Legislative Actions are records you create to track bill introductions, co-sponsorships, amendments, and Dear Colleague letters. You can view the legislation on the Library of Congress Thomas system, attach files, and link Workflow records to an action. By linking actions to Workflow records, you can track support of your office’s legislative initiatives.
To add a legislative action:
Click the Legislative tab.
Select Add Action on the Actions menu.
On the Legislative Action - New record page, enter information in available fields as appropriate using the TAB key to move from field to field.
Click the Save and Close action to save and close the new action.
Fields on the Legislative Action panel of the Legislative Action - New record page let you record information about the legislative action you are tracking. These fields include: Action Name, Type, Member Role, Description, Notes, Assigned To, Issues, Completion Date, Success Rating, Bill Type, Bill Number and Congress. In addition to these standard fields, custom fields created by your IT Consultant may also appear on this page in the Other section. Click the Workflow tab to link workflow records to the Legislative Action. Click the Attachments tab to attach, detach or view files associated with the Legislative Action record. The Status Log panel shows a history of action taken on the Legislative action record, including the action date, the user who performed the action, and a description of the action.
The action name identifies the legislative action you are tracking, for example "Co-Sponsors for HR 1234," or "Support for Budget Amendment." The action name appears on the Search Results page when you search for a legislative action.
Identifying the type of legislative action lets you restrict searches to Amendments, Bill Introductions, Floor Statements, Letters, Support Tallies, and other actions. Enter the type of legislative action by typing the first letter of the type or clicking in the field and selecting a type from the list that appears. Types are code files and can be added, printed, and deleted.
Click in this field and select Co-Sponsor or Prime Sponsor to show your Member’s sponsorship of a Bill or Amendment. Member Roles are code files and can be added, printed, and deleted.
Type the purpose or description of this action. For example, you might be trying to obtain co-sponsors for a bill, co-signers for a Dear Colleague letter, or support for an amendment that your Member is introducing.
This is a text-entry field, which means you can type and delete text in this field just as in a word processor. You can check the spelling of text entered into this field by clicking the spell check icon next to the field.
Include notes or additional information you want to record about this legislative action.
This is a text-entry field, which means you can type and delete text in this field just as in a word processor. You can check the spelling of text entered into this field by clicking the spell check icon next to the field.
Type the name of the staff member responsible for this legislative action or click the lookup icon to display and select from a list of users.
To categorize the legislative action, you can assign one or more of your office’s standard legislative issue codes to it. To enter data in this field, type the code or click the lookup icon to display and select an issue code.
Enter the date on which the legislative action was completed by typing a date in the field or by clicking the calendar icon and selecting a date from the calendar that appears.
Click in this field and select a success rating to indicate how relatively successful you were in completing this action. Ratings available for selection include Major Success, Minor Success, Neutral, and Unsuccessful. Ratings are code files and can be added, printed, and deleted.
This field lets you record the type of legislation you are tracking. Click in this field and select a type of legislation. Legislation types include House Amendment, House Bill, House Concurrent Resolution, House Joint Resolution, House Resolution, Senate Amendment, Senate Bill, Senate Concurrent Resolution, Senate Joint Resolution, or Senate Resolution. Bill Types are code files and can be added, printed, and deleted.
Type the bill (or amendment or resolution) number in this field. You need only type the number because your selection in the Bill Type field identifies its type. Click the Bill Status button to access the bill on the Library of Congress (http://thomas.loc.gov). Note that this button only appears if you have entered a valid Bill Type and Number.
Click in this field and select the Congress during which this bill was introduced.