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To use auto-apply, refer to the instructions in the user manual here: Applying Amendments
For The auto-apply to work, the following prerequisites must be met:
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function will only work correctly if you are in a bill project which meets the following criteria:
at least one published version of the bill must exist, and that published version must include line numbering (see Publishing a Bill document version )
the applied amendments you choose to apply must contain accurate clause, line, and page references
the applied where amendments insert new provisions into the bill, those amendments must consist of well-formed, valid XML
the applied amendments' instructions must be insert, leave out, or leave out and insert amendments
the wording of the applied amendments must be correct, and must not contain any unnecessary punctuation; for example, an amendment in the form “leave out ____ and substitute ____” will fail to apply, but “leave out ____ and insert ____” will work.
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To apply amendments to a bill, follow these steps:
Select which amendments you wish to attempt to auto-apply from the Amendment Manager tab. The current status of the amendments (Draft, Submitted, Tabled, Agreed) has no impact on auto-apply; amendments at any stage in their lifecycle can be auto-applied to a bill version.
Click ‘Apply Amendments’ from Open the Amendment Actions menu, click ‘Apply amendments’, then select whether to ‘Create a new bill version’, apply one of the following options:
Create a new bill version, to create a new copy of the published bill containing the applied amendments
Apply to an existing bill version,
to apply to a working version which already exists in the bill project (for example, a version of the bill which
already contains some applied amendments)
Apply to a bill version which is currently open in the Editor, to apply the amendments to a version of the bill which you’ve already opened up for editing in another tab.
You can use the latter two options to apply additional amendments to an already created amended copy. This gives you more control over the order in which to apply amendments, and
allows you to apply amendments in batches.
Lawmaker will attempt to apply the selected amendments to the bill version. Once this processing step is complete, a green toastie notification will appear in the top-right of the screen telling you how many amendments were successfully applied.
In When you view the amended bill version in the Editor, successfully applied amendments will appear as red and blue tracked changes in the body of the bill, and . They will have corresponding numbered cards on the right-hand side of the window, in the ‘Inline Amendments’ panepanel. Amendments which could not be applied will appear in the ‘Review’ pane, with an error message. The Inline Amendments pane allows you to click a card and jump to the applied amendment. You can also accept or reject each applied amendment.
You can make further manual edits to the text of this version, before or after accepting the applied amendments, if you need to.
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Lawmaker’s auto-apply function allows a large number of amendments to be applied to a bill version without manual intervention. However, there will always be some amendments which fail to auto-apply for different various reasons, and will therefore require manual edits to integrate into need to be applied to the bill version manually.
If you know which amendments are likely to fail, and the manner in which they tend to fail, you will be better placed to use the auto-apply feature effectively and to avoid creating problems in the resulting bill XML. The details of the known limitations listed below should help you to manage any problematic amendments you encounter when creating an “as amended” version of a bill.
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Amendments which insert, leave out, or substitute whole rows in tables can’t be auto-applied yet. We plan to extend auto-apply to handle these instruction types in future. For now, you will have to apply these amendments manually. If you do attempt to auto-apply amendments to whole rows in tables, there is a slight risk that the amendment will appear to apply successfully but produce bad XML in your bill version.
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This problem does not arise where an instruction leaves out the entirety of a sub-section or paragraph. In those cases, the removal of the number is correct, since the whole of the sub-section or paragraph has been is being left out entirely. The problem only affects amendments which remove the whole of the first line of a multi-line sub-section or paragraph, leaving behind some other textual content of that sub-section or paragraph.
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Amendments which replace lines containing structure with simple text
Where an amendment leave leaves out multiple lines of structured text (for example, paragraphs (a) and (b) in a subsection) and inserts a new simple line of text, auto-apply may produce unexpected results. The screenshots below show an example of this.
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Currently, applying and accepting this amendment will result in the newly inserted text disappearing. We intend to fix this problem in a future Lawmaker release.
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Accepting amendments sometimes results in unexpected changes
Sometimes amendments are auto-applied successfully, and the deleted and inserted text all appears correctly in the new bill version in the Editor, but clicking the individual accept icon or the “accept all” button to consolidate accept those changes into in your bill version produces unexpected results. We have identified the following scenarios in which “accept all” behaves unexpectedly:
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In each case, auto-applying and accepting these amendments may produce unexpected outcomes: text may be duplicated after accepting, or empty XML elements may be left behind. When applying amendments such as these, it is advisable to note down the numbers and locations and re-check them after accepting all amendments.
Incorrect application of amendments which leave out a particular Schedule and insert another one
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