AI knowledge base

Herald Chat answers residents best when it has community-specific context. Its knowledge sources are where you point it at that context.

What the knowledge base does

Herald Chat uses the sources you turn on to answer resident questions, and it can mention the source name in its answer. These sources feed Herald Chat only.

Without extra sources, Herald Chat still answers from your library and general HOA knowledge - workable for general questions, but less specific to your community.

Where to configure it

Configuration → Herald Chat, in the Library. The Library holds your Governing Documents, the Board Pack - State HOA Law, and Violation Rules. Its Additional Sources section has three toggles:

Source	What it does
HOA Announcements	Uses your community’s own announcements as a source
Neighborhood Issues	Uses your public maintenance requests and their updates as a source
External Websites	Reads your HOA’s public web pages when a question needs them (up to 5 sites)

External websites

If your HOA has a public website with rules, FAQs, board info, etc., Herald Chat can read it:

1. Add the URL. A specific page like yourhoa.com/rules works better than a home page.
2. Turn the site’s switch on
3. Tap Test to check that Herald can read it

Herald fetches the page live when a resident’s question needs it. Nothing is stored or indexed ahead of time. Up to 5 external websites can be configured.

Useful when:

• Your HOA has a community website separate from HomeHerald
• You have rules / FAQs already published on a public page
• You want the AI to answer questions consistent with what’s on your site

If you don’t have a public site, this section stays empty - the AI works fine without it, just with less community-specific context.

HOA Announcements

Toggle this on and Herald Chat uses your community’s announcements as source material. When residents ask Herald Chat “when’s the next board meeting?” the AI can pull from a recent announcement that mentioned the meeting date.

This is usually safe to leave on. Announcements are already visible to residents - putting them in the AI’s context just makes the AI more accurate.

Neighborhood Issues

Toggle this on and Herald Chat can reference your community’s public maintenance requests, whatever their status, along with their updates. Useful when, say, a resident asks “what’s the status on the playground repair?” and Herald can pull from the related request.

This is generally safe to enable. Only public requests are used. Private complaints and violations are never included.

What Herald Chat does with the sources

When a resident asks Herald Chat a question:

1. Herald looks through the sources you’ve turned on for relevant content
2. It answers grounded in what it found, and can mention the source name
3. If no good source is found, it is instructed to say so rather than guess

To see what residents asked and what Herald answered, open AI Chat Logs under Configuration → Herald Chat.

Privacy considerations

Sources in the knowledge base are visible to:

• Admins (full read access)
• Herald Chat (uses them to answer resident questions)

Sources are NOT shared between communities. Each community’s knowledge base is isolated.

Don’t add private information (board internal discussions, specific resident personnel issues) to the public sources. Anything in the knowledge base may be referenced in Herald Chat responses to residents.

When the AI gives a wrong answer

Most often the cause is:

• The external website source is outdated or wrong
• The configured sources don’t cover the topic the resident asked about
• The AI misinterpreted ambiguous language

When you spot a wrong answer:

• Check what the AI cited - is the source itself accurate?
• If yes, the AI may be drawing the wrong conclusion - consider making the source more explicit
• If the source is wrong (outdated public page), update the source

Common situations

”We just updated the rules on our website”

Nothing to refresh. Herald reads the current page each time a question needs it, so the next question sees your update.

”Residents keep asking the same question that’s not in any source”

Add it. Either:

• Add an announcement explaining it (and turn on HOA Announcements)
• Update your public website (if it is one of your External Websites)
• Have the board write a community-wide FAQ that gets posted as an announcement

”We don’t have a public website”

That’s fine. Leave External Websites empty and rely on HOA Announcements and Neighborhood Issues. Herald Chat still works - just with less community-specific context.

”Herald doesn’t seem to be using our site’s content”

Check that the URL is correct, the site is publicly accessible (not behind login), and that its switch is on. Tap Test to see whether Herald can read it. If everything looks right, contact support@homeherald.ai.

Where to go next

• Herald Chat - the main consumer of the knowledge base
• Integrations - connecting external systems