Alerts are how PolicyNote notifies you when new legislation or regulations match topics you care about. When a new bill is introduced or an existing one moves that matches your alert criteria, PolicyNote surfaces it on your Alerts page and sends you an email.
Every alert starts the same way: a search in Discover. If you can find it in search, you can be alerted on it.
Step 1: Search in Discover
Go to the Discover tab and run a search. You have two options:
AI-Assisted Search : Describe what you're looking for in plain language. Good for broad topic coverage where you want PolicyNote to find relevant policies even when bill text uses different phrasing than you do.
Keyword Search: Use specific phrases or Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT) for precise, predictable matching. Boolean searches are auto-detected when you use operators in all caps — no prefix needed.
PolicyNote remembers your last-used search mode, so you'll return to whichever one you used most recently.
Step 2: Filter Your Results
Once results load, use the filters to narrow them down. Common filters for alerts:
- Content Type: Select either Legislation or Regulation. A single alert can only cover one — not both.
- Location: Narrow to specific states, federal, or international jurisdictions
- Legislative Status: Focus on bills at a specific stage
- Session: Limit to active sessions if you only want current legislation
Take a look at the result count before saving. A well-scoped alert should feel manageable — if you're seeing thousands of results, the alert will generate more noise than signal. See [Building Effective Alerts] for guidance on tightening your search before saving.
Step 3: Save as an Alert
When your results reflect what you want to be notified about, click Save as Alert in the upper right corner.
In the dialog that appears:
- Give the alert a clear, specific name. You'll be picking from a list of alerts later, so "EV Charging Infrastructure" is more useful than "Energy"
- Add an optional description
- Select the Project you want the alert to live in
- Choose how far back to backfill. By default, PolicyNote will surface matches from the last 3 days, but you can go back up to 90 days if you want to catch recent history when the alert is first created
A Few Things Worth Knowing
Saving with a large result set: If your search returns more than 1,000 results, PolicyNote will warn you before saving, but won't block you. That's a signal your alert may be too broad and could generate a high volume of matches. You can save it anyway, but consider tightening the search first.
One content type per alert: A single alert covers either legislation or regulation, not both. If you need to track the same topic across both, create two separate alerts.
Editing an alert later: You can always update the search criteria for a saved alert. From the Alerts page, click the dropdown on the alert name and select Edit Search Criteria. This takes you back to Discover with your current query loaded.
For guidance on building alerts that return the right results consistently, see Building Effective Alerts.
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