A guide for municipal staff

Vanteve is the AI assistant HeyGov built to answer resident questions automatically — over chat, text, or email — so clerks spend less time on repeat phone calls and more time on everything else. This article walks through exactly how each core dashboard tool is set up, how it works day to day, and what kinds of questions or requests it's built to handle — plus how each piece connects to Vanteve.

These four are the foundation everything else connects to. If you're a beta customer, you'll see all of them already in your dashboard's side navigation.

What it is. The Dashboard is the single login where staff manage everything — the town website, forms, meetings, payments, and every setting Vanteve depends on. It's the same login whether you're updating a webpage, checking a payment, or reading a Vanteve conversation.

How it's set up. Which sections show up in your side nav (311, Campaigns, CRM, Vanteve, Payments, and so on) depends on what's included in your HeyGov plan — the HeyGov team turns features on for your account, and from there your own staff manage the day-to-day settings. Two settings worth knowing about because they show up in several places later in this article:

How it works. Staff log in once and see only what applies to them — there's no separate login for forms vs. payments vs. Vanteve. Larger features (like Vanteve or Payments) have their own settings pages nested under this main dashboard, so day-to-day configuration happens without needing to contact HeyGov support each time.

What it is. The CRM — labeled "People" in the dashboard — is your resident address book, except it fills itself in. Anytime someone reports an issue, submits a form, or subscribes to a notification list, a profile is created (or updated) for them automatically, with their contact info and everything they've done sitting in one place.

How it's set up. Nothing to configure to get started — profiles are created automatically the first time someone interacts with your town through any connected feature. On top of that, staff can:

How it works. Every resident profile shows their full activity: payments made, forms submitted, reservations booked, and which Lists they're subscribed to. Staff can search and filter the CRM by name, email, phone, department, or role to find who they're looking for quickly, rather than scrolling a full list.

Types of things staff use it for: looking up a resident's history before returning a call, building a segment of "everyone subscribed to Emergency Alerts" to notify through Campaigns, or cleaning up duplicate/outdated contact info.

What it is. 311 is how residents report non-emergency issues — potholes, downed branches, code complaints, missed trash pickup — and how staff track each one to resolution.

How it's set up. Staff decide, per town:

How it works. A resident can file a report through the website widget, by texting or emailing Vanteve, or by describing the issue in chat — Vanteve can file the report for them on the spot rather than just explaining how to do it. New reports come in as "unverified" until the resident confirms their email through a one-click verification link (no separate password or login code needed). Once verified, the report is officially logged, assigned to a department, and given its tracking number. Residents can then check back anytime — including by giving Vanteve the ticket number directly (e.g. "what's the status of PARKS-7?"). Reports can be marked public or private by the resident when filing; if a report is private, Vanteve will confirm one exists when asked but won't reveal details until the person verifies they're the one who filed it. Automated spam/bot filtering keeps junk submissions out of the queue.

Types of questions/requests it handles: "there's a pothole on Main Street," "I want to report a code violation but don't want my name attached," "what's the status of my report from last week," "who do I follow up with about a downed tree."

What it is. Campaigns is the notification center for reaching residents who've opted in to hear from you — separate from 311 (which is resident-initiated) and more like a newsletter/alert system.

How it's set up. Campaigns send to Lists built in the CRM, so the groundwork is: create or import your Lists first, then build a campaign that targets one or more of them. Email is fully live today; SMS/text is also available, with delivery tracked automatically (so you can see if a text actually reached someone, bounced, or failed) so you're not guessing whether an alert got through.

How it works. Staff draft a message, choose the List(s) to send it to, and choose the channel (email, text, or both). Beyond regular campaigns, there's a separate, simpler tool for posting News & Notices straight to the town website — meant for quick posts (a title, category, image, and text) rather than a full campaign send, with view counts so you can see what residents are actually reading.

Types of things staff use it for: a monthly newsletter, a same-day emergency alert (road closure, boil-water notice), or a quick news post about an upcoming event — each using the right tool for how urgent and how targeted the message is.

What it is. Vanteve is the AI Virtual Clerk that sits on top of everything above, answering resident questions and taking action across whichever channel a resident prefers to use.

How it's set up.

Each of these channels can be switched on or off independently in Vanteve's settings — so, for example, a town could enable the chat widget and email without turning on text yet. You can also give your Virtual Clerk a custom name (some towns use something playful like "Clerky," others use a local name) and write short custom instructions — up to 500 characters — for how it should behave, without needing HeyGov support to make the change. You can also customize how it greets your residents, and the style you want it to respond, eg. take on a friendly southern accent in all of the conversations.

How it works. A conversation only actually "starts" once a resident sends a real message (just opening the chat bubble doesn't create anything). From there, Vanteve tracks the conversation by the resident's identity — phone number for text, email address for email, or their logged-in account for the app and widget — so if someone starts a conversation by text and later opens the app, their history carries over instead of starting from zero. If a question touches something private (a specific account, a private 311 report, personal info), Vanteve asks the resident to verify their email with a one-click link before sharing details — the same lightweight verification used for 311, so there's no separate password to remember. Once verified, that stays true for the rest of the conversation.

Types of questions/requests it handles:

How staff manage it. Every conversation — regardless of which channel it came in on — lands in one Vanteve inbox in the dashboard. Staff can read the full thread, assign it to themselves or a teammate, and reply directly; a reply to an email conversation goes back to the resident as a normal email in their same inbox thread, not a disconnected new message. Marking a conversation resolved locks it so it's not accidentally reopened.