As always, we have added a bunch of new products, tools, features, data, and so on to BillTrack50 over the year. This is our annual round up of new features for you to glance through to make sure you are using everything that might prove useful to you. (If you are way behind, perhaps you should review our 2016 roundup first. These topics are arranged by a subjective estimate of which are newest and/or potentially most important.
BillTrack50 App
If you haven’t checked out our iOS app yet, we’ve added the ability to add individual bills to a watch list inside the app, so you can easily track bills and keep up with what’s going on. You can also print out bill, if you are some kind of bill printing nut. Here’s a link to the Apple app store to grab the app: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/billtrack50/id1315336133?mt=8 and our press release with more details and this post to see the latest new features.
Timeline
We’ve always let you search historical bills on BillTrack50, but it was an all or nothing affair. Now I am pleased to announce that there is a new search tool on your query tab, a timeline so you can pick exactly how much history you want to see.
If your search overlaps just one year of a two-year session then we include all bills from the entire session, not just bills from the overlapping year. For example, the search covering 2013 – 2016 search pictured above would overlap one year of, say, California’s 2012-2103 session. So you would see bills introduced in 2012 because they were potentially still alive in 2013. We feel keeping whole sessions together in this way will give you the most relevant results. For lots more detail please see this post.
Out of Session Bill Tool
If you have a bill sheet that is mostly or entirely bills you’ve added by bill number (by typing in bill numbers, using the plus/list button, or using the Track This Bill button), it will need to be cleaned up. When you add a bill by bill number we assume you really do want that bill and include it on your bill sheet no matter what the other query items say. Which means these bills won’t be dropped automatically when their sessions are over. If you are using the bill sheet to drive a widget or a map on your website, you might want to remove Out Of Session Bills (OOSB)s. Otherwise, your readers might get confused about why they are looking at bills from sessions that are over. Since you don’t want to have to pick through and figure out which bills are current and which aren’t, we created a quick way for you to eliminate the OOSBs. If you try this now you’ll be removing bills that weren’t valid in 2017. If you try it on Jan 1, 2018, you’ll be removing bills that aren’t valid in 2018. So you might want to remember to come back to your sheet and do this again at the beginning of the year.
To use the new tool open your bill sheet, go to the query tab, and scroll to the bottom where the bills are listed by bill number. Below the box of bill numbers, you’ll see a link to remove the OOSBs. If you hover over the link we will highlight for you which bills are about to be eliminated. Then clicking the link removes them. Note you still have to click the save button for the changes to actually go into effect.
For more information about housekeeping you might want to do to get ready for 2018, please see this post.
New Highlight Search Terms Tool
You are hopefully familiar with the checkbox above the text of a bill that lets you highlight all of the search terms that made the bill come up.
For us to know what terms to highlight you have to have clicked on a bill from your home screen change log, from a bill sheet that is based on keywords, or from an alert email (see below). Now when you check that box you’ll get a new search term tool, that shows you a count of terms that match, and arrows to let you jump from search term to search term. Hopefully, this will save you time evaluating bills.
To dismiss the tool click the little x.
Better Links in Email Alerts
We’ve adjusted the links in your email alerts so that when you click on a link you’ll be able to use our new highlight search terms tool. You’ll still have to log in the first time you click, but after that, you should be able to work your way through your whole alert email highlighting terms as you go, if you are so inclined.
Little Bits of New Data
When you read a bill you will notice that we have added a new link to the source document on the summary tab. Similarly, when you look at a regulation you will notice that we have added a new link to the source document up in the title block. In both cases, we show you the whole link so you can see where to go to do more research. We also added Ballotpedia and Follow the Money links to our legislator pages, as well as enhanced the staff information in states will full-time staff.
Regulation Tracking Improvements
We have added several new features to the regulation sheets to help make them more like bill sheets. Last year we added in templates. This year we added in a new Regulation Management tool, more data (see list above), and lots of new behind the scenes work to keep it all running smoothly. We also added Massachusetts regulations to our regulations coverage. For more details, especially about the management tool, see this post.
Scorecard Improvements
In addition to some data improvements, we gave you the ability to give sponsors extra credit (or extra penalty) for sponsoring a bill. We’ve also let you set the sort on the summary page, so you arrange the scorecard in the way that will make the most sense for your reader.
We’ve also given you a way to batch add bills from different bill sheets (or from the same bill sheet later).
For more information see this post.
New Bill Management Tool
Thanks to many customer requests, you’ll notice the old plus button in your bill sheet now looks like a little list button instead:
This new manage button does everything the old plus button did, and more. Here is the new mange dialog:
We’ve removed the checkboxes and given you some new buttons instead. You’ll see the familiar plus button to add the bill in question to any of your other bills sheets. However, if a bill is already on other bill sheets, you now have an “x” option available. Clicking the x will hide the bill from any of your other bill sheets you choose, and the message will change on the dialog to let you know that the bill has been hidden.
For more information, and ideas about how you can take advantage of this feature, see this post.
Created Column for Bill Sheets
Created is the date a bill was added to our database. When our processes are running smoothly the created date will be the evening of the day the bill was introduced, or early in the morning the next day. If something has gone awry then all bets are off, but the information will hopefully still be useful to you. We have exposed this created date for you so that you can sort on it to see bills that have been added to the database since last time you had a chance to work on your bill sheet. To sort on a column click on the label of the column, and click a second time to sort the other direction. For lots and lots of information about this and other new columns, plus ideas for when you might want to use all of the different columns we offer, see this extensive post.
Thank you most sincerely to our wonderful customers who give us great ideas and help us keep improving. I can’t wait to see what you think of this year!
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.