Requests and the care queue

Requests are how needs and tasks enter Forge, from a prayer request to a facility issue to a reimbursement claim, and the care queue is where your team picks them up, assigns them, and tracks them to resolution. This article explains what requests are, how triage works, and how pastoral care differs from general and finance requests.

What a request is

A request captures something that needs attention. Each one has a category, a short summary, a longer description, and a priority. Requests can come from staff, from members through the self-service portal, from a kiosk, or from an import.

Requests fall into a few categories:

Lanes: care, operations, and finance

Requests are organized into three lanes, each pre-filtered to the categories that matter to a given team:

• Care focuses on pastoral care requests.
• Operations covers facility, admin, reimbursement, and other requests.
• Finance focuses on reimbursements.

You can switch lanes from the toolbar. Each lane shows its own counts and defaults, so a care pastor and a facilities coordinator each see the work that's theirs.

Viewing the queue

The requests page offers three views, and it remembers the one you prefer:

• Table for a sortable, filterable list with status badges.
• Kanban for a board grouped by status.
• Agenda for a timeline sorted by when requests came in.

Triage and assignment

Triage is the work of picking up new requests, deciding who owns them, and moving them along. Forge surfaces a Needs Attention count to help you find what's waiting. A request is flagged when it's still open and either has no owner assigned or came in more than 48 hours ago.

To triage a request:

1. Open the requests page and review the summary counts.
2. Click the Needs Attention count to filter to unassigned or stale requests.
3. Open a request to see its details.
4. Assign a triage owner, the staff member responsible for it.
5. Set the status to In Progress.
6. Add notes as the work moves forward.
7. If you're waiting on someone, set the status to Waiting.
8. When it's done, set it to Resolved, and it later moves to Closed.

The full lifecycle is open, in progress, waiting, resolved, and closed. If you change a status by mistake, an undo option appears so you can revert it.

Pastoral care versus general and finance requests

Care requests carry extra fields suited to ministry. When you create one, you can choose a care type such as prayer, hospital visit, counseling, follow-up, home visit, meal, or benevolence. You can set a preferred contact method, add the request to a prayer list, note a location, and set a follow-up date.

Care requests also have stronger privacy options. Visibility levels let you restrict a request to the assigned owner, to leadership, to clergy only, or to the pastoral care team, so sensitive needs stay with the right people.

General requests (facility, admin) and finance requests (reimbursement) use a simpler form focused on the task at hand. A reimbursement, for instance, captures an amount, vendor, purchase date, payment method, and expense category.

Turning a request into tasks

When a request needs project-style tracking, you can convert it into one or more linked tasks with their own assignees and due dates. The request and its tasks can then be tracked independently, and the linked tasks show up in the request's detail view.

Tips

• Start your day with the Needs Attention count to catch anything stale or unassigned.
• Assign a triage owner early so nothing sits without someone responsible for it.
• Use the right visibility level on care requests to protect sensitive pastoral needs.

Common questions

What makes a request "need attention"? It's still open and either has no owner or arrived more than 48 hours ago.

Can members submit their own requests? Yes. Requests can come in through the member portal, as well as from staff, a kiosk, or an import.

Can a request become a task? Yes. Use convert to tasks to create linked tasks while keeping the original request.

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