We've got some exciting news! There has been a major update to the way bill and regulation sheets work in BillTrack50, and we want to walk you through what's changed and why.

Why the change?

We're working on a powerful new search feature coming this summer that will let you find bills and regulations by browsing a detailed topic taxonomy. So, for example, you'll be able to pull up all bills in Michigan related to Immigration → Immigration Regulation and Control → Border Security, Deportation, ICE  without needing to craft a keyword search at all.

To make this new feature possible, we needed to rethink how sheets are structured, which ultimately meant introducing a new sheet type.

There are now three sheet types: Query, Handpicked, and Rollup

When you create a new sheet, you'll now choose from three options:

Query: This type of sheet looks and works pretty much the same as before. There is one important difference, though. If you leave the keyword field blank, you will now get all bills from your selected states that also meet your additional selected filter criteria, like passed bills, or, soon, bills in a particular topic. So you no longer need to enter the state code as a search term when you are trying to see all bills in a state or regs from a particular agency or etc.

Handpicked: This is the new one. It's designed for sheets you want to populate manually by adding bills directly by bill number, by using the + from another sheet, by using the +track button when browsing bill or regulation pages, or when using the AI similar search. Instead of a Query tab you will see a Pinned tab; this tab is where you enter and manage your chosen bills or regs. Otherwise the sheet looks and acts like any other sheet. NOTE: If you had existing sheets that were fully populated by hand (no keyword search), they've already been automatically converted to this new type. If you would like any of those sheets converted back to a Query type sheet just let us know.

Rollup: Same as always; a way to combine multiple sheets into one view.

Want the full details?

Check out this help article for a complete walkthrough.

As always, if you have any questions or run into anything unexpected, don't hesitate to reach out to Karen or Patsy, write to BillTrack50Info@LegiNation.com, or book a meeting. We're always happy to help!

Thanks for being a BillTrack50 customer. We really appreciate your support and love hearing everyone's suggestions and feedback. There's a lot more good stuff on the way this summer thanks to your ideas!