portal.
What the portal does with the information that passes through it. One section per area, written as each is built, so this stays the answer to “what does the portal do with this?” rather than a record of how things used to work.
the short version.
Every form on wearezeal.co lands in one place in the portal, called Intake. Each arrival notifies the shared mailbox it belongs to and carries a clock, so nothing sits unanswered. You still reply from the mailbox exactly as you do today. The portal’s job is to make sure nothing is lost, and to record what came of it.
Typeform and Zapier have been retired. Mailchimp still sends the catalogue and the newsletter, and that has not changed.
what arrives.
Each form notifies a shared mailbox as well as appearing in the portal, so there are two ways to notice an enquiry and one place to deal with it.
send us a note
notifies hello@
New business, general questions, anything that does not fit elsewhere. Two working day clock.
get the full kit list
notifies hire@
Somebody wants the rental catalogue. They receive it automatically, and it is a dry hire lead. Seven day clock.
used equipment
notifies hire@
An enquiry about a specific item we are selling. No clock, because there is no promise to keep.
careers
notifies careers@
Somebody asking about working here, in any capacity. No clock, but it is still a person putting themselves forward.
stay up to date
notifies nobody
A newsletter sign-up. Nothing to action. It lands closed and exists as our own record of consent.
how it flows.
From somebody pressing send to it sitting in front of you. Everything on this path happens without anyone intervening. Everything after it is deliberately a person’s job.
what you do with one.
Claim it first. One click. It stops two people replying to the same enquiry, and it moves the follow-up reminder from the room to you.
Reply from the shared mailbox, exactly as you would today. The portal does not send email to customers and is not going to.
Then record what happened. Turn it into a project, add the person as a contact, create the organisation, or simply close it. Whichever fits.
If we ever start trying to hold the conversation inside the portal, we will have built a worse email client. Reply where you always have, then tell the portal what came of it.
the follow-up clock.
Two of the five types carry a deadline. It is not a promise made to the customer, it is a nudge to us. Enquiries are due in two working days, catalogue requests in seven calendar days. The other three carry no clock.
Anything overdue appears in the Follow-ups view and in the daily digest. If nobody has claimed it the reminder goes to the shared mailbox; if you have claimed it, it comes to you.
The clock stops when an enquiry becomes a project, or when it is closed. It keeps running if you only add a contact or create an organisation, because recording who somebody is is not the same as answering them.
statuses.
An enquiry is new until somebody touches it. That is the default view, sorted oldest first, on the basis that the oldest untouched enquiry is the one most likely to embarrass us.
It becomes open once claimed, and ends as either converted, meaning it became a project and is tracked there, or closed, meaning it was dealt with and nothing needed creating.
Spam is marked rather than deleted, so we can see whether the bot check is doing its job.
quick reference.
frequently asked.
01
can everyone see everything, careers included?visibility
Yes. All staff can see all of Intake, applications included.
A deliberate choice rather than an oversight, on the grounds that a careers enquiry is not confidential and hiding it makes it easier to drop. If it ever needs to change, it is a settings change rather than a rebuild.
02
what exactly do we store about consent?marketing
The exact wording somebody was shown, their answer, and the moment they gave it.
Not a paraphrase of the wording, the wording itself, read off the page as it was rendered. If anyone asks what they agreed to, we can tell them precisely rather than approximately.
The timestamp comes from the database rather than the browser, and only where consent was actually given. A declined consent carries no timestamp, because there is no moment at which consent was given.
03
does the portal email customers?never
No, and it is not going to.
It emails us, to say something has arrived. Mailchimp sends the catalogue and the newsletter because somebody asked for those. Every reply to a person comes from a human, in the mailbox.
04
can it promote something on its own?automation
Nothing is ever promoted automatically. A person decides every time.
No enquiry becomes a project, a contact or an organisation without somebody choosing to make it one. The automatic part ends the moment the record exists and the mailbox has been told.
05
what happens to attachments and CVs?uploads
There are none. No form on the site accepts a file, deliberately.
A public upload path is a standing risk for very little gain, so the careers form asks what somebody does and invites them to write. If we want portfolios later, that will be a considered decision rather than a default.
the rest of the portal.
Each area gets its section here as it is written up. These are honest gaps rather than omissions: the part of the portal exists, the explanation does not yet.
How projects are created, what a ZPID is and where it comes from, the relationship between projects, organisations and the planner, and what the lifecycle looks like.
The grouping axes, how people, transport and subhire requirements are booked, what the population toggle does, and how saved views work.
The difference between directory, invited and active, how somebody becomes a portal user, what sits behind the sensitive-fields permission, and how freelancers and casuals differ from staff.
How requests are made and approved, how entitlement is calculated, and how time off surfaces in the planner.
What an organisation is, how contacts attach to one, the relationship with Xero, and how client and supplier records differ.
The subhire, transport and warehouse dashboards, and what each one is the source of truth for.
Which events notify, how email and Teams delivery are chosen, and what the daily digest collects.
Label sets, assets, and the PAL, fixture and soca formats.
What a station is, how pairing works, and what a station can and cannot do.
When a new area is built, its section is added here in the same pass as the decision record and the announcement. Three artefacts, one moment: why we chose it, that it changed, and what it now does. That is the only thing stopping this page becoming a description of the portal we used to have.