Requests & Violations
The request lifecycle
Every request moves from New to Resolved, with In Progress in between for Neighborhood Requests. Here's what each status means, who can change it, and how to handle stalled requests.
Last updated September 25, 2026
A request goes through up to three statuses from filing to closure. The status tells residents and admins where things stand. Stuck requests at any stage are how community trust erodes - this article is about keeping things moving.
The statuses
| Status | What it means | Resident sees? |
|---|---|---|
| New | Just filed, no one has acted on it yet | Yes |
| In Progress | Someone is actively working on it (Neighborhood Requests) | Yes |
| Resolved | The request is done; no more action expected | Yes |
How each type moves through them:
| Type | What the admin sees |
|---|---|
| Neighborhood Request | A New / In Progress stepper and a Resolve button |
| Complaint and General Inquiry | Open until you click Resolve |
| ARC Request | Approve or Deny - either one closes the ticket |
In the admin Requests list, the Open, Closed, Herald and All tabs filter by status. Herald shows the tickets Herald Shield resolved on its own. Resolved requests sit under Closed and stay searchable.
New
The default state when a request is created.
What it signals: nobody on the admin side has acted on it. The resident is waiting.
How long it should stay this way: 24 hours, max. If a request is New longer than that, residents start to feel ignored.
A practical rule: at least one board member should check the request queue every weekday. The first action - even just a reply saying you’ve seen it - matters more than the eventual resolution.
The board can file one too. Most requests come from a resident, but not all of them do. Requests in the admin sidebar, then New Ticket: say whether you are filing on behalf of A resident or The Board, pick a type or tap Let Herald decide and let the description sort it out, attach a photo if you have one, and tick Check this against the covenants if you want it screened like any other intake. That is how the call you took on the phone, the thing somebody raised at a meeting, or the fence you noticed yourself ends up on the same board as everything else instead of in a text thread.
In Progress
Someone on the board is actively handling a Neighborhood Request. Click In Progress on the stepper.
Use cases:
- A maintenance issue you’ve contacted a vendor about
- A broken streetlight you’ve reported to the city
- A common-area problem the board is getting quotes for
The status implies action is happening - make sure it actually is. If a request sits in In Progress for two weeks with no replies, the resident assumes it’s been forgotten.
A good practice: reply in the thread when you move it, even if it’s just “Looking into this - we’ve called the vendor.” If the request is published, everyone who subscribed gets a notification when the status changes.
Complaints and General Inquiries don’t have this step. They stay Open while you work, so use replies in the thread to show progress.
Resolved
The request is done. No further action expected.
For each request type, “resolved” means something specific:
| Type | What “Resolved” means |
|---|---|
| Complaint | Closed with a Warning, a Fine, or Quietly Resolve (no notice to the address) |
| ARC Request | Approved or denied, with a decision letter to the applicant |
| Neighborhood Request | The work is complete or the underlying issue is addressed |
| General Inquiry | The board has provided an answer or taken the requested action |
When you resolve a Neighborhood Request that’s published to the community board, you can also post a line to Community Pulse with Send to Pulse, if your community uses it.
Status transitions
New → In Progress
For Neighborhood Requests, when an admin starts working on it.
New or In Progress → Resolved
The decision is made and communicated.
There is no reopen
A resolved request stays resolved. ARC decisions are final, and residents can’t reply on a resolved request. If a resident comes back - pushes back on an ARC denial with new information, reports that the fix didn’t hold, or brings new evidence on a complaint - have them file a new request, or file one yourself from New Ticket, and reference the old ticket number.
Herald’s Quick Take
Deciding what to do is the slow part of a request. Typing it is not. Open any ticket and Herald offers to read it for you: Ask Herald what to do. Click it and Herald goes through the whole thread, the photos on the ticket and in its replies, your covenants, and the prior tickets at that same address, then comes back with a take.
What lands:
- A headline and a summary - what this actually is, in a sentence you could read out at a meeting.
- The covenants it matched, as chips. Tap one and you get the quoted text and where it came from, so you can check the citation instead of trusting it.
- History at the address - “3 prior at this address,” with what happened on them.
- A recommendation, with the reasoning underneath it. Why? opens the rest: the risks Herald sees, the alternatives it weighed and when each is the better call, and the questions it still has.
- A governance gap when there is one - the awkward case where your documents don’t actually cover the thing being complained about. Advisory, not a verdict.
- A confidence percentage and a timestamp, at the bottom, always.
