The Daily Alert: Your Ultimate Power Tool for Beacon Hill
Ever feel like Massachusetts legislation moves at lightning speed? With over 9,500 bills and 10,000 amendments in every two-year cycle, it’s easy to miss key updates—unless you have The Daily Alert on your side.
Delivered straight to your inbox every morning, The Daily Alert is a digest emailed every morning and available online all day, it ensures that you never lose track of the bills, amendments, hearings, and legislators that matter most to you. Before you start, make sure your daily alerts have been configured, instructions can be found in our Tips and Tricks blog. Now let’s break down how it keeps you ahead of the game.
1. Finding your Daily Alerts
If you’ve been following certain bills, amendments, legislators, committees, or state agencies, The Daily Alert consolidates everything into one easy-to-read report. You’ll see key updates like: actions on tracked bills, upcoming committee hearings, new bill text and more. Your daily alerts can be found on your dashboard on the bottom left.
Additionally, you can access it through the dashboard drop down, this will lead you to a Daily Alert full page that might be easier to see.
2. Stay on top of your Tracked Bills
Let's dive into the details of what your Daily Alerts include and the new information they provide. One of the most crucial sections is Action on Tracked Bills or Amendments, keeping you informed on key legislative movements.
This section shows any action on your tracked bills or amendments, including in the cases of amendments if they are withdrawn.
The next section lets you know if new bill text has been added to a bill you are tracking. This includes proposed amendments, new drafts substituted, and enacted text. If a new draft of a bill gets a new number, we automatically track it for you.
Up next are upcoming committee hearings on your tracked bills. They remain visible from the moment they are scheduled until the day they take place, ensuring you never miss an important update.
You can also track state agencies and receive notifications about their hearings or public comment periods on proposed regulatory changes. Our alerts provide significantly more advance notice than the regulations division of the Secretary of the Commonwealth.
Transcripts on your track keywords. We convert videos of legislative and related events into searchable, clickable transcripts. When transcripts are edited, we tag them with the relevant bills and legislators who testified or spoke on the floor. Additionally, our search engine scans these transcripts to notify you whenever one of your saved keywords appears.
Other important sections include the News related to keywords and Categories.
As part of our MassInsider morning newsletter, we compile daily news and press releases, typically featuring 60-80 news items and 15-20 press releases. Each piece is tagged with relevant bills, legislators, and legislative committees.
In the Legislator section, you'll find key updates and news about the legislators you're tracking. You'll also get notifications about their transcripts, newly filed legislation, and scheduled events like fundraisers.
The sheer volume of legislation can be daunting, but the Daily Alert lets you customize what you track. Setting up the Daily Alert is quick and easy, you can find these at the top of the page or from the dashboard labeled ‘My Settings.’ Based on your company or organization’s personal needs, ensure that you’ve saved all relevant: Keywords, Statutory Citations, Categories, Line Items, Senators/Reps, Committees, and State Agencies.
Remember, these settings are user-specific. Even if your colleague has their alerts customized, it doesn’t mean you’ll get the same notifications. If you’d wish to copy settings from another person on your account, let us know, and we’ll assist you.
Checking your Daily Alert each morning means you’ll always be ahead of the curve, armed with the latest legislative intelligence.
Need help or want to sign up? We’ve got you covered! Contact us at 617-292-1800 or info@instatrac.com, and let’s make sure you never miss a critical update again.
Training Sessions: Join our twice-weekly training sessions to learn how to maximize MassTrac’s features. Sessions are held every Wednesday at 2 p.m. and Friday at 10 a.m.
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