Public Records Requests

Public Records Requests

1. What it is

A government employee’s messages about public business are public records under state law, Chat included. Admin → Compliance → Public Records Requests is where a records officer answers a request for them: log it with the due date the state’s law sets, search what the named people wrote, keep everything found from being deleted, decide what goes out, redact what the law allows, and give the requester a link to download the records.

• Who can use it: company admins, and anyone whose role has Public Records Requests on Admin → Roles & Permissions (under Compliance). View reads requests, their logs and the records their searches found (direct messages included); Manage does everything else. A records clerk does not need to be an admin, and no manager can see requests unless their role is given this.
• What it is not: a request from an employee for their own data is a different thing — that is Requests about a person on Admin → Compliance → Retention & Legal Holds.

2. Answering a request

1. Click Log a request. Enter who asked, what they asked for, the day it arrived and the state whose law it falls under. The due date is counted for you from that state’s statute — business days skip weekends, US federal holidays and your organization’s own holidays (the company-wide ones on Admin → Holidays). You never type it.
2. On the request, under Search, choose the custodians (the people whose records were asked for — former employees too), the first and last day, the search terms (one per line), and where to look: Chat (direct messages included), Messages, feed posts, comments, Drive files, form submissions, site pages, wikis, tasks, workspace posts and comments, and meeting notes. Click Run the search.
3. Everything the search finds is listed under Found records, and each one is held under the request at once: no retention schedule, purge or person can delete it while the request is open.
4. Open each record and decide: Responsive (it goes to the requester), Withheld (choose the exemption code the law allows), or Not responsive. Highlighted text is a suggestion — a Social Security, card or phone number, or an email address — and is redacted only when you choose its exemption code and click Redact. You can redact any other words yourself. The record itself is never changed; redactions are applied to the copy the requester gets.
5. When every record is reviewed, click Produce records. The production is one ZIP: each responsive record as a PDF of its redacted copy, a record’s own files when nothing in it was redacted, an index of every record, and an exemption log listing what was withheld or redacted under which code — never the withheld words.
6. Copy the download link (or click Email the link). It works for 7 days. Turn off the link stops it at once.
7. Click Close request and say why. Closing lifts every hold the request placed. A closed request can be reopened.

If the law allows an extension, the request page offers it once, with the reason the law asks you to give.

3. The law behind the dates and codes

Each state’s response deadline and the exemption codes on file are maintained by MangoApps from the statutes. A rule our reviewers have not yet checked shows Unverified — confirm it against the statute before relying on it. Add your organization’s own codes (a charter provision or local ordinance) on Exemption codes; you cannot remove a statute’s code.

4. Keep every record

Admin → Compliance → Retention & Legal Holds → Keep every record stops these scheduled deletions: Chat message retention, Messages retention, AI Notepad meeting retention, text message (SMS) body retention, Service Desk request retention, Drive version pruning, Recorder recording retention, Workforce Bots conversation retention and Live Assist call recording and transcript retention. Each app’s own setting stays as it is for when you turn it off. A public agency that keeps records under its own retention schedule usually turns it on.

When your company profile’s industry is confirmed as Public Sector, admins are asked whether to apply the public-sector setup, which turns this on. Nothing changes until an admin confirms.

5. On the phone

Requests and their due dates are on the phone at /m/records-requests, read-only. Searching, reviewing and producing are done on the full page.