West Kingdom College of Heralds

Court Reporting Procedures

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Please follow these guidelines carefully to ensure that all awards are published in the Awards List (and in The Page) in a timely fashion.

1. After Court -- hand-write a list of all the items that occurred in court (most importantly awards and honors, but if you are not sure it should be reported, err on the side of caution and add it to the list) and if possible, review it with the Royalty. PLEASE be as legible as possible when filling doing this, as these notes will be used to fill out the Court Report Form. Please note if an award recipient was given a scroll during court (even if it wasn't signed/sealed). This helps in tracking scrolls, the Court Report form has a column that you can simply check if a scroll exists.
   
   Note: There is a PDF form you can fill out (CourtForm.pdf), if you feel it will help you be more organized, or legible ... it is not required you use this.
2. If you are the Court Herald, you are responsible to fill out the court report form in a timely fashion. If you are not comfortable with doing this, then please be sure to get the court report to the Court Herald in charge at the event (at Kingdom events this is usually the Green Banner Herald, if at Principality events, it is usually the Principality Herald, and so on). If you need to pass this to a different herald, then please do so at the event, as soon as possible after court, so the paperwork does not get lost.
3. If the event is a Coronation or Investiture event, and you were the herald in charge of a court for the outgoing royalty (the ones who just stepped down), please get appropriate email addresses for the Sovereign and/or Consort. This is important to ensure that they receive the reports in a timely fashion. The Court Report form (see below) has a place for "Alternate EMail for Royalty" specifically for this purpose.

Fill Out The Web Form: When you get home from the event, go to the Court Report web page and fill out the form as shown. (You should keep the hand-written Award List for reference, in case something goes wrong ... if you don't have one, create a file folder and keep it there in a place you can find.)

When you look at the form, there are instructions on the page, and there is a link to more detailed instructions, if something doesn't make sense.

1. This web form will send the report to the Golem Herald, The Green Banner Herald, Principality Herald if appropriate, the Royalty (or Baron/Baroness), and the Kingdom Chronicler, as well as to yourself.
2. The Royalty (or Baron/ess) will be asked to affirm the awards on the list by replying to the report. Note that this is a required part of the process, without the confirmation by the royalty that They did indeed give the awards or recognitions shown, they are not official.
   VERY IMPORTANT: If the Royalty uses the "Reply" button, rather than "Reply to All", you (the herald) may be the only person to see a confirmation. Please look at the headers for the message, and see if there are others in the CC: or TO: fields of the email sent by the Royalty on a confirmation. If they are not there, please forward the confirmation to the Golem Herald, and the Kingdom Chronicler.
3. If there are corrections needed, either the Royalty or you can make them in the replies (via email). Golem will often ask questions, this is not meant to make you look bad, just to help ensure the data is correct.
4. The Golem Herald will attempt to make sure names are spelled correctly, and once the Royalty has affirmed the awards, will enter them into the Awards List Database.
5. The Kingdom Chronicler can then publish the awards in The Page.

PLEASE KEEP THE PAPER COPY of the information for your records, in case of a problem, or a need to verify something. Create a file folder for court reports or keep it in a safe place somewhere, or if you are uncomfortable with this, give the paper copy to the Banner Herald, Vesper Herald, Principality Herald ...

If you do not hear from the Golem Herald or the information is not listed online within two weeks after sending your report, please follow up with them. It is possible the award list did not get to them for whatever reason.

It should be noted that any awards that are not published in the Awards List (Award List) within nine months will need to be reaffirmed in Court by the appropriate royalty, and sent to the Golem Herald for publication. For information about Reaffirmations of awards, please see: Award Reaffirmation.

Possible problems:

• The Royalty do not check their email often (it happens) and do not affirm the Court Report.
• The court report arrived but went to the Royalty's spam or junk folder (please ask Them to check).
• The report was confirmed by the Royalty, but their response (or one from Golem) went to YOUR spam or junk folder (please check).
• Names are so hard to read that Golem cannot understand them and they get garbled in the database.

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