Four decisions for Fede are in section 8. Everything below is the evidence.
Four real Western Slope calls to AppFolio's call center (Sep 23–30, including Fede's own burned-outlet call), two real Camellia calls to Clara, and eleven Clara test calls at Fairhaven and Willows. All from stored recordings and transcripts.
| AppFolio call center | Clara today | |
|---|---|---|
| Call length | 3 to 12 min; 1 to 2 min wait before pickup, plus silent "documenting" holds | 1.5 to 3 min, no hold |
| Knows the caller | No. Asks full name (twice), address, callback number, last four, "new or existing" | Yes. Greets by name and unit; sees open orders and appliances |
| Unknown caller | Turned away twice this week ("contact the front office"), nothing created | Takes the request anyway |
| Troubleshooting | Checklist only (breakers? GFCI?) | Live: reset button, shut-off valve, run cold water and wait |
| Accuracy of the record | Fede's call: breaker "not reset" (he had checked), outlet "stopped working" (it works), the dead 220V dryer outlet omitted, "caught fire" softened to "sparked", "do not enter" not recorded | Description is the resident's raw words. Fine, but no structure |
| Urgency | Outlet that burned two hair dryers filed as MEDIUM, same as a missed trash pickup | Emergency rules fire (gas smell to 911 and transfer in ~20 s). Non-emergency urgency not written to the record |
| Duplicates | Checked the open order first, added a note. Good | Recognized the open order on a repeat call. Good |
| "Your order is in" | Gives a work-order number (later in the call) | Said "logged" 8 times; a matching order existed 1 of 8 times |
| What happens next | "Reviewed by the manager before it is assigned." No time | "I'll text you when the handyman timing is confirmed" |
| Resident with a maintenance problem, wrong line | n/a | Two test calls: told "maintenance isn't handled here" and pitched rentals |
Where the call center is better: reads the callback number and address back, asks "any sparking or smoke until someone arrives", checks for an existing order first, gives a number. Where Clara is better: speed, knows the caller, troubleshoots, tells the resident what happens next, never turns anyone away. Neither: an accurate structured record, a real urgency, an arrival time, or anything the technician wants (photos, which fixture, brand and model, pets, gate codes, parking, real availability windows, history such as two dryers in two days).
Read-only pull of every work order from Oct 2025 to Sep 2026 in both AppFolio databases, plus the activity log on a sample (408 Western Slope, 50 Situs).
| Western Slope | Situs Group | |
|---|---|---|
| Work orders in 12 months | 1,952 (897 from residents) | 3,705 (1,843 from residents) |
| Trend | Rising: 109/mo last Oct to 230+/mo this summer | Rising: 281/mo to 483/mo in August |
| Top resident issues | HVAC 29%, plumbing 21%, appliance 14%, doors/locks 13% | Plumbing 32%, appliance 15%, doors/locks 14%, HVAC 11% |
| Who entered them | Staff 52%, resident portal 33%, system/call center 15% | Staff 55%, system/call center 28%, portal 17% |
| Median days to done (resident) | 3 (1 in 5 takes over 14 days) | 4 (1 in 6 takes over 14 days) |
| Open right now | 40, of which 17 older than 14 days | 422, of which 325 older than 14 days (median age 55 days) |
| Probable duplicates (resident) | 12% | 14% |
| Marked urgent | 1.3% | 5.1% |
| Resident orders with no visible resident update | 90% | 89% |
| Resident orders created after hours | 50% | 46% |
| First staff touch takes over 24 h | 20% | 26% |
| Resident chased for status | 6% | 6% |
What this says. The gap is communication and follow-up, not intake volume. Half the resident requests arrive after hours, nine in ten never get a resident-facing update, and one in eight is a duplicate, which is what residents do when nobody tells them anything. Western Slope's "Maintenance Performer" AI intake already handles 57% of resident orders in the sample, so the call-center cost is also a quality cost: we saw the records it writes.
Update 2026-10-29: Orca's founder confirmed Orca cannot write to AppFolio (reports API only). The event integration design is at Orca field events → Clara.
On today's call Jason described Orca as "a big data collector for us" (his friend's maintenance product) that tracks technician location and writes back to AppFolio. Fede's idea: read whatever it writes so Clara can tell a resident "it's assigned, here's the status" and push updates.
