- April 22nd, 2010
- Posted by Ken in CMF
I wanted to congratulate all of our clients who were recognized by the Congressional Management Foundation with Mouse Awards. We’re proud to help support these offices in all their online constituent outreach.
It looks like this competition was more difficult than ever. Since 1998, the CMF has assessed the quality of congressional Web sites to determine how Members of Congress can use the Internet to more effectively communicate with and serve citizens.
Here are the Fireside21 winners:
Gold Mouse
Silver Mouse
Bronze Mouse
Finally, congratulations to the CMF for putting together a great event for the Mouse Awards and the announcement of their new Partnership for a More Perfect Union.
UPDATE: We received an email alerting us that Mike Ross was working with iConstituent at the time of the judging for these awards. My mistake–I’ve updated the list above. Nevertheless, I want to congratulate Mike Ross, as well as Paul Ryan and the Committee on Education and Labor (minority) who have all decided to migrate their award-winning websites to Fireside21.
Attention, caseworkers! You’ve given us a lot of great ideas over the past couple of months, and we’re about to put a number of them into action. When you come into work on Monday, you can look forward to the following changes to your Fireside Casework. Thanks for all the input, and please keep it coming!
My Cases
- Sorting: Click on the column headers to sort your list of cases by Date Created, Name, Agency, and Reminder Date.
- Status update notes: Casework notes are automatically added to a case when the case status or assignment changes, creating a more complete record of your case history.
- Reminder Date: Casework reminder dates have been added to the My Cases page.
- Expanded/List View: Click “Expand” to display the case descriptions and the last update (the most recent email, letter or note) to your cases from within the My Cases page, and click “List” to collapse the display. You can also click the Expand arrow to expand or collapse the display of individual cases.
- Loading Speed: The My Cases page should now load more than twice as fast.
Edit a Case
- Edit Case Description: Simply click into the case description to edit the text, and then click Save, or Cancel.
- Edit Notes: Case history notes can now be edited or deleted. Click into the text to edit it, or click the red X to delete.
- Delete Pending Letters or Emails: You can now delete letters and emails in the Pending Activities list by clicking the red X.
- Case Reminders: Reminders can be set in the Case Details sidebar. Simply select a date from the calendar to set the reminder. You can click the red X to delete reminders.
A few other changes that were deployed last week:
- Closed Favorable/Closed Unfavorable: You can now set the status of a case to New, Pending, Closed, Closed Favorable, and Closed Unfavorable. Existing cases that were set as Closed before this feature was implemented remain as Closed.
- Casework Staffers lists: The list of staffers on the My Cases and Case Details page used to contain all active administrators. It now contains all active administrators that have ever been assigned to a case as well as all inactive administrators that are currently assigned to an open case. This allows you to view cases for inactive staff so you can assign them to active staff.
- Number of Cases Displayed: The page size of My Cases has been increased from 50 to 100
Co-chairs Congressman Phil Gingrey, MD and Congressman Tim Murphy, PhD unveiled a new website for the GOP Doctors Caucus yesterday. With its scrolling topic list, latest videos, and a prominently displayed mission statement, their site is an excellent example of how a Congressional committee can use the internet to represent itself and its legislative priorities.
