To assist the individuals who work to manage the architectural approval process for their communities, CiraNet offers the Architectural Application module. This feature rich module features the following:

• A permanent record of applications received, and the actions taken pertaining to them.
• The ability to manage applications by project and multiple line items.
• Online review and approval by configured board and/or committee members.

Table of Contents

• Access
• Portfolio
• Community
• Lot / Owner
• Adding an Application
• Adding an Application from CiraMail
• Submitting an Application from the Resident Portal
• Managing the Open Application
• Project Options: Actions
• Line Item Options: Actions
• Internal Project Management and Architectural Approval Options
• Board / Committee Approval Configuration
• Basic Configuration of Approvals Parameters
• Setting up Board and Committee Members for Approval
• Reviewing the Configuration and Approvers
• Managing Approvals
• Board and Committee Member Access
• Communication Among the Board / Committee Members
• Monitoring the Approval Activity
• Communicating the Decision to the Owner
• Finalizing the Project

Access

The Architectural Application module can be viewed at a portfolio level, the community level, or by individual lot / owner. To access any of these viewpoints, use the Navigation Pane along the left-hand side of the page.

Portfolio

Without needing to select a specific community, navigate from the My Work Queue under Community Management and select Architectural Application:

This view allows you to see all applications within your portfolio, with the default view to all open applications.

Community

To pre-filter to a single community, after selecting it users will follow much the same path (from My Work Queue, select Community Management and then Architectural Application). In this case, My Work Queue is the last main node in the list:

Lot / Owner

Finally, users can see individual owner applications mirroring what the owner sees and can do in the Resident Portal. In our case as internal users in the Management Portal, we access the page from the Property node, then select Account:

But do not worry that you must remember all these pathways because you have the handy Navigation Search icon located along the Navigation Header.

Adding an Application

Once you access the page in either the portfolio or community view, the option to Add Application is a button on the top right-hand side of the page.

Clicking on the button opens to a pop-up form allowing users to enter the information to create the application using this process:

Fields notated by a red asterisk (*) are mandatory.

3. Property. You can search by either the address or the owner's name but begin by typing in a minimum of three characters and then click on the three dots in the blue box on the far-right of the line to open to the search results to make the selection. If you are working in a portfolio view, you can set the community at the top to limit the search. You can also click on the Sort icon at the right of each column to filter to the right owner or address. Once you identify the right lot / owner, click on Select to have it populate this field.
4. Community. Once the Property is selected, the community will auto populate to this field. Note that it is a hyperlink that users can use to open to the Community in case you need to check on any settings or restrictions while working on the application.
5. Prior Owner. The default is to search and select current owners only, but there are occasions when the previous owner submits the application for some reason, such as satisfying an open covenant enforcement issue as a condition of the sale, so we support creating the application under their name.
6. Submitted by. This will reflect the selected owner's name (note that it is a hyperlink that you can click on to go to their account). While it may seem that this should be the internal user who added the application into the system, if you stop and consider, the application is always submitted to the community on behalf of the owner.
7. Project Description. This should be a minimum 10-character description of the overall project. An example might be "Front Yard Landscape Improvement Project" or "Swimming Pool and Decking Installation". The goal being to give enough detail that any user could find the right project without a reference number but not so much detail they cannot read it immediately since you often need it the most when you have someone on the phone with questions.
8. Received from Owner. It is important to pay close attention to the date used here. It is not necessarily the date you are entering the submission, but the date the owner or their representative delivered it to the community: whether that be via mail, email, Resident Portal submission or hand delivery. This will help you accurately track the number of days the committee has to act on it.
9. Assigned To. This is the internal user who is ultimately "dashboard responsible" for the project. While submissions may be worked by more than one person in your office, select one person to be the assignee for these purposes. It will not preclude others from viewing and working on the item.
10. Last Modified By. This will be you initially, but as the title implies, it will update to let anyone who can view the module see who last made any changes to it.
11. Last Modified On. Correspondingly, this shows the date they made that change.
12. Show Finalized Items. As we will explore next, the Application process in CiraNet can support multiple Line Items, which can be actioned on at different times. If part of a larger project has been finalized before the rest of it you can call it back into the Project by changing the default toggle of No to Yes.
13. New Line Item. Projects can support multiple line items but must have a minimum of one. The reason to potentially split larger applications into separate line items is to allow the committee the ability to approve or deny part, but not all, of the overall project. As an example, if the owner submits plans for a major backyard remodel, encompassing a new deck, a fountain, flower beds and tree installations, those can all be separate line items. If the deck plans look great, but there are concerns about the drainage flow for the beds, the committee can approve the former and deny the latter rather than reject the application entirely Clicking on the New Line Item button opens to another smaller pop-up window that is completed as follows:

