go review the bill(s) you are discussing.
Step 4 – Explore BillTrack50
If you would like to look up a bill or legislator we have a search box at the top of the screen whenever you are logged in. Once you start typing you’ll be given the option of searching for bills or people.
We also have an option to get daily email alerts letting you know what’s going on with the bills you are following, along with other tools to research or follow bills from across the country. If you are interested in exploring these options talk to your BillTrack50 account owner to have those additional features turned on for you (if they aren’t already). And of course feel free to contact us any time.