Managing Bill Messages

Market: House, Senate

Description: Mail that is associated with a piece of legislation is automatically tagged by IQ as a Bill Message and are sorted by the constituent’s position on the Bill (Supports, Opposes, Undecided).

These instructions teach users how to find and manage Bill Related Messages in IQ. For instructions on how to send responses to messages, see Sending Messages.

1.Navigate to Legistats > Bills > Bills with Open Messages.

2. Click on the Filters and/or Sort options to find the Bills with Open Messages you’d like to view. A good filter to use is the Our Bills filter, which will show only those Bills that your Member has sponsored or co-sponsored.

3. Click on the Bill Number to open a new tab in Congress.gov showing you more detailed information on the Bill.

4. Click the Messages number outside the parentheses to view all Messages ever received for the Bill. Click the number inside the parentheses to view only the remaining Open Messages for the Bill.

5. Click the Campaigns number to view all the Advocacy Campaigns that have been created by IQ for this Bill.

6. Click the Form Letters number to view any form letters created to respond to messages for this Bill.

7. Click the Policy Area to view other bills with Open Messages related to that Policy Area.

8. Click the icon to expand the Bill information available. This includes detailed information on the Open Messages, Form Letters, Co-Sponsors, Related Bills, and Major Actions.

9. Click the +Letter for Bill Supporters/Opponents buttons to instantly create Form Letters tied to the Bill based off of the position clicked.

10. To create Messages Response Rules for the Bills Messages, click Assign Response.

11. Click the box or boxes next to the Constituents Position you are creating a response rule for.

a.*Note: Best practice is to create one response rule for each position (Supports, Opposes, Undetermined), but you can create a single response rule for multiple or all positions.

12. Type into the Comments field any comments that should be associated with these messages. Note that you can Update if empty, Remove Existing Comments and Add to existing comments by clicking those boxes below the Comments field.

13. Type into the Affiliations field Affiliation codes to be associated with the Contacts who sent in the Messages regarding the bill.

14. Type into the Issues field the Issue code(s) to be associated with the Messages regarding the bill.

15. Select an IQ User for the Assigned To drop down field or type in the name of the user who will be Assigned these Messages.

a.*Note: This field may fill in automatically if the Issue code selected has been assigned to a particular user.

16. Select Yes or No in the History drop down. Selecting Yes will include the original incoming email in the outgoing response. Leaving the field blank or selecting No will not include the original incoming email in the outgoing response.

17. Select a Form Letter to send out from the Letter Name drop down. You can also type in the Form Letter Name instead.

a.*Note: If you created the Form Letter for the Bill position using the +letter for bill supporters and/or opponents, you should be able to find the form letter by typing in the bill number.

18. Once a form letter has been selected, IQ will automatically select Add New in the Batch Change field. It will title it after the Form Letter you selected above in the Batch Name field, so the batch and form letter names match.

a.*Note: You can also choose to add the messages to an existing batch or no batch if you would like by selecting No Change or All/My Active Unlocked

19. Click Save.