Help & Support, in depth

A request starts as New. When staff send a reply that the family can read, the request moves to Awaiting User. Staff can also set it to In Progress, Resolved or Closed. Each request has a tracking number.

A family reply moves a request from Awaiting User or Resolved back to New. This puts it in front of staff again. A family cannot reply to a Closed request. Staff can reopen a Closed request to New.

Two emails go to the family. One arrives when the request is received, and one arrives with each staff reply. Each email links to the tracking page with the number already filled in.

• Anyone can send a request. Public submission uses a human check to stop spam.
• A signed-in family sees only its own requests. The family sees staff replies and never sees internal notes.
• A person who is not signed in looks up one request with its tracking number and the email address on it. The page removes the email address from the web address after the lookup.
• Staff with the help desk role see the whole queue.
• Admins of other modules see only the requests that carry their module tag. They cannot widen that view.

• A daily auto-close. A timer runs once a day. It closes each request that has stayed in Awaiting User for 24 hours with no change. It reads each request again just before it writes, so a late reply keeps the request open. It handles at most 200 requests per run. It sends no email or text, so the family is not told.
• Admin alerts with retry. When a new request arrives, staff get an email alert. If that email fails, the server retries every 10 minutes. After a fixed number of tries it stops and logs the failure.
• Spanish replies. When a family writes in Spanish, the server translates the staff reply into formal Spanish before it sends the email. Notes that the parish opens for a family are not translated, because staff write them with care.

Staff set the status and the priority of each request. Staff tag a request with one or more modules, which decides who else can see it. Staff choose between a reply the family reads and an internal note.

A reply goes out by email. If a request has no email address, the reply is saved in the queue but nobody receives it. The queue warns staff about this before they send.

The thread keeps every family message, every staff reply and every internal note, in order. Every status change writes an audit note on the request. The note names who made the change. The auto-close writes the same note, with the timer as the actor. The timer also logs a count of requests it closed, skipped and failed each day.

The parish can open a request for a family. Other modules do this when a family needs a personal note, for example about a late payment. These requests send nothing until a staff member replies. Module admins answer the requests that carry their tag, so a ministry team can handle its own questions.