If you would like to share some or all of your bill sheet, either publicly on your website or privately protected by a password, then you want to create a stakeholder page. Stakeholder pages are quick and easy to create, come included with your subscription, and are kept up to date automatically. No wonder you want one! Let’s get started.
A Stakeholder Page is essentially a way to share your bill sheet, but you get the chance to decide which columns should be included. Our other bill sharing tool, the widget, is a small simple list of bills, meant to fit into whatever size space you have available on your web site. The Stakeholder Page is much larger, it really needs to be a whole page. But it gives you a chance to share a lot more information about the bill, including your detailed comments. Both the Widget and the Stakeholder Page give your readers the chance to click on a bill and do further research.
The steps to create your Stakeholder Page are quick and easy.
First, go to the Stakeholder Pages tab on your home screen,
and then click the New Stakeholder Page button.
You’ll be given three simple screens to fill out to create your new page.
Page 1 – New Sheet
On this first page simply choose the billsheet you are wanting to publish, fill in your company name, give the sheet a title, and then add a subtitle if you want one. The reason for filling in your company name is so that if you share the sheet with other users, they will know where the stakeholder page is coming from.
Page 2 – Appearance
On this page you pick your template, which is an important opportunity. If you would like to share certain columns on your website, but not others (for example you might have some private notes that are not meant for others to see), then this is how you set that up. Make a template with the columns you want, in the order you want, and then choose that template here. For more about creating and using templates, see this post.
You can also choose to add your logo to your stakeholder page. If you are going to embed the page right on your website you probably don’t need to add a logo. If you are planning on letting us host the page, then you should probably add a logo to make sure the people you send to the stakeholder page feel comfortable that they are looking at the right thing. Keep in mind whatever image you upload will be made square, and the max size for the image file is 1MB and 600 x 600 pixels. If you don’t want to mess with the logo when you are making the page, you can go back and upload one any time on the manage tab of your stakeholder page.
Page 3 – Terms of Service
This final page simply asks you to confirm you agree to our terms of use, essentially that you aren’t going to steal all of our data and sell it yourself, or get up to anything else too nefarious.
Once you push create you will have your new Stakeholder Page. For more information on using your stakeholder page, or if you are looking for a useful post to send to people who will be using our stakeholder page, see this post.
Manage Tab
After you’ve built your stakeholder page you can change its settings, including permissions, on the manage tab. You can also make your stakeholder page public, and get the links to share it, from the manage tab. Let’s take a look.
Sheet Properties 
Page Logo 
The Sheet Properties and Page Logo are simple, and are what you set up when you created your sheet. See above for an explanation of each item.
Stakeholder Users
The User Settings determine who else is allowed to see and change this page. (See this post for more about setting up additional users in your account.)
If you give a user None permission, they won’t even know the stakeholder page exists.
If you give a user View permission, they will be able to see the stakeholder page, sort it, filter it, see the map, and click on any bill to get more information.
If you give a user Comment permission they will be able to write comments in the discussion threads. Again, see this post for more about using the stakeholder pages to hold discussions. The discussion threads are only seen by people you’ve given at least view permission. Even if you share the page with the public (see Post Notification below), the public won’t see the discussion threads.
If you give a user Admin permission they will have access to the manage tab and will be able to change anything about this stakeholder page, including the user permissions.
Post Notification
If you are using the Stakeholder page to host a discussion about a group of bills, you can check this box to get an email when someone posts a new comment.
Public Access 
If you check this box we will give you some links you can use to share your Stakeholder Page with the public. The first link, Full Page Public URL, is if you would like us to host the Stakeholder Page. You can use this URL as a link on your website, or put it in a newsletter, or tweet it, or share it however else would be useful. Here’s an example.
The second link, Embedded Public URL removes all of the BillTrack50 branding, so you can embed the page on your website using a frame. Here’s an example.
Hopefully you will find the Stakeholder Page to be a great way to share information both internally and with stakeholders. As always, please contact us if you have any questions or need any help getting everything set up just how you need it.
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.