5. Response to Owner. This is reserved for information that will be included in the final response to the owner, so it should be left blank at this initial stage.
6. Allowance Category. Setting an allowance will provide an alert to the compliance inspector to let them know that an application is pending so the owner is not mistakenly cited for a violation temporarily. The categories available here are based on the violation configuration tree.
7. Allowance Sub-Category. As noted above, the sub-categories available are based on the active sub-categories in the violation configuration tree.
8. Allowance Start Date. Typically, the date to begin the allowance timeframe is the date the application is entered into the system, although it will not appear for the inspector until the line item is approved.
9. Allowance End Date. Since the allowance is designed to be a temporary status while the application is being considered an end date based on the estimated project completion date is recommended.
10. Deposit Type. If the community requires a deposit for some or all modification requests, the line item will provide fields to allow you to document how the deposit was made, starting with how it was paid: Personal Check, Cashier's Check, Credit Card, or Cash.
11. Deposit Status. This will allow you to notate how the deposit was handled: Held at Branch (onsite offices will elect this if they hold the deposit), Held at Corporate, Deposited - Association Funds, Deposited - Homeowner Accounts (the difference between these two is how they are accounted for or Refunded.
12. Deposit Ref #. You can use your company / team protocol to determine tracking information, but in general this is used for check or money order numbers.
13. Deposit Amount. Record the amount of the deposit here.
14. Okay. Click here to save and complete the line item.

The line items are what the board / committee members will see and action on, so be sure the documents to support each line are added at that level. Once the line has been added to the Project any supporting documents or photos can be attached using the paperclip icon in the Docs column.

Adding an Application from CiraMail

Applications come in from a variety of sources, but undoubtedly email is the number one venue for owners to send in their request. Therefore, CiraMail allows internal users to open a new project straight from there. From a fully attributed email, click on Actions and drop-down to Start and over to Architectural Application. Once you make that selection, the Project form will open, and you can proceed to complete the information as detailed above. The difference is when you click on the paperclip icon to add the documents, there is an additional option to add Attachments from Email. The email will be linked to the resulting project.

Submitting an Application from the Resident Portal

If enabled, owners can submit their own applications and supporting documents directly from the Resident Portal. Once they log in to their account, they can navigate to Architectural Application from My Account on the side Navigation Pane. However, probably the quicker path is to click on the Architectural Requests icon on the My Dashboard they see when they first login.

Once the owner opens to the page, they can see any Open Applications and their historical requests from Closed Applications. For owners, these grids are primarily read-only. They can view the attached documents and the status, as well as dates associated with the request, but they cannot add additional documents, make comments, or ask questions from here. They can, however, access the application form, any guidelines provided and add a new improvement request.

There is a more detailed guideline available via the Architectural Application via the Resident Portal lip Sheet. It is important to note that requests submitted from the Resident Portal immediately populate in the Architectural Application page in the CiraNet Management Portal with the status Initial Request. This allows internal users to review and edit the information before it is submitted to the committee. No team member, however, is emailed or otherwise alerted once a request is submitted, so it is important to monitor the page minimally daily and sort or search by that status.

Managing the Open Application

Once the application, with the appropriate line items, has been logged, there are several items an internal user can see and edit from the Architectural Application module. Using the grid, they can be sorted, grouped, and filtered to help you find and manage the data. Fields shown in blue (depending upon your set Preferences) indicate hyperlinks that you can click on to access other information or files.