When the thread doesn’t support a call, Herald says so instead of guessing. The card reads Herald needs more before it can advise and lists what it would need. That’s the honest answer, and it’s the one you want.
The take is saved on the ticket, so the whole board reads the same one instead of each member generating their own. If the ticket changes afterwards - a new reply, a new photo, a type or status change - an amber line appears across the top saying so, with Refresh next to it. Age alone never stales a take. Only a change to what it read does.
Solve It
Under the recommendation is a button that names the action in plain words: Solve it: close with a warning, Solve it: close with a fine - $250.00, Solve it: approve it. There are sixteen actions Herald is allowed to recommend and no more. It cannot invent a seventeenth.
Here’s the important part: the button writes nothing. It opens the flow you would have opened yourself, with Herald’s draft already in the fields - the notice to the offending address, the acknowledgement to whoever reported it, the fine amount, the letter body. You read it, change what you want, and that flow’s own confirm button does the work. Solve It never sends a message or posts a charge on its own.
Three rules it follows without being asked:
- A button you can’t use never appears. An action that doesn’t apply to this ticket’s type, or needs something your community hasn’t turned on, or would act on a ticket that’s already Closed, is hidden rather than shown greyed out.
- Drafts don’t travel between outcomes. Each alternative under Why? has its own Use this instead, and text written about one outcome never rides into another - a “you have been fined $250” paragraph can’t end up in a warning. Those fields open empty and the flow’s own AI Draft button refills them for the outcome you actually picked.
- “Nothing to do here” is a real answer. When that’s the recommendation there is no button, because there is nothing to execute.
Comments and updates
Every status change is logged in the request’s history. Replies are added in-thread and visible to:
- The reporter
- The board / admin
- For complaints, any resident linked to the address the complaint names - they see the ticket in their own request history
Notifications
- Resident → Admin: every admin and board member gets a notification when a new request is filed. Each board member can set their Tickets & Requests notifications to Real-time, Daily brief or Off.
- Admin → Resident: the reporter gets a message when you reply, when you change the status with a message, and when you resolve it with a message. Subscribers to a published Neighborhood Request are notified on every status change.
Service-level expectations
These are guidelines, not rules. Use what fits your community.
| Type | Expected first response | Expected resolution |
|---|---|---|
| Complaint | 24 hours | 7-14 days for normal cases |
| ARC Request | 48 hours | Within 30 days (your bylaws may specify) |
| Neighborhood Request (urgent) | 4 hours | Same day or next |
| Neighborhood Request (routine) | 24 hours | 30 days |
| General Inquiry | 24-48 hours | Varies by question |
Common situations
”A request has been New for a week and nobody noticed”
That’s a process gap. Two ways to fix:
- Check your notifications. Make sure your Tickets & Requests notifications aren’t set to Off, so new requests don’t slip past.
- Designate an owner. Pick one board member as the “request triage” person. They reply to everything within 24 hours and route to the right person.
”A complaint is being investigated for a month and the reporter is asking for updates”
Update them in-thread: “We’re still gathering info, expect a decision by [date].” Don’t go silent. The investigation taking time is fine; not communicating is the problem.
”I resolved something but the resident isn’t satisfied”
A resolved request can’t be reopened, and the resident can’t reply on it. Ask them to file a new request that references the old ticket number, hear them out, and either change course or resolve the new one with more explanation.
”This came in as the wrong type”
It happens constantly - somebody files a maintenance issue as a complaint, or an ARC request lands as a general question. The type isn’t locked in. Open the ticket, click the type under Type in the header (or the type chip in the details sidebar), pick the right one under Reclassify as, add a line saying why, and click Reclassify.
What happens next is the point. Your reason goes into the thread, the old AI screening is archived instead of overwritten, and Herald re-checks the whole thread against your covenants for the new type. Money and decisions are never rewritten by a type change: if the ticket already carries a fine, a recorded outcome, an ARC decision, or a Herald Shield resolution, HomeHerald stops and tells you exactly what survives before it lets you continue.
”We have 50 closed requests cluttering the dashboard”
The Requests list opens on the Open tab, so resolved requests are already out of the way. They’re under Closed and All when you need them.
Where to go next
- The four request types - picking the right type at filing time
- Issuing a fine - what happens when a complaint becomes enforcement
- Escalations and repeat offenders - automated handling of repeat violations
- Publishing to the public board - community visibility on resolutions