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Module 3 · Reporting and alerts · Lesson 9 of 13 · 5 minutes

Set up alerts

You hear about the bills that matter the day they move, and you don't mute the alert two weeks later.

Open QuorumWatch the official tour firstFormal training in Quorum School

The BMS scenario

You don't want to check for new bills; you want the new bills to find you — at a cadence that doesn't get muted.

When to use it

As soon as a saved search is stable, and again when session pace changes.

Why it matters

An alert nobody trusts gets muted, and a muted alert is worse than no alert — it creates false confidence that you'd have heard if something moved. The fix is almost always upstream, at the search, not at the alert settings.

Before you start

  • A saved search you trust — alerting on a noisy search is how alerts get ignored.
  • A decision on what you'd actually do differently if the alert fired today.

Field guide

Trigger type (new bill vs. status change)
Choose deliberately — 'both' is fine for a priority issue, but a low-priority issue on 'both' triggers is how alert fatigue starts.
Frequency / delivery cadence
Pick a cadence you'll genuinely read; daily digests are usually more sustainable than real-time for state legislative volume.
Alert name
Name it identically to its source search so an unwanted email is traceable in seconds, not a mystery to investigate.
Recipient list
Keep it to people who'll act on it; a wide distribution list is how an alert becomes background noise that nobody individually owns.

If your situation is different

  • If you need near-real-time notice for a fast-moving priority bill, set that one bill's alert to real-time while keeping the rest of your alerts on a digest cadence — don't move everything to real-time just because one bill is urgent.
  • If an alert is shared across the team rather than owned by one person, name an explicit owner in the alert description so tuning decisions don't get made by committee or ignored by everyone.
  • If a session ends and the underlying issue goes quiet, retire the alert rather than leaving it running unread until next session — recreate it when the issue resurfaces.

Step by step

Steps describe the general Quorum workflow. What your seat shows depends on the BMS subscription — check with your Quorum admin if a control isn't there.

  1. 1

    Start from a saved search you trust

    An alert can only be as precise as its query, so fix the search before you automate it.

    Do this in Quorum

    1. 1.1Open the saved search you want to be notified about.
    2. 1.2Create the alert from that search so the two stay linked.
    3. 1.3Confirm the search itself is still returning clean results before attaching anything to it.

    You know it worked when: The alert lists the saved search as its source.

  2. 2

    Match cadence to the pace of the issue

    Real-time for a bill in active committee; a daily or weekly digest for background monitoring across many states. Cadence mismatch is the main reason alerts get ignored.

    Do this in Quorum

    1. 2.1Choose the trigger deliberately: new introductions, status changes, or both.
    2. 2.2Pick a frequency you'll genuinely read — a daily digest beats real-time for most state work.
    3. 2.3Match the frequency to how often you actually act on this issue, not to how important it feels.

    You know it worked when: You can say what you'd do the moment it fires.

  3. 3

    Send it to the person who acts

    Keep recipient lists short and role-based. Wide distribution turns an alert into background noise for everyone on it.

    Do this in Quorum

    1. 3.1Name the alert after the search so an unwanted email is traceable in five seconds.
    2. 3.2Send yourself a test or wait for the first delivery before adding more alerts.
    3. 3.3Check the first delivery actually matches what you expected before trusting it long-term.

    You know it worked when: The email subject tells you which search produced it.

  4. 4

    Review after a week

    If you skimmed every alert without doing anything, narrow the search or slow the cadence — don't switch it off.

    Do this in Quorum

    1. 4.1After a week, tune the source search rather than muting the alert.
    2. 4.2Retire alerts for issues that have left the BMS agenda.
    3. 4.3Review the full alert list monthly, not just when one gets annoying.

    You know it worked when: You have not muted anything.

Common mistakes

  • Muting an alert instead of fixing the noisy search behind it.

    Fix: Go back to the source search and tune it — the alert is only as good as what it's watching.

  • Setting every alert to real-time regardless of priority.

    Fix: Reserve real-time for genuinely urgent bills; use digests for everything else.

  • Naming the alert something generic that doesn't match its search.

    Fix: Name the alert identically to the saved search so it's traceable.

  • Never reviewing the alert list until one becomes actively annoying.

    Fix: Do a monthly review of every active alert, not just reactive fixes.

Prompts to run in Quincy, inside Quorum

Quincy is the agentic layer in Quorum — it works on your live data. Copy a prompt into Quincy after you log in. If you want the steps explained first, ask the site guide.

  • "Summarize what triggered this alert and whether it needs action today."
  • "List my active alerts and which saved search each one is attached to."
Open Quincy in Quorum

Practice it now

  1. 1) Audit your current alerts: for each, name the search behind it. Delete any you can't.
Open Quorum and try it

Done looks like this

  • Every alert traces to a named, owned saved search.
  • Nothing in your inbox is ignored by habit.

When to stop and ask

If you can't tell which search an alert is attached to, or delivery isn't matching the frequency you set, confirm with a Quorum admin or the BMS account team (Michael Fuentes, michael.fuentes@quorum.us) rather than rebuilding the alert from scratch.