How do bill change notifications work?

Conservative States watches your organization's bills and records each change it finds as a notification. You see them on the Notifications page under Bill Tracking in the left navigation, and the bell at the top of every page tells you how many are unread. Everyone on your staff gets notifications, whatever their role.

Which bills are watched

• Every bill on your Tracked Bills list.
• Every bill in an active Issue Portfolio, shared or private.
• New matches for saved searches, and bills that match an amendment packet.

A bill that is only in someone's private Issue Portfolio is watched for that person alone. Its notifications go to the portfolio's owner and nobody else. Once the bill is on the tracked list or in a shared portfolio, its changes go to the whole staff.

Saved search matches follow the search: you see matches from your own saved searches and from searches shared with the staff. If a search is made private or deleted, its earlier matches disappear for everyone but its owner.

Bills are checked for changes about every 15 minutes.

Types of change

Each notification belongs to one type. These are the filters along the top of the Notifications page:

• Progress: a bill passes, fails, is vetoed, signed or becomes law, or is withdrawn.
• Committees: a bill is sent to a committee.
• Hearings: a hearing or floor vote is scheduled, moved or canceled. When a hearing moves, the notification also shows where it was before ("Was …").
• Amendments: an amendment is filed or adopted, or a placeholder bill is rewritten.
• Sponsors: a sponsor joins or leaves a bill.
• Documents: a new bill version, fiscal note or other document.
• Companion bills: a companion bill is linked, or one bill is substituted for another.
• Search and packet matches: a bill newly matches one of your saved searches, or matches an amendment packet.
• Every action: every line added to a bill's history. This can be a lot.

The Notifications page

Notifications are listed newest first and grouped by day (Today, Yesterday, then dates). Each one shows the bill number, the state, when it happened, what changed, the bill's title, its type of change and the Issue Portfolios it is in. A lock means the portfolio is private.

Each notification has:

• View bill to open the bill.
• Open packet for an amendment packet match.
• Mark as read while it is unread.

At the top you can narrow the list:

• Issue Portfolio: pick one portfolio, or All tracked bills.
• Saved search: shown when you have saved searches. Pick one to see only its matches.
• The type-of-change buttons. Pick one or more; Show every type clears them.
• Unread only.
• Archived (see below).

Mark all as read marks every unread notification that matches the filters you have on. Load more at the bottom shows older ones.

Read and unread are personal. Marking a notification read does not mark it read for your teammates.

Archived notifications

To keep the list short, a notification moves to the archive for you once it is more than 14 days old and you marked it read more than 7 days ago. Unread notifications are never archived. Tick Archived to see them. A teammate who has not read a notification still sees it in their own list.

The bell in the header

The bell at the top of every page shows how many unread items you have. It adds two things together: unread bill change notifications, and unread mentions of you by teammates. It refreshes every minute and shows 9+ above nine. Clicking it opens the Notifications page. Mentions are listed on the Activity page under @ Mentions.

Getting notifications by email

Notifications stay in the portal. To get them by email, set up an email digest. See the article on staff email digests.

Common questions

I tracked a bill but see nothing for it. Notifications cover recent changes, not a bill's older history, so a quiet bill shows nothing until something happens. Check that the type of change is not filtered out and that Unread only or Archived is not ticked.

A teammate sees a notification I do not. It is probably for a bill in their private Issue Portfolio, or a match from their private saved search.

If this does not solve it, email support@conservativestates.app and tell us your organization's name.