Regulation
An official regulation written and published by a government agency. More formal than an Advisory, directive, or other memorandum, regulations are or will become Massachusetts law.
Why use this content type?
A Regulation is a formal, official law or set of laws from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. You may choose to publish draft, working draft, and proposed Regulations in addition to finalized Regulations. This content type includes fields specifically geared for Regulations, including Agency CMR number and Regulatory authority.
Regulations are often collected into Curated Lists or Binders.
Overview
Regulation Status
An optional dropdown field used to indicate if your Regulation is proposed, draft, or working draft, or if it has a future effective date.
Agency CMR number
Required. The “Code of Massachusetts Regulation” number, representing the Commonwealth organization that is issuing the Regulation. The agency CMR number will automatically be displayed before the regulation title.
CMR chapter number
The chapter where the Regulation can be found. The CMR chapter number will automatically be displayed between the agency CMR number and the regulation title.
Regulation title
Required. The official name of the Regulation. Often, the regulation title will be finalized by the time it is ready to be published on Mass.gov. If your Regulation has a generic title, you may want to search the "All Content" tab to see if there have been any other Regulations published with the same title. The agency CMR number, the CMR chapter number, and the regulation title will all be used to catalog your regulation in the "All Content" tab and in your page’s URL.
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.
Last updated
Required. When the Regulation was last edited. This is particularly useful to keep track of proposed and working draft Regulations.
Organization
This optional field links to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts agency responsible for the Regulation. This information will be displayed directly below the regulation title. You may choose to link to a page on Mass.gov using the autocomplete field, or enter a link to an external page. External links must begin with “http://” or “https://”. Only one organization may be entered.
This field is separate from the organization field further down on the overview tab found on all Mass.gov content types, which determines the “Offered by” relationship indicator and which organization the page will be categorized under in the CMS backend.
Regulatory authority
This required field links to the specific law that gives the organization the authority to create the Regulation. This information will be displayed directly below the regulation title. You may choose to link to a page on Mass.gov using the autocomplete field, or enter a link to an external page. External links must begin with “http://” or “https://”.
Official version
This required field links to where the full text of the official law can be found. A link to the Massachusetts Register is automatically listed by default if you are creating a new Regulation.
Listing description
An optional description that will be displayed in Mass.gov search and if the Regulation is included in any Curated Lists. Content entered into this field will not be displayed anywhere on the Regulation page.
Short description
An optional rich text field that can contain formatted text, hyperlinks, and images that precedes the text of the Regulation.
By default, the short description of a new Regulation page will read: “This is an unofficial version of Commonwealth regulations and is posted here for the convenience of the public. It is not an official statement of the regulations.”
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)
The organization or organizations that are responsible for publishing and maintaining the page on Mass.gov. This field will determine the links in the “Offered by” relationship indicator at the top of the page, as well as which organization the page is categorized under in the CMS backend.
This field is separate from the organization field above that sets the “Organization” link under the Regulation title.
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 Regulation 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.
Content tab
Section
If you are listing the full text of the Regulation, you can enter the content into separate sections. Each separate section requires a section title, which will automatically be listed in a clickable table of contents under the short description, and a body, which is a rich text field that can contain any combination of formatted text, links, and images. You can change the order of sections by clicking and dragging or by using row weights.
Download
Offer a link to a document of the full Regulation. You can add a new document or link to one that has already been uploaded to the CMS.
Related tab
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 a new one.
Related
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.
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