Stack · Heritage Village Tech Stack

Part One

Shape of the stack

A hub in the middle. Spokes at the edges. A traffic cop between them.

Heritage Village runs on a hub-and-spoke model. Microsoft Dataverse is the hub. WordPress, AUC/ADMINS, MaintainX, Constant Contact, WebTrac, and libib are spokes. Power Automate is the traffic cop between them. Teams and SharePoint handle staff surfaces. SendGrid or Mailgun carries transactional email once the resident portal launches.

The golden rule: every piece of data has exactly one owner. AUC owns units and owners of record. MaintainX owns work orders. Dataverse owns the verified contact directory. WordPress owns editorial content and form intake.

Budget lives in one place: hv-data-hub/PLAN.md §5. Consolidated totals with CT tax: Year 1 $11,384.99 including the one-time site build; steady state $5,777.52 a year. Totals include SendGrid (in the base budget as of 2026-07-05), a domain-renewal placeholder (~$27 a year; confirm the current payer), and a $500-a-year unforeseen-expenses buffer. The hub core costs $638.10 a year.

II.

Part Two

Core components

Eleven pieces carry the platform. Each does one job well.

WordPress (custom theme)

The public website and gated resident portal. A custom theme built from vanilla HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Staff edit content through a stripped-down admin. The theme disables Gutenberg on locked pages and enables it on the editorial blog.

Role: Frontend presentation, editorial content, form capture, resident auth surface.
Cost: WordPress core is free; hosting runs separately (see Operations).
Owner: Heritage Village IT — theme code, plugin roster, release cycle.
Data store: Local MySQL tuned for speed; holds WP users, CPT content, ACF fields, form submissions in transit.

Advanced Custom Fields Pro

Strict form fields replace the open text editor. Staff see labeled inputs for headline, date, committee, PDF, and meeting video. The layout stays locked.

Role: Backend form rail, user-profile extensions, repeater fields for multi-unit owners.
Cost: $49 per year per site ($52.11 with CT tax).
Owner: Heritage Village IT.
Note: Gemini suggested the free tier with CPT workarounds. For 3,600 residents, snowbird addresses, multi-unit owners, vehicles, and emergency contacts, Pro is the correct call.

Gravity Forms Basic

Form capture for resident submissions. A small custom gform_after_submission hook posts each entry to Power Automate. The Basic tier plus that hook replaces the $259 Elite tier.

Role: Form capture; the webhook source for every upstream flow.
Cost: $59 per year ($62.75 with CT tax).
Owner: Heritage Village IT.
Note: Prove the hook when the first form-to-hub flow is built. If it falls short, revisit Elite.

Microsoft Dataverse

The master database. Holds the resident roster, unit ownership, approved vehicles, variance records, work-order history mirrored from MaintainX, and every form submission. One brain. One source of truth for contact data. The directory consolidates four conflicting sources: AUC, the directory spreadsheet, MaintainX contacts, and the census. AUC is the spine. Every contact field carries a source stamp, a verified date, and a completeness flag.

Role: Enterprise hub; canonical resident, unit, and request records.
Cost: Rides on Nate's Power Apps Premium seat ($20/month, the only builder seat). The directory fits the free storage baseline (under 1 GB). No storage purchase.
Owner: Nate (Procurement and Data Manager), the sole builder.

Power Automate

The middleware between every spoke. Triggers on webhooks, database events, and schedules. Translates payloads. Prevents infinite loops by checking the service-account author on every sync.

Role: Webhook receiver, scheduled batch runner, AUC CSV importer, Teams card dispatcher, Constant Contact writer.
Cost: Two Power Automate Premium seats at $15/user/month: the sync service account and the security lead's standalone flows. Premium is not bundled with Power Apps. Dataverse is a premium connector; every flow that writes to it needs a paid seat.
Owner: Nate; the service account runs the sync flows.

AUC / ADMINS

The property and accounting system. Source of truth for units, owners of record, and financials (AP, AR, GL). The most vetted data in the Village. It is the spine of the directory consolidation.

Role: Property records master; feeds the hub one-way, read-only.
Cost: Existing license.
Owner: Office staff.
Integration: No API. A scheduled CSV export lands in a watched SharePoint folder. Power Automate picks it up. Until the AUC developer enables a scheduled export, an employee runs a daily or weekly manual export. That fallback is accepted and does not block Phase 1.

MaintainX

Work orders for trades and office staff. Already in heavy daily use. Stays in place.

Role: Trades system of record; resident-submitted work requests land here.
Cost: Existing license; API access confirmed in use (it already powers the resident work-order status page).
Owner: Operations team.
Integration: REST API through a WordPress server-side proxy. Never embed as an iframe. MaintainX sets headers that block framing. One open question: does the tier include webhooks? Scheduled polling is the accepted fallback.