First pass was wrong. It searched the tickets for the word "Orca" and treated the automation-shaped entries as noise. The second pass read every author and every entry type across 1,156 work orders, 8,001 activity-log entries and 462 notes (all Western Slope logs we hold, plus a fresh headless read of 50 Western Slope and 99 Situs tickets). Fede's point stands: a vendor would not sign its entries "Orca".
| Who writes to the ticket | What it is | Western Slope | Situs Group |
|---|---|---|---|
| "Maintenance Performer" | AppFolio's own AI intake for residents (creates the order from a call or chat) | ~57% of resident orders, since Dec 2025 | ~22% |
| "Customer Service" | AppFolio's contact center. After hours it texts and calls the on-call person, waits 5 minutes, tries the next, logs "accepted via text" | involved in ~60% of resident orders, since Jul 2024 | ~22% |
| "System" | AppFolio automation: emails and texts the order link to staff within a minute, re-sorts urgency, reminds vendors | most tickets | most tickets |
| "Assistant PM" / "PM Assistant" | A staff seat (Situs's has a Situs email and President-level access). Weekdays, business hours, acts hours after the ticket arrives. Notes read like someone relaying others: "Daniel says this is done", "sent a reminder via Teams", "already told the tenant via SMS" | ~45% of resident orders, since Mar 2026 | ~47%; created 899 orders in six months, since Mar 2026 |
Reading. No outside tool writes under its own name, and nothing anywhere mentions GPS, "on the way", or an arrival. If Orca is people (or AI plus people) working inside the client's own AppFolio seat, the "PM Assistant" seat is exactly what that looks like: same month at both clients, same share of the work, relaying between techs, vendors and residents by hand. One question for Jason settles it: "Do Orca's operators log in as PM Assistant / Assistant PM?"
What residents actually get from any of this, per the log: contact-center calls with an ETA on about 13% of Western Slope orders (4% at Situs), and hand-sent texts that only show up as a note ("told the tenant via SMS"; a templated bilingual "we received your request" text at Situs, three copies). Nothing writes an en-route or arrival, a scheduled-time notice, a completion notice, or a satisfaction follow-up. Situs rarely records a schedule at all (4 of 99) and goes from assigned straight to "work done"; its techs log time on site with a phone timer. Western Slope records a schedule on about a quarter of orders, mostly entered by the assistant seat or by vendors.
What Clara can read today for an honest status: the status itself, who is assigned and whether the vendor accepted, the scheduled window and any reschedule, the latest "Waiting" note, the Situs on-site timer, "Work Done" or "Completed" with its closing note, and whether the contact center already gave an ETA. That supports "scheduled Thursday 9 to 3" or "marked done Tuesday", never "on the way". That is enough for Stage 2 and does not depend on Orca.
Full tables and five redacted samples per author and entry type: scratchpad report orca-footprint.md (session 000, 2026-10-01). Coverage: 275 of 897 Western Slope resident orders in the last 12 months have a log in the pull; Situs is a 99-ticket sample re-weighted to the real mix.
Gera built most of this; Camellia has run it since May. Reuse estimate for Stage 1 is about 90%.
| Piece | State | Stage 1 needs |
|---|---|---|
| Voice intake with live troubleshooting from the unit's appliance manuals | Built, live at Camellia | Nothing |
| Knows the caller: name, unit, open orders, appliances, emergency number, after-hours rules | Built | Nothing |
| Emergency rules (gas, fire, sparking outlet, flooding, no heat in winter, injury): 911, transfer, on-call conference | Built, hardcoded | Move Western Slope's own rules into its knowledge base |
| Work order created in AppFolio after the call (browser robot) | Built; said "in" with no order 7 of 8 times | Fix: only confirm after the write succeeds, else say "I'm sending this to the team now" (issue #14512) |
| Add a note to or close an existing order | Tools exist, resident use unproven | Prove on three Willows calls |
| Status by text: "working on it", "order X created", "done, rate 1 to 5" | Built | Nothing |
| Handyman paged by text with photos; vendor scheduling by text | Built | Western Slope has no handyman number on file; add or skip |
| Work-order sync from AppFolio (status changes drive the texts) | Off since 9/12 after rate-limit errors; budget fix merged since | Gera restarts it; without it no completion texts |
| Daily enrichment robot: permission to enter, slots, urgency, assignee, activity log | Built, daily 3 AM | Nothing for Stage 1 |
| Urgency written to the AppFolio record | Not written | Fix: emergency / urgent / routine on every order Clara creates |
| Email maintenance request to a work order | Recognized, forwarded to the team inbox, no order | Stage 2 |
| Reading portal-created orders and AppFolio's urgency rating | Only via sync; urgency rating unread | Stage 2 |
| Text drafts mode (Gera 9/30) | Built, on nowhere | Decision, see section 8 |