Reference
Frequently asked questions
The questions the management office actually gets, answered by role, with the honest answer where the honest answer is "not yet".
One section of this article carries operator-only instructions. They are published so the whole picture is visible, and nobody outside Vara can act on them. They are marked where they appear: For Vara operators.
I never got my sign-in link.
Check the address you typed, then check spam. If it still has not arrived, ask for another one, but note that five requests per hour per address is the limit and it is counted across the whole service, so a sixth attempt will be refused rather than sent. If the sign-in page shows a notice instead of a form, no link could have been sent at all and the management office needs to know.
My link says it has expired.
A link lasts 15 minutes and works once. Opening it on your phone and then again on your laptop uses it up. Ask for a fresh one.
Can I pay my dues here?
No. Nothing in the portal accepts or records a payment, and the association holds no bank details for you in this platform. Pay the way you pay today. See the register entry on dues and payments.
Can I ask a question and get an answer here?
Not from the platform. The portal’s "Ask" entry has no page behind it, which is how this service says a feature has not arrived. Email or telephone the management office, and a person will answer.
Why can I not file a ticket?
Because the list of categories a ticket can be filed under has not been set up for your association yet. The portal explains that instead of showing a form, because a form whose submission would be refused wastes your time twice. Contact the management office in the meantime.
Can I attach a photo to a ticket?
Not today. The platform is designed for it, up to 10 MB per file as a JPEG, PNG or PDF, and the storage is not configured, so it refuses. Describe the problem in the ticket and email photos to the office if they matter.
Can I see my neighbour’s ticket?
No, and asking for one directly returns exactly the same not-found you would get for a ticket that does not exist, so you cannot use the portal to work out what exists.
Can the manager write things about me that I cannot see?
Yes. A ticket carries two conversations: comments, which you can read and reply to, and internal notes between staff, which you cannot. That is normal for a management system, and it is enforced by the platform rather than by anybody remembering to be careful.
I rent here. Can I register?
Not yet. Registration is for owners. Renters are planned and are not in the platform today.
My home is owned by my family trust and registration was held for review.
That is expected. A home held by a trust, an LLC or any other entity is never confirmed automatically, no matter what details you give. A person reviews it and you hear the outcome.
The documents page is empty.
Governing document uploads refuse today because file storage is not configured, so the library may be empty even though the page works. Ask the association how it is distributing the CC&Rs in the meantime.
What exactly can a board member do?
Read everything in the console: residents, tickets including internal notes, vendors, and the document library including drafts. They can also comment on a ticket where the resident will see it, and mark a governing document superseded. They cannot transition or assign a ticket, write an internal note, edit a vendor, decide a registration, publish a document or trigger a reindex.
Why can the board supersede a document but not publish one?
Because that is what the service does. It is an asymmetry in the deployed code rather than a policy this documentation is describing, and it is recorded here so that nobody assumes the tidier version. If it is wrong for your association, it is a change to the service.
Can I file a ticket on a resident’s behalf?
No. The filing route admits residents only. If somebody telephones, you will have to record it another way, and it will not appear in their portal.
I moved a ticket and it was refused.
Either the move is not one the state table allows, or somebody else moved the ticket a moment before you. Reload and look at the state it is actually in. Nothing was applied twice.
Can I reopen a closed ticket?
No. Closed and rejected are final. A resolved ticket can be reopened, because the resident is the one who finds out it was not fixed, but closing is the act of calling the record final. Raise a new ticket and reference the old one.
I recorded a work order number. Did that send anything to the vendor?
No. It records a reference and nothing else, and the service never checks that anything exists at the other end. Dispatch the vendor however you dispatch them today.
A vendor shows an unknown insurance badge. Are they covered?
Unknown means no expiry date has been recorded, not that the vendor has no cover. Record the date from their certificate and the badge becomes meaningful.
Where do I upload a vendor’s W-9?
Nowhere, deliberately. A W-9 carries a taxpayer identification number, and the platform does not accept one until document intake, extraction limits and retention are all in place. Keep it where the association keeps it today.
I deleted a vendor and the record is still there.
Making a vendor inactive keeps the record on purpose. Old work and old invoices still name that vendor, and removing it would leave them pointing at nothing.
A board member uploaded a document and it published immediately.
That is the default. Board uploads land as drafts only if the association has turned on the setting that says they need review. Ask your operator to turn it on if that is what you want.
What does the Reindex now button do?
Today, it returns an error and starts nothing, and the error says why. That is deliberate: a button that reported success and started nothing would have you waiting for a build that was never running.
A resident says they cannot register.
Ask them exactly what the page said. "Not matched" means the address did not match the county roster, so check the address as it appears on the deed. "Held for review" means it is in your pending queue and waiting on you.
For Vara operators
Operator onlyThis section is for Vara operators
These answers assume access to the deployment and its data. Nobody outside Vara can act on them.
The health endpoint says the knowledge base index is unobserved. Is it broken?
Probably not. The index state is the last observation this process made, and the service runs with no minimum instances, so a freshly started instance has not looked. Load the documents page to make an observation, then read it again.
Can I re-run the tenant seeder safely?
Yes. It back-fills absent keys only and issues no write when there is nothing absent, so a manager’s edits survive a re-run. The force flag is the one that overwrites, and it exists to be typed on purpose.
Retention reported zero deletions. Did it work?
Read the response rather than the count. With no catalog registered it says so in as many words, precisely because zero from a job that had nothing to walk and zero from a job that found nothing due are different facts.
Why does the owner refresh endpoint refuse a request with no credentials instead of redirecting to sign-in?
Because a scheduler misconfigured to send no token would receive a login page, record a 200, and report a job that never ran as a success. A control that reports success when it refused is worse than no control.
Why do document upload and attachment uploads return 503?
No storage ports are installed at startup. Both refuse rather than accepting a file they cannot store. Wiring them is a deployment change, and until it happens the register entries on document storage and attachments are accurate.
Still stuck?
That is a fair place to be, and it is usually faster to ask than to keep reading. Your association's management office can tell you whether what you are hitting is a permission, a setup step or a fault. Say what you were trying to do and what the screen said. If it needs changing at the service level, they will bring Vara in.