Decision

Document official decisions, rulings, or opinions. Choose from many Decision types, including consent orders, rulings, and settlements.

Why use this content type?

Decisions can be used to explain how an issue was decided or provide an opinion on a matter determined by a court or government agency.

Alternatives to the Decision content type

Rules of Court and Regulations are separate content types for court rulings or other official laws issued by the courts and Commonwealth of Massachusetts regulations, respectively.

Consider using the Advisory content type for official government agency announcements that are not formal rulings or orders.

Note: The Decision content type is distinct from the Decision Tree, an interactive tool that, like a flow chart, helps organizations walk people through a series of choices to reach a conclusion.

Overview

Title

To the extent you’re allowed to, based on the type of Decision you are publishing, write the title using language you think your audience would use. It’s also a good idea to Google your intended title or conduct a search in “All content” in the CMS to see if it’s identical to the title of existing Mass.gov content.

Short title

Optional. This field is used to shorten the full title of a page when displayed in a breadcrumb. First aim to shorten the actual page title if it’s long, but not so much that the title is no longer clear if someone comes directly to a page from a search engine.

Type

You must choose the type of Decision you are publishing, and the type you choose will be displayed just above the title of your page.

Use the dropdown menu to choose a dozen kinds of Decisions, such as consent order, mandate, and ruling. If you don’t see 1 that fits your needs, make a ServiceNow request for a new type to be added to the list.

Date

This required field shows when the Decision was published. It displays directly under the page title.

Issuing organization

Required field in which the organization making the Decision is selected.

Docket number

Optional field for including the unique identifier for a Decision. Can include letters, numbers, and special characters.

Location

This optional field is for including the location where the Decision was made.

Overview

An optional short description that precedes the text of the Decision. This is a rich text field in which hyperlinks, images, and more can be included.

Listing description

An optional short description that helps to explain your Decision when it appears in Curated Lists and search results. This information will not appear on the Decision itself.

Parent page

The required Parent page field appears on all public-facing content types and it powers the breadcrumb-based navigation system.

The Mass.gov team prepopulated the field based on an analysis of which child pages belong to which parent pages. Each child page can be assigned only 1 parent, or higher level page.

These connections, displayed in the form of breadcrumbs (i.e., links) above the page title, will help Mass.gov visitors find their way to relevant information regardless of where they start on the site.

Organization(s)

Select the organization or organizations issuing the Decision. The name will appear at the top of the page.

Intended Audience

This field isn’t being used yet, so there’s no need to fill it in.

Label(s)

Optional: Choose an existing label or create a new 1 so that your Decision can become part of an automatic list within a Curated List.

Be sure to create specific labels: The label field is shared across the whole site, so your label should be unique and identifiable to prevent overlap with others.

Collections

Optional. Most content will not be in a Collection. Only add content to a collection if the collection creator has approved it. In that case, select any collections, topics, and subtopics for this content.

If you later need to remove a page from a Collection, go back into the page and uncheck the box and select Save.

Learn more about collections.

Details tab

Participants

Includes 2 optional “Decision Participant” fields: participant name and participant type.

Type the person or organization name into the participant name field and choose from more than 2 dozen selections in a dropdown menu for participant type. Choices include claimant, employer, employee, defendant, and many more. If you don’t see 1 that fits your needs, make a ServiceNow request for a new participant type to be added to the list.

Participant information will appear on the page just below the section featuring the date and organization.

Referenced sources

Use this section to link to any related legislation, regulations, cases, or past decisions that relate to this Decision. Fill in the URL and if desired, link text.

Section

This is where to put the body of the Decision text. It can be divided into sections, which will generate a table of contents and make the text easier to scan.

Using 1 section, plus filling out the download field below or the contact field under the “Related” tab, will also result in a table of contents being created.

Footnotes

This rich text field allows you to enter footnotes as a numbered list.

Download

An optional download of the Decision document. If you do not offer a full-text version, we recommend offering a PDF or Word document version. You can provide both the full-text and document versions.

Contact

Include contact information if this information needs to be displayed on the page. You can choose from an existing contact information item or create one.

Add links to pages on Mass.gov or external links. These links display on the right side of the page in a desktop view and at the bottom on mobile devices.