LANSING – Gongwer News Service Thursday announced enhancements to its bill tracking services that give subscribers more control over the display of personal comments tied to legislation.

The changes improve subscribers’ ability to generate personalized bill status reports that can be shared with members, clients, colleagues and others.

All bill tracking and reporting features are included with your Gongwer subscription at no additional charge.

Q: What is the comments function?

A: The comments function allows subscribers to post personal notes that include information they deem necessary to appear underneath the bill’s status.

Q: What’s improved with the comments function?

A: Subscribers can now assign comments to selected tracking groups without them appearing in other places. So if a subscriber wants to prepare a professional bill status report for a single client, that now can be easily done.

Additionally, the system now allows for comments that only the subscriber can see, enabling the subscriber to keep private notes on a bill.

Q: How do I use the new feature?

A: Comments can be posted in multiple ways across the Gongwer platform, most easily through the Bill Tracking page. Comments can be posted by opening the Tracked Legislation menu, or by opening the Tracking Groups menu.

To post a comment from the Tracked Legislation menu, click the Add Comments option below a bill title, and select whether the comment should be private, public or assigned to a tracking group.

Comments can also be posted directly within each Tracking Group. To do that, select “Edit Preferences” under the appropriate group. In the “Status Report Options” in the right-hand column, under Content, click “Comments” and farther down, click “Save As Default for this Group”.

Under any bill where you wish to add a comment, click “Add Comment”.

When clicking “Post Comment”, the comment is automatically set to appear in that tracking group. However, should you wish to have this comment be a private comment only you can see or a public comment visible in all your status reports, select “Private” or “Public” instead of “Tracking Group(s)” under Display Restrictions. You can also select other groups from the list if you want that comment to appear in additional reports.

Now if you return to the Bill Tracking page, go to Tracking Groups and select “View Report” under the groups where you added comments, the comments will appear.

Q: What if I already am tracking several bills and would like to put them into a Tracking Group so I can use this feature?

A: Go to the Bill Tracking page and select Tracked Legislation. Then pick “Manage Groups” under a bill you want to put into a Tracking Group. You can either put the bill into a new group or into multiple new groups by filling out the appropriate field or by clicking on the name(s) of existing groups and then clicking “Track Bill”.

Q: How can I see comments I mark “Private”?

A: Go to Status Reports, click “Edit Preferences” and then in the Status Report Options field on the right, click the Comments box, the Include Private Comments box and farther below, click “Submit”. If you save that view as the default, they will appear anytime you go to the “Edit Preferences” page under Status Reports.

Or under the Tracked Legislation header, find the bill where you want to review comments and click “Show Comments”. All comments you have entered will display, as will the option to add new comments.

TUTORIALS AVAILABLE: Subscribers wishing to see first-hand how these new functions work can contact Gongwer at 517-482-3500 or [email protected] to schedule an appointment with Gongwer staff.