Preview and comment on amendments

You can quickly preview any amendment from the Amendment Manager tab. While previewing the amendment, you can add a comment or update the existing comment. You can also add a quick comment.

If the amendment has changed since you opened the preview, you can refresh the preview by clicking Refresh preview and comment.

How to preview an amendment

To preview an amendment click on the eye icon in the Comment column of the amendment manager Tab:

This will display a dialog box like the one above showing you a preview of the amendment and giving you access to a number of other features.

The amendment is shown as it would be in the Editor. The only difference is that any Dnum is shown separately at the top of the dialog box.

The preview function currently doesn’t support formulas or images. To view those you will have to look at the amendment in the Editor or in a PDF version of a list.

Comments

You can add a comment against the amendment you are previewing by adding text in the Comment box. This comment will only be visible to users in the same organisation as you. You can also edit any existing comment.

Any changes you make to the comment will be saved when you navigate away from the amendment (by clicking Next, Previous or Save and Close) unless you press Cancel.

Click Clear text if you want to remove the comment.

When you close the preview, the first 20 or so characters of the comment will be visible in the Comment column of the Amendment Manager tab but you can hover over the comment to see the rest.

If the comment is changed by another user while you are previewing an amendment, Lawmaker will prevent you from saving your changes to the comment so that the other user’s changes aren’t inadvertently overwritten. You can click Refresh amendment and comment to see their changes and then update it further as needed (copy any changes you’ve made to the clipboard before clicking the button if you want to retain them).

You can use the Filter options on the Amendment Manager to filter amendments based on the content of the amendment comments.

Quick comments

It can sometimes be useful to add the same comment to each amendment when you preview it (e.g. you might want to add your initials to confirm you’ve checked it.)

You can use the Quick comment box for this. When you click Quick Comment, the text in the box next to it will be added to the end of the existing comment. Once you’ve added text to the box, Lawmaker will remember it whenever you preview another amendment so you only need click Quick Comment again to insert the same comment.

Editing the amendment

You edit the amendment you are previewing by clicking Edit amendment.

This will open up a temporary list containing the single amendment in the Editor in a separate tab.

The amendment preview will remain open. If you make any changes and save the amendment, click Refresh preview and comment to see those changes reflected in the preview.

Navigating in the preview

You can use keyboard shortcuts to quickly navigate around the preview feature.

The shortcuts are:

Shortcut Key	Action

Shortcut Key	Action
N	Next amendment
P	Previous amendment
Q	Add quick comment
E	Edit amendment
S	Save and close