What this helps you do
Your permitting, billing, request-tracking and records systems keep what they keep, and whatever you are required to publish stays exactly where the law puts it. The Hub holds only the residents who chose to connect, the services they follow, and what you sent. It is one additional voluntary channel beside your required notices, never a replacement for any of them. Whatever the system, the doors are the same four: a CSV export you upload on Connections, the inbound webhook that invites one person at a time, signed outbound events that tell your systems who connected or replied, and the Zapier app when both ends are apps rather than code.
When to use it
Use the inbound webhook when a signup form on your site should invite a resident the same day. Use CSV only for a list of people who asked to hear from you. Use outbound events when your own systems should know who connected. Most departments start with a published code and nothing else.
How to do it
- Publish your code where residents already look, and approve the requests that come in.
- Point a subscribe form on your site at the inbound webhook on Integrations.
- Upload a CSV on Connections only where people asked to hear from you.
- Add your HTTPS endpoint under events out if your own systems should hear about connections and opt-outs.
- Send the closure, the collection change or the meeting notice from Send, beside whatever you are required to publish.
Example
A public works department publishes its code on the collection-schedule page. When a route changes for a holiday, one Blast reaches the residents who follow Collection, and the clerk answers questions in Conversations. The statutory notice went out exactly as it always does.
Good to know
- There is no municipal-software, 311, CAD, permitting or utility-billing connector. Granicus, CivicPlus, Accela, OpenGov and Everbridge are named here only to say so.
- This is not an emergency alert system, a mass-notification or reverse-911 platform, and it is not a path to wireless emergency alerts.
- Billing files, voter rolls and tax rolls may not be uploaded. Only people who chose to hear from you belong here.
- The audience is self-selecting and always partial, so this reaches the residents who connected, never a whole town.