DOCS SETTING UP
Setting up
From empty install to live command center in four moves: communities, data import, public-data keys, and AI settings.
1 · Add your communities
Communities are the foundation — every product keys off them. Each needs a name, short code, city/state, ZIP (this powers ZIP-precise market data), unit count, and approved photos in the Asset Vault.
- 1 Admin → Communities: add each property with its code and ZIP.
- 2 Upload approved exterior/interior photos to the Asset Vault — campaigns composite onto these.
- 3 Add each community's competitor set under Competitor Intel (2+ comps makes Price Rank live).
2 · Import your data
Bring history in so day one isn't empty.
- 1 Leads: install the attribution snippet on your property sites; import Yardi / CallRail / Google Ads CSVs for history.
- 2 CRM: open the Pipeline and click Import from Attribution — every lead becomes a Person with stage and timeline intact (safe to re-run; only new leads import).
- 3 Residents: set lease end + current rent on resident records, then run Sync windows on the Renewal radar.
3 · Connect public data
Four free keys light up market context everywhere — area rents, affordability ceilings, jobs, and the rate climate. Each provider issues keys instantly or within a day: Census ACS (api.census.gov), HUD FMR (huduser.gov), BLS (data.bls.gov), FRED (fred.stlouisfed.org). Enter them in your server's secrets file, then hit Refresh all states on Market Context — Sentinel pulls statewide AND per-community-ZIP data.
✦ These are economic datasets published by the U.S. government. Sentinel labels the sources on every surface that uses them.
4 · AI settings & the spend cap
Sentinel's AI (briefs, advisors, memos, Ask Sentinel, review replies) runs under a hard daily spend cap you set. The rail shows today's spend at all times; when the cap is reached, AI features pause gracefully until tomorrow — nothing breaks. Configure the Anthropic key, the cap, and the mail driver (log for testing, SES for real sends) in the secrets file.
5 · Schedule the background jobs
Sentinel's engines run on plain cron. Admin → Cron Runs shows every job, its cost tier, and run history. The core schedule: comp pricing scrape (weekly), renewal windows (daily, free), sequence runner (daily, free), GBP/social publishers (daily), and the optional deal-source watcher (daily, AI-metered, opt-in per state).
6 · Wire your website
Point your marketing site's contact/tour form at the CRM intake endpoint with the shared token (set
crm_intake_token in the app, the URL + token on the site). Submissions become CRM leads instantly — honeypot and minimum-fill-time spam defenses included. The sentinelmos.com tour form ships pre-wired; it just needs the two config values.