When and How to Use Field Notes

When You’d Use This

• Logging a conversation with a legislator regarding their stance on a specific bill.

• Sharing a committee hearing debrief with your internal policy team.

• Documenting interactions with legislative staff to maintain a centralized record of outreach.

• Forwarding email threads directly into the system to automatically generate a meeting record.

How To Do It

To manually create a Field Note:

1. Go to Field Notes

2. Click New Note

3. Enter a Title

4. Search and select Meeting Attendees

5. Enter your Meeting Notes

6. Select a Meeting Date and Meeting Time

7. Search and select Bills Discussed

8. Choose your Visibility Settings (Select Private or Team)

9. Click Save

To create a Field Note via email:

1. Send or forward your meeting notes to your designated State Affairs notes inbox (e.g., notes@stateaffairs.com)

2. Ensure the email subject and body contain your meeting details

What Happens Next

If created manually, the note is saved and immediately visible based on your privacy settings. If submitted via email, the system automatically reads the text to identify the meeting date, sentiment, and key topics, and automatically tags the relevant legislators, staffers, and bills.

Once saved, the note becomes linked to the profiles of the tagged entities. You can filter your Field Notes list by these tags, search by keyword, and export your filtered notes to CSV or Excel.

Pro Tips

• Type at least two characters when searching for attendees or bills to see matching database results.

• If a meeting attendee is not in the directory, type their name and click to add them as a custom Meeting Participant.

Limitations

• Email extraction works best when both first and last names of officials or standard bill numbers (e.g., HB 123) are used in the text.

Enterprise Differences

Available on Enterprise plans.