WebTrac

Calendar, class sign-ups, and space bookings. Already in place. Residents click through; the portal does not wrap it.

Role: Events, registrations, facility reservations.
Cost: Existing license.
Owner: Activities staff.
Integration: Link-out on /living-here/activities; the homepage pulls a lightweight event feed where the vendor supports it.

Constant Contact

The e-Bulletin newsletter provider. Sends to opted-in residents.

Role: Mass email, subscriber list.
Cost: Existing license.
Owner: Communications staff.
Integration: Power Automate writes new opt-ins after Sarah approves them.

libib

Library catalog for the community library.

Role: Book, film, and item catalog.
Cost: Existing plan.
Owner: Library volunteers.
Integration: Link-out from /living-here/facilities/library.

Transactional email

Delivers magic-link emails, form confirmations, and staff notifications. Pairs with WP Mail SMTP. SendGrid or Mailgun both fit.

Role: Deliverable transactional mail.
Cost: $254.60 a year with CT tax (SendGrid Essentials at $19.95/month; Mailgun similar). In the base budget as of 2026-07-05: the launch gates require magic-link delivery, and provisioning mail to 3,600 residents exceeds the free tier's 100/day cap. Free tier covers development until launch.
Owner: Heritage Village IT.
Note: Magic-link auth fails if mail lands in spam. Once the portal launches, this service is not optional.

III.

Part Three

Staff-facing components

Where the people who run the place actually work.

Microsoft Teams

Every staff member lives here. Premium licenses go to builders. Standard licenses get Adaptive Cards.

Role: Staff triage, approval cards, channel routing.
Cost: Bundled with M365 licenses.
Owner: Heritage Village IT.

SharePoint and Excel

The reporting tier for tier-3 staff. Power Automate writes nightly upserts to Excel files on SharePoint. Staff open the files through their standard M365 license.

Role: Read-only dashboards for staff without Power licenses.
Cost: Bundled with M365.
Owner: Heritage Village IT.

Entra ID

Single sign-on for staff. Binds to Dataverse and Power Apps.

Role: Staff identity, license assignment, SSO for internal tools.
Cost: Bundled with M365.
Owner: Heritage Village IT.

IV.

Part Four

License tiers

Three tiers. Each maps to a Microsoft license level.

Tier 1 (Premium). Power Apps Premium plus Dataverse. Nate alone. He designs flows, builds apps, and edits Dataverse schema. Add a second seat only when a second builder exists.
Tier 2 (Standard M365). Staff liaisons like Carol and Sarah. They approve requests through Teams Adaptive Cards. They do not log into Power Apps.
Tier 3 (Standard M365). Broader staff. They open Excel files on SharePoint for read-only snapshots.

Paid seats today, exactly three: one Power Apps Premium (Nate, $20/month) and two Power Automate Premium at $15/month each (the sync service account and the security lead's standalone staffing and compliance flows). Everyone else consumes emailed outputs on their existing M365 license. Trades workers stay on kiosk licenses as long as they only receive emailed outputs.

See Auth for the full role table.

Part Five

Summary

The whole stack on one page. Seventeen rows, one sentence apiece.

Layer	Component	Cost / year (w/ CT tax)	Owner
Frontend	WordPress custom theme	$0 core	HV IT
Hosting	WP Engine	$414.77	HV IT
Forms	Gravity Forms Basic	$62.75	HV IT
Fields	ACF Pro	$52.11	HV IT
Builder seat	Power Apps Premium (1, Nate)	$255.24	Nate
Middleware	Power Automate Premium (2 seats)	$382.86	Nate
Hub DB	Microsoft Dataverse	$0 (free baseline)	Nate
Property	AUC / ADMINS	existing	Office
Trades	MaintainX	existing, API in use	Ops
Events	WebTrac	existing	Activities
Newsletter	Constant Contact	existing	Comms
Library	libib	existing	Volunteers
Email	SendGrid or Mailgun	$254.60	HV IT
Domain	registrar TBD (confirm payer)	$26.59 placeholder	HV IT
AI	Claude Max + metered API	$3,828.60	Nate
Staff chat	Teams	M365	HV IT
Reporting	SharePoint + Excel	M365	HV IT
Identity	Entra ID	M365	HV IT

The table matches the consolidated budget in hv-data-hub/PLAN.md §5 and Website-budget.xlsx. Year 1 adds the one-time $5,607.47 site build.

Hosting platform choice lives in Operations. The plugin list beyond ACF Pro lives in Auth. The design system (typography, palette) is locked in the design-system folder.

Stack.

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