Project Options: Actions

(Note that anywhere you see the Closed Padlock indicates an Action that executive users do not have access to.)

1. View/Edit. Selecting this will open the entire project form. From this vantage point individual line items may be actioned on as well (see below).
2. Change Status. This action allows a change to one of the statuses listed above. Note that changing to any one of these does not move the item from the active grid.
3. Change Owner. You can correct the address linked to the project if necessary. The documents will be moved to the updated owner's Document Archive. If you choose this option, there will be a small Confirmation pop-up that opens first to verify this is the action you want to take.
4. Finalize. This option is only visible if the line item has been Canceled, Approved (including with Stipulation), or Denied. Selecting this option moves it to the Closed Application tab.
5. Email Owner. This launches an email composer for one or more of the project line items but is and of itself not a notice, so the user may then proceed to attach the actual response or type the response in the email body.

The email will automatically be linked to the Application once sent.

6. Custom Responses. This is not automatically available, but Custom Response Templates can be added for individual management companies and or branches to help streamline the letter response template. For more information on Custom Response Templates, refer to CiraHelp.

Line Item Options: Actions

As noted, from the Project view, clicking on View /Edit opens the entire project but the user may also drill down to the individual line item through a secondary Action button, as detailed on the following page.

1. Edit. This opens the Edit Form and allows the user to edit any of the fields for that specific line item.
2. Remove. This will delete the line item.
3. Update Status. The status options available here are the same as the options detailed above.

Internal Project Management and Architectural Approval Options

Once the Project has been added, users will note additional icons along the top right-hand side of the form designed to help them with the internal management of the project.

1. Project Documents. A user can immediately tell how many documents are attached to the Project from the (# indicator.
2. Internal Project Notes. The notepad (shown here highlighted in green, indicating a note exists) allows internal users to notate information they want to keep track of or want other internal users to do or see. Committee members are reviewing and voting on individual line items and do not see this data.
3. User Log. Clicking on here opens to a detailed log showing who took what action and when on the Project level (there is a separate log for each line item).
4. Committee Approval. If the community has been enabled for online approval of ACC applications, this icon will appear as a green check mark. If it has not been, the icon is a red x.

Board / Committee Approval Configuration

Basic Configuration of Approvals Parameters

Configuring board / committee approval is a two-step process. The first step involves working with the board or committee members to determine what parameters they require for approval. CiraNet can support a variety of options, up to and including making one or more approvers required. Once you have determined from the board and the governing documents the necessary configuration basics, communicate that to the individual serving as the Account Manager for that process for your management company. They minimally need to know the following information to enable the community to support online ACC approval: The minimum number of members required to approve or deny an application; • The number of expiration days (the default being thirty); • If there is an alternate name for the modification request review process for the community, that can be set here. Your management team may have additional protocols, so please check with them for any other information you will need to provide.

Your management team may have additional protocols, so please check with them for any other information you will need to provide.

Setting up Board and Committee Members for Approval

Once the base configuration is determined and has been set-up, the management team can assign the correct board and committee members to be approvers. First step, of course, is to make sure the appropriate approvers have been added as community executives through the Board / Committee Members page with sufficient access / permissions to allow them to view any files they might need to make an informed decision on the submissions they are assigned. There is a separate Process and Service Description available on this process. Once in place, control their approval from the Action button and then dropping down to Board Approval Setup in the far left-hand column:

• Can Approve. This enables the board or committee member to approve the Process selected. This is required to enable their permissions and must be checked.
• Approval Required. This should be used sparingly but will indicate that this approver's participation is mandatory and if they do not action on the submission it cannot be moved to Approved or Denied status.
• Notification Enabled. This enables a system generated email reminder to be sent to the individual periodically so they are aware of the open projects they must review. What is different in this portal from the Classic Management Portal, is that this is the default status. If the individual prefers not to receive these reminders, it will need to be disabled.
• Notify X Days. This will set the number of days between reminder emails. The default between days for Architectural Requests is three days, but this value can be overridden to suit the individual approver.

