Introduction
You can draft ping pong motions and their amendments in the same way as drafting amendments on a List of Draft Amendments (LoDA) from the Amendment Workspace tab.
How to draft a ping pong motion
From the Amendment Workspace tab, click on the + New button
Fill in the necessary details in the dialog box that opens and click on Create
The system will take you to the Editor, with an empty List of Draft Amendments template loaded and pre-populated with the affected bill short title
Use the Insert menu (click Enter on your keyboard) to select the appropriate ping pong motion or amendment:
The motion context is the header before the ping pong motion text and usually refers back to the amendment that the ping pong motion is targeting. This information is parsed by Lawmaker when the ping pong motion is saved and used to update the location table on the Amendment Information right-hand panel. The location information is used to sort the amendment lists that are automatically generated. The parse logic can work out phrases that include:
Lords amendments 1, 2 and 4
Lords amendments 1 to 3
Commons amendment 1
Commons amendment no. 4
Commons amendment nos. 3 to 6
When a list is auto-generated, any duplicate motion contexts are hidden and a new interstitial heading is inserted before the group of motions to ensure there is only ever one heading before the group.
To check if the motion context has successfully parsed, open the Amendment Information right-hand panel and check the numbers that appear in the table row labelled Provision - it should list all the numbers that it has successfully parsed e.g. "amnd_2". It can be manually updated if the motion context isn’t recognised by the parsing logic.