Quick Start for Coordinators

You don't need to be technical to use this. Setup takes about 15 minutes, once. After that, your daily routine is about three clicks.

One-time setup (15 minutes)

1. Open any email in Outlook and click Report Router on the ribbon. Open ⚙️ Setup — it walks you through six numbered steps with Back/Next buttons, and a checklist at the top shows your progress the whole way.
2. Where should your lists live? Easiest answer: pick your legislative Team from the first dropdown — the lists go on that Team's own site, and everyone on the team automatically has access. Working solo? You still need a SharePoint site — the three lists are SharePoint lists, and OneDrive only stores files. Any site of your own works: sharepoint.com → Create site → Team site, name it (e.g. Legislative), then click Refresh list.
3. Click ② Create my lists. The add-in builds its three lists for you and connects. Nothing to configure.
4. Step 3 of the wizard: type the division's short name (like MVD), pick its Team, channel, and tag from the dropdowns, and click Add this division. No tag yet? Click ➕ Create the tag — it's made on the spot (then add the division's people to it in Teams: Manage team → Tags). A division can post to more than one channel: just add it again with the second channel.
5. Add people: use Quick add (one email + a division), or paste your whole contact spreadsheet and click Preview → Apply. Don't have a spreadsheet yet? Download the fill-in template — open it in Excel, add your people, paste it back.
6. In Let the add-in write the Daily Bill Report, paste the To: line from one of your past reports. The addresses sort themselves out.
7. Click ✅ Test my setup → Run all checks. Green means go. If anything shows a ✗, the message says exactly what to do — or click Copy results and email it to support.
8. Pin the tracker in Teams (so everyone sees review status): in your legislative channel, click ＋ (Add a tab) → Lists → Add an existing list → pick BillTracker → Save. Then, on the tab, use + New view to add three views: My division (filter Division = yours), Still waiting (Status is "Pending review", grouped by Division), and Overdue (Pending review + Due date before today). Details.

Want it even easier? Let it draft for you

In Setup → Let the add-in write the Daily Bill Report, turn on "Draft it for me each morning" and pick a time. Then pin the pane so it stays open: click the 📌 pin icon at the top of the Report Router pane. As long as Outlook is running, today's report drafts itself at your chosen time — divisions pre-assigned, sitting in your Drafts. You review, publish to Teams, and press Send. (If Outlook was closed, it catches up next time you open the pane.)

Every morning (about 3 clicks)

1. Open the pane → New bills tab → Check for new bills. Bills you've already reported are hidden automatically. Out of session, or want to practise? Raise the Watch window to 400 days — the feed still holds the whole previous session, so you can replay real bills.
2. Click Add selected bills to today's report. Most bills arrive with divisions already suggested — the Review screen highlights, in red, only the ones that need your judgment.
3. Fix anything red (one-click suggestions, or type the division), then Publish. That posts each bill to the right Teams channel with the right people tagged, emails each division its bills, updates the shared tracker, and puts the finished Daily Bill Report in your Drafts — addressed and ready. Read it, press Send. Every post, email, and report carries the comment deadline (see below), so nobody has to ask how long they have.
Teach it as you go: when a bill lands with no division, type a keyword (like "CDL"), pick the division, and click Teach. The add-in remembers forever — next week that kind of bill routes itself.

Comment deadlines

Divisions get a response window — 48 business hours by default, ending at 5:00 PM. The Router does the calendar math for you: a Friday afternoon publish is due Tuesday at 5:00 PM, never over the weekend.

Set it in Setup: Response window (business hours) and Due time. Weekends and the six holidays every US public employer closes for (New Year's, Memorial, Independence, Labor, Thanksgiving, Christmas) are skipped automatically — including the federal rule that moves a Saturday holiday to Friday and a Sunday one to Monday. Nothing to maintain each year.
Under Which other holidays does your agency close for?, tick the ones you actually observe — MLK, Presidents, Juneteenth, Columbus, Veterans, day after Thanksgiving. These differ between agencies, so they're asked rather than assumed; the defaults are the federal list and a state agency's is usually shorter. Furlough days and local closures go in the other closures box.
The deadline appears in the Teams post's subject line (visible in the channel list before anyone opens it), in the post body, marked high importance (the red !), in the division emails, in the daily report, and as the Due date on every tracker row.

Costs and severity: the fiscal rollup

Divisions report what a bill would cost them. The Router collects those numbers and keeps a running total per fiscal year — the number you need at budget time.

How divisions report: whichever way they already do. They can fill in Estimated cost and Impact severity on their BillTracker row, or just reply in the Teams thread ("minimal impact, about $40,000 in FY27") or attach a spreadsheet.
You collect it: History tab → Harvest from Teams replies. The add-in reads the reply threads and any attached Word/Excel files, pulls out the dollar figures with the sentence they came from, and shows you a reviewable list. Edit anything that looks off, tick what's right, then Apply checked to tracker. Nothing is written until you apply it.
You report it: Load fiscal rollup shows totals per fiscal year — by division, by severity, and how many bills are still awaiting an estimate (a "TBD" is never counted as zero). Export CSV gives you detail rows plus a TOTAL line per year, ready to paste into a budget request.
Want charts instead? All of this lives in ordinary SharePoint lists, so Power BI can read it directly — outstanding-response scorecard, spend by fiscal year, average response time per division. The build recipe is in docs/powerbi; hand it to whoever runs Power BI at your agency.

Handing this to someone else

A backup coordinator, or whoever takes over: open Setup → Advanced → Hand this setup to someone else, type their email, and click Write the invitation. Review the draft and press Send. They open Report Router, click Find my setup, then Connect & load routing rules once — and they have your entire configuration. No code to copy, nothing to re-enter.

Tell your divisions what's expected

Send your reviewers the one-page guide for division reviewers — what the Teams post means, how to answer, and how to mark themselves done. Paste the link into your legislative channel description so it's always there.

Things to know