Be sure to hit Save to make the changes effective.

Reviewing the Configuration and Approvers

There are a couple of places within the application users can use to verify what the approval configuration is and who the individual approvers are.

1. For both internal and external users, if they are viewing the Board Approvals node they can click on the Approval Requirements to see the current approval configuration and approvers enabled.

2. If an internal user views any Project, they can minimally tell if the community is configured for online board approval by the green checkmark or red x as noted above
3. When setting up the approvals for individual board or committee members, a summary of the current approval configuration is provided for review when the user saves the changes.

view any files they might need to make an informed decision on the submissions they are assigned. There is a separate Process and Service Description available on this process. Once in place, control their approval from the Action button and then dropping down to Board Approval Setup in the far left-hand column:

Managing Approvals

Board and Committee Member Access

Voting executive members can access their pending items from the Management Portal, the Classic Management / Board Portal or on their iOS devices through CiraMobile. We are concentrating on the Management Portal here. They can log in directly to the Management Portal and navigate to My Work Queue, select Community Management and then Board Approvals*. *If the voting member serves on more than one community, they must be in one of the communities to access the page. This page is not available at a portfolio level.

There are additional details on using this page for internal users in the CiraConnect Management Portal My Work Queue Process and Service Description.

Executive users can avail themselves of the CiraConnect Approving Architectural Modification Applications on the Management Portal Tip Sheet for Community Executives. An internal user can act on a file on behalf of a board or committee member if necessary.

Communication Among the Board / Committee Members

As a best practice, the board and/or committee members should confer by using the board discussion notes, or other methods of their choosing, but should appoint a specific member to state the Response to Owner with a stipulation or denial, as this note will be a directive to the community manager to assist in explaining the final decision to the owner. The Response to Owner note should be formatted in a short paragraph as a clarification to the owner on any guidelines that are needed to comply. This note is a unique note for this line item, and although all approvers can view and type in a note, only the last note gets saved in this field for the community manager review before notification of the requestor.

Monitoring the Approval Activity

The internal management team will not receive an automatic email when a file is actioned by a board or committee member; therefore, we recommend that internal users monitor the activity on the Architectural Application page every day. Users in the Management Portal can also monitor activity by configuring a Workspace utilizing Open Work and / or Team Open Work.

For more information on Workspaces and Widgets please refer to the CiraConnect Workspaces and Bookmarks in the Management Portal Process and Service Description.

Communicating the Decision to the Owner

CiraNet provides a few different methods for the internal team to send a response to the owners.

1. Email from the Architectural Applications Page. This email is conveniently launched from the Action menu from the line item in the Architectural Application page. See above for an example of the template. The advantage to notifying the owner from this resource is that it links the email to the project automatically, and many users find the grid data that auto populates in the composer helpful to identify the project and its status.
2. Email from CiraMail. Of course, users may also launch an email from CiraMail, and if that method is used routinely, consider adding a Quick Response template to help make the replies consistent and quick. While easy, it would need to be manually linked to the Architectural Application.
3. Custom Response Templates. As noted in the section above, internal users can also avail themselves of Custom Response Templates that can be modified to fit the specific project but in general have most of the requisite information you need ready to go so creating a letter response is relatively seamless. That said, it must be printed and mailed locally. It can be attached to the Project using the Paperclip icon, which will populate it to the owner’s Document Archive.

Whichever method you select, be sure to review any notes left by the board / committee in the Response to Owner notepad and included that information in the communication back to the owner.

Finalizing the Project

• The minimum number of members required to approve or deny an application;
• The number of expiration days (the default being thirty);
• If there is an alternate name for the modification request review process for the community, that can be set here.

To support the notion of potentially multiple line items within a single project, as well as to help internal users know what items still require the final notice back to the owner, once the board / committee makes their decision, the project remains in the Open tab until an internal user takes the action to Finalize the project from the Action menu. This action can also be taken at the individual line item level.