Mail queue
Every notice Housing sends is an email, and the residents who most need notice are often the ones without an email address. A notice that cannot go by email is queued as a letter the same day, with the wording the email would have carried. The office prints the batch as one PDF, puts the letters in envelopes, and marks them mailed. The date mailed is the date of notice.
The queue is Mail queue, under Residents in the sidebar.
Which notices become letters
| Letter | Queued when |
|---|---|
| Recertification due | The first notice or a reminder for a recertification |
| More needed for the recertification | The office moves a recertification to Waiting on resident with a note |
| Notice of rent | The office approves a recertification |
| Application denied | An applicant with no email address is denied |
| Approved for the waitlist | An applicant with no email address is found eligible |
A recertification notice is queued when the email did not go out, for any of the reasons under Could not be reached, or when the household has Send notices on paper as well turned on. An application decision is queued only when the applicant has no email at all.
The same notice for the same recertification is one letter: a reminder that failed to email three times is one envelope, not three. Nothing else is queued. An inspection appointment or a unit offer is too short-dated for the post and goes by email only.
What the letter says
One page per letter: the authority's name, address and contact email as a letterhead, today's date, the head of household's name and address, the heading and the paragraphs of the email. Where the email failed, the letter adds "We tried to reach you by email: {reason}. If you have an email address, tell us and we will use it." The first recertification notice, which by email says to sign in, instead says to call or visit the office and bring proof of income for everyone in the household.
When Spanish is one of the authority's languages, each letter ends with a line in Spanish saying it is available in Spanish on request. Nothing else is translated.
Where the letter goes
| Who | Address used |
|---|---|
| A household with a Mailing address on its Contact card | That address |
| A household with none | The property's address with the unit, as "Apt {unit}" |
| An applicant | The mailing address the office has put on the application, or failing that the current address on the application |
A letter with nowhere to go is still queued. It is named on the page with No address on file · add one and cannot be chosen until an address is typed in on the household's page.
The page
Three tiles: Letters to send, Printed, not yet mailed, and No address on file when there are any.
| Column | Shows |
|---|---|
| (tick box) | Whether the letter is in the batch. Every letter with an address starts chosen; one without cannot be |
| Household | The head's name, which opens the household's or the application's page, and the property and unit, or "Applicant" |
| Notice | Which letter it is. Under it, "Email: {why it failed}" or "Asked for paper", and the date it was printed if it has been |
| Mailing address | The address the letter will carry, or No address on file · add one |
| Waiting | Days since it was queued, in red from seven days |
Letters are in the order they were queued.
Print
Print {n} letters builds one PDF of the chosen letters, opens it in a new tab, and marks each letter printed with the date and who printed it. A printed letter stays in the queue, with "printed {date}" under its notice, until it is marked mailed, and can be printed again.
Mark as mailed
Mark {n} as mailed today records the chosen letters as mailed today, with who did it and the address they went to. Each letter leaves the queue for the household's or application's letter history, and the mailing is written to the audit log. For a recertification notice it also:
- records the post on the recertification's notice log, and
- clears Could not be reached: the row on the queue stops reading "Not notified", and the tile stops counting it.
There is no way on the page to mail a letter on an earlier date. Mark the batch mailed on the day it goes.
On the household's page
The Contact card on the household's page gains two settings under Edit:
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Mailing address | Where letters go. "Leave blank and letters go to the unit" |
| Send notices on paper as well | Every recertification notice is queued as a letter whether or not the email went. Off, a letter is queued only when there is nobody to email |
The card reads "Letters go to" with the address or "The unit", and lists the household's letters: each one in the queue, as "in the mail queue" or "printed, not yet mailed", and the last five mailed with their dates.
Where else it shows
- Home has a Mail queue button with the count, and a {n} letters to print card when there are any.
- On the Recertifications queue, the Could not be reached tile reads "letters in the mail queue" and opens this page, and a row whose notice did not go says "letter in the mail queue".
Housing does not post anything itself. There is no mail service, no envelopes or labels, and no tracking: the queue is the office's list of what to put in the post.