Notice automation (rules)

How to make the system draft notices for you automatically, so nobody has to remember which violation is past its deadline or which account is overdue. Rules propose drafts; you stay in control of what actually sends.

Two ways notices go out

There are two separate paths, and it's easy to mix them up:

• Send now (manual). The mail icon on a violation / request opens the send dialog and delivers a notice immediately. You pick the template + channels (Email, In-app, PDF, Mail) and it goes out right then.
• Rules (automatic drafts). A rule watches a kind of record and, each night, drafts a notice for every record that matches. Those drafts wait for you in a review queue. Nothing is sent until you approve it.

This tutorial is about the second path. It's how you stop hand-tracking deadlines: instead of remembering that 23 Oak's warning lapses Tuesday, you write the rule once and the system surfaces the draft when the day comes.

How a rule works

A rule has three parts: a kind of record it watches (violations, architectural requests, maintenance, or dues), a set of conditions, and the template to draft when those conditions match.

Every night a scheduled job walks each enabled rule, finds the matching records, and creates a draft notice for each one that doesn't already have a pending draft. The drafts land in Drafted notices for you to review, edit, and send (or dismiss). It is idempotent: re-running doesn't pile up duplicate drafts for the same record.

Building a rule

Go to Admin → Notice Templates → Automation rules and click New rule. You'll give it a name, pick the record type, pick the template to draft, and define the conditions. A couple of one-click example starters sit right above the conditions box. The fastest way to begin is to load one and tweak it.

Two buttons help you test without waiting for the nightly run:

• Run now (▷ on the rule row) evaluates the rule immediately and drafts any current matches, so you can see exactly what it would produce.
• Pause (the power icon) stops a rule from running without deleting it.

Conditions: fields & operators

Conditions compare a field on the record to a value using an operator. Each record type exposes its own fields (the builder lists them); the common ones are status, created_at, and for violations correction_deadline, fine_amount, and fine_paid.

The operators that matter most for "remind me when time has passed" are the date ones:

• is older than (days): the date is more than N days in the past. 0 means "the date has now passed" (perfect for a correction deadline).
• is newer than (days): within the last N days.
• plus equals, is one of, greater than / less than, and is empty / is not empty for text, numbers, and enums.

Combine conditions with and (all must match) or or (any matches). The builder shows a plain-English Preview of whatever you've written so you can sanity-check it before saving.

Example rules

Escalate a lapsed warning. Draft a follow-up notice the moment an open violation's correction deadline passes:

{
  "and": [
    { "field": "status", "operator": "eq", "value": "open" },
    { "field": "correction_deadline", "operator": "older_than_days", "value": 0 }
  ]
}

Nudge an aging request. Draft a status update when an architectural request has been awaiting review for a week:

{
  "and": [
    { "field": "status", "operator": "in", "value": ["submitted", "under_review"] },
    { "field": "created_at", "operator": "older_than_days", "value": 7 }
  ]
}

Chase an overdue balance. Draft a reminder when a property owes money more than 30 days past its oldest due date:

{
  "and": [
    { "field": "outstanding", "operator": "gt", "value": 0 },
    { "field": "oldest_due_date", "operator": "older_than_days", "value": 30 }
  ]
}

These three are available as one-click starters in the builder, so you don't have to type the JSON by hand.

Reviewing drafts

Drafts created by rules collect in Admin → Drafted notices. For each one you can approve & send, edit then send (tweak the wording for that specific resident first), or dismiss it if it shouldn't go out. Make reviewing the queue part of your routine. A draft nobody reviews is the one way an automated notice never reaches anyone.

What rules do and don’t do

Rules draft a notice. They do not change the underlying record. A rule that drafts a "fine" notice does not itself create the fine, flip the violation from warning to fine, or post a charge. Today those are still manual steps you take on the violation. (Auto-creating the fine itself is a planned enhancement.)