Bill Tracking and Team Collaboration

Duration: 12 minutes | Tier: Platform & Enterprise

Getting Started with Bill Tracking

You can begin tracking bills from two locations: the Bill Tracking tab (your main workspace) or directly from Keyword Alerts when relevant bills appear in your search results.

From Keyword Alerts [0:33]

When a keyword alert shows bills matching your interests, click "Track" to start monitoring. This immediately signs you up for action alerts whenever the bill moves forward. From here, you can also add the bill to a group, set its priority, note your position, and assign it to a team member—all in one workflow.

From Bill Tracking Tab [2:37]

The Bill Tracking page serves as your primary workspace, with five tabs organizing different views of your tracked legislation: All Bills (main view), Groups (organized by category), Reports (saved reports), Actions by Date (daily legislative activity), and Compare (cross-state bill comparison).

Organizing Bills with Groups

Think of groups as flexible folders you control completely. Create them for clients, issue areas, jurisdictions, or any categorization that matches your workflow. A single bill can live in multiple groups simultaneously—critical when you're tracking the same legislation for different stakeholders who need separate analysis and reporting.

Creating and Using Groups [1:08]

Create a group by clicking "Add to group" on any bill and selecting "Create group." Name it based on your needs: client names, policy areas, geographic regions, or projects. Once created, bills can be added individually or through bulk actions.

Multiple Group Membership [9:21]

When a bill matters to multiple clients, add it to multiple groups. Each group can have different priority levels, positions, and notes. For example, the same healthcare bill might be "High priority / Support" for your hospital client but "Low priority / Neutral" for your agriculture client. This flexibility lets you maintain separate perspectives and generate targeted reports for each stakeholder.

Setting Priority and Position

Every tracked bill can be tagged with priority (High, Medium, Low) and position (Support, Oppose, Neutral, etc.). These are internal markers—not visible outside your organization—that help you focus attention and generate meaningful reports.

Priority Levels [1:18]

Use priority to manage your workload. High priority bills need immediate attention and regular monitoring. Medium priority bills deserve routine check-ins. Low priority bills can be reviewed periodically or when major developments occur.

Position Tracking [1:24]

Your position captures your stance: Support, Support with Amendment, Oppose, Oppose Unless Amended, Neutral, or Monitor. Positions can be included in reports and help you quickly assess where you stand across your entire portfolio of tracked legislation.

Team Collaboration

State Affairs supports team workflows through bill assignments and collaborative notes.

Assigning Bills [1:33]

Assign any bill to a team member to clarify ownership and send them an email notification. This is purely organizational—it doesn't restrict who can see the bill. Assignments help you filter your view ("show me all bills assigned to Matt") and ensure accountability across your team.

Shared Notes [2:03]

Every tracked bill has a comments field where team members can add notes, discuss strategy, document decisions, and track action items. These notes are visible to your entire team and can be included in reports. When bills belong to multiple groups, you can write group-specific notes to maintain separate analysis for different contexts.

Bill Details and Intelligence

Click into any bill to see its complete profile: legislative summary, sponsors, committee assignment, vote history, action history, and related news coverage.

AI Analysis [10:25]

When you open a bill, State Affairs automatically generates an AI analysis based on your saved keywords. This contextual summary helps you quickly understand the bill's relevance without reading the full text—especially valuable when managing dozens of bills across multiple states.

Vote History and Actions [10:56]

See complete voting records broken down by chamber and individual legislators. The action history shows every step the bill has taken through the legislative process, creating a clear timeline of its progress.

Working Efficiently with Bulk Actions

When you need to apply the same settings to multiple bills, use bulk actions instead of updating them individually.

Bulk Workflow [8:21]

Select multiple bills using checkboxes, then use the bulk action controls at the top of the page. You can track all selected bills, add them to groups, set priority levels, assign positions, or delegate to team members—all in a single operation. Note that selections clear after each action, so you'll need to re-select bills for subsequent operations.

Daily Monitoring with Actions by Date

The Actions by Date tab [3:31] provides a calendar view of legislative activity. Select a date to see which bills had actions that day and what those actions were. This is particularly useful for catching up after being away or reviewing what happened in the legislature at the end of each day.

Searching and Filtering

The search bar at the top of Bill Tracking searches bill text across all states you're subscribed to. Combined with the filter panel, you can quickly narrow down to specific segments: bills in certain states, at particular stages, assigned to specific committees, or belonging to your defined groups.

Filtering by Groups [12:15]

One of the most powerful filters is viewing bills by group. This instantly shows you all legislation relevant to a particular client, issue, or project—making it easy to focus your analysis and generate targeted reports.

Quick Reference

Starting to Track Track → Add to Group → Set Priority & Position → Assign → Add Notes

Key Capabilities

• Bills can belong to multiple groups with different settings for each

• Assignments notify team members but don't restrict visibility

• Notes can be group-specific for different stakeholder contexts

• Bulk actions save time when managing multiple bills with similar settings

• AI analysis provides quick context based on your keywords

Video Timestamps

• Tracking from Keyword Alerts: 0:33

• Creating Groups: 1:08

• Setting Priority & Position: 1:18

• Team Assignment: 1:33

• Collaborative Notes: 2:03

• Actions by Date: 3:31

• Bulk Actions: 8:21

• Multiple Group Membership: 9:21

• AI Analysis: 10:25