Creating Complaints

The Complaints & Appeals area tracks external challenges to how your institution handled an access or privacy matter — a complaint filed with an oversight body, or a statutory appeal of a decision. AccessPoint treats complaint and appeal as two "kinds" of the same record; the kind comes from the complaint type you pick at intake, and the panel wording adapts to it. A complaint can stand on its own or be linked to the request it contests. Open the intake dialog from the Complaints dashboard. The Register complaint button is a split button: its Register from email… option opens the same mailbox picker as the request New from email flow — pick the complaint email from your own or an intake mailbox and the form is pre-seeded (title from the subject, summary from the body, complainant from the sender, received date). On register, the email is logged as the complaint's first inbound correspondence — method Email, the received date, subject, sender, To and Cc recipients and Message-ID — with the original .eml attached to the entry, exactly as for a request created from an email. If the entry cannot be created, the email is saved to the complaint's Documents instead and a message says so. The form is help-enabled, so the ? icon opens this guidance.

Registering a Complaint or Appeal

1. Complaint type (required) — pick the type. Each option is tagged (Complaint) or (Appeal). Your choice drives everything below, including the read-only Regulator shown beneath the dropdown — the regulator's name in your language, with the office as the jurisdiction pack records it (often its postal address) in small text underneath — the filing-window rule, and the grounds catalogue. The same name is used by the Complaints regulator filter, the Regulator column, the By regulator table in analytics and the regulator-name letter token.
2. Intake origin — choose Regulator investigation (the oversight body is investigating) or Direct to institution (the matter came straight to you). The type suggests a default, but you can override it. The origin determines whether the complaint later passes through a Submitted stage; a short hint explains the difference.
3. Admissibility hint — if the type defines a filing window, a banner tells you whether the complaint is in time against the computed deadline (calculated from the notified date, or the received date if none). This is advisory only and never blocks you from registering.
4. Title (required), an optional External complaint / file number (the regulator's reference), and a Summary.
5. Ground — if the type has a grounds catalogue, select the subject-matter ground of the complaint. The grounds, dispositions and allegation findings a type uses are the complaint choice fields an administrator maintains — see Complaint Choice Fields.
6. Allegations (optional) — break the complaint into its individual allegations right at intake: type each allegation and click add (anything still typed in the box when you register is captured too). Each allegation can carry its own ground, and findings are later recorded per allegation on the Outcome tab. You can also add allegations any time after registration.
7. Desired outcome (optional) — what the complainant is asking for, in their words. It appears on the Outcome tab and in the complaint report.
8. Parties — capture the complainant name, email, and the assigned investigator name. The investigator may be the oversight body's.
9. Received on and Notified on dates, both capped at today.
10. Primary request link (optional) — search the request register (type-ahead, top matches) and link the contested request. Standalone complaints are fully supported; you can link or change requests later.

Click Register complaint / Register appeal. The complaint is created in the Active stage and opens in the detail panel. If you close the dialog with unsaved entries, a guard asks you to confirm.

Complaints Through the Portal

A complaint can also come from your public portal. A portal form registers in one register, chosen when the form is created — the Privacy complaint template registers in Complaints. The form asks what happened, what the complaint is about (an administrator maps each option to your imported complaint grounds in the form editor), what would resolve it, a request number if it is about a request, documents and the complainant's details. The complainant sees complaint wording throughout and, once you register it, a Registered status that says your office will write; there is no online progress page for complaints.

In the Portal Inbox a complaint carries a pill. Register complaint asks only for the type (blank uses the pack's direct-to-institution complaint type) and an assignee; the complainant's details, the narrative, the ground and the attachments come from the submission, and the original is filed as the complaint's first document. Registering needs the register's own intake permission on top of portal triage. See Public Portal.

Kind-Aware Wording

The complaint type you pick determines the kind of record. When you choose an appeal-kind type, the panel wording flips automatically — for example, the title and received-date labels — but the workflow is identical to a complaint. The type also carries the governing authority (the regulator office), the filing-window rule, and the grounds catalogue, so choosing the right type sets up the rest of the record.

Privacy by Design

Staff you later delegate investigation work to — custodians and contributors — never see the complainant's identity. Instructions are sanitized, and the create dialogs remind you of this firewall.