Finding a requester and reading their history

Requesters are the members of the public who have filed with your agency. The list holds everyone who has ever filed, and their history is often the fastest route to answering the request in front of you.

How to find a requester

1. Go to Requesters.

2. Search by name, organization, phone, or the exact email address. A partial address will not match. Use Filters to narrow the list further.

3. Click a name to open their details alongside the list, without losing your place.

The list shows name, organization, email, phone, their total requests, how many are open, and when they last filed. Every column sorts. Sorting and your position are held in the page address, so a link opens the same way for whoever you send it to.

Where no name was captured, the email address appears in the Name column instead. Those are usually portal filings where the requester gave nothing beyond an address.

Why the history matters

Two situations make it worth checking before you start work.

Somebody files repeatedly on a related subject. If the same person asked for adjacent records three months ago, the work you did then may answer most of this request. That is the cheapest response available to you.

You need to establish a pattern of contact. Where a request is one of many, or where correspondence has become difficult, the history is the record of what has actually passed between you.

Reading the totals

Total is every request they have ever filed. Open is how many are live right now.

A requester with several open requests at once is worth a moment's thought. It may be one matter split across several filings, which is often better handled as a conversation than as parallel work.

What you cannot do here

There is no way to create a requester. Records are made automatically when a request arrives, and there is no route to add someone who has not filed.

That is deliberate: a requester record exists because a request exists, so the two never drift apart.