Helm is the private website and iPhone and iPad app that Plymouth Harbor, Inc., a continuing care retirement community in Sarasota, Florida, uses to share meeting papers, minutes and votes with its board of trustees and committees. Only people the board office has invited can sign in. This page explains what Helm holds about you and who can see it.
The short version
- Helm holds what a board needs to run its meetings: who you are, which committees you sit on, and what you do with board papers.
- There is no advertising, no analytics company and no tracking across other apps or websites. Nothing is sold or shared with data brokers.
- Helm never asks for your location, your contacts or your photos.
What Helm holds
- Your account
- Name, email address, and optionally a title, phone number and short biography, entered by the board office. Your email address is how you sign in and receive meeting notices.
- Your password and authenticator app
- Your password is stored scrambled with one-way encryption, so nobody can read it. The key that links Helm to your authenticator app is stored encrypted, and recovery codes are stored scrambled.
- What you do with board material
- Which papers you open or download and when, your replies about attending meetings, your votes and any comments on them, and files you add to a committee workroom. Boards keep these records as part of good governance.
- Sign-in records
- When you signed in, from which internet address, and with which browser or device. This is how repeated wrong passwords are spotted and stopped.
- Your device, in the app
- If you allow notifications, a code that lets Apple's notification service reach your device. Notifications carry only a short subject line; the detail stays behind sign-in.
- Board books saved for offline reading
- If you save a board book in the app, the papers are stored inside the app on your device, behind Face ID or your passcode. Helm records which books you saved. Saved books are deleted after 30 days, when you sign out, or when your access is removed.
What Helm does not hold
- Your location, contacts or photos.
- Your face or fingerprint. When the app uses Face ID, your device only tells it yes or no.
- Payment or financial details of any kind.
Who can see what
You see the meetings, papers, workrooms and votes of the committees you belong to, and the shared library.
Other members of your committees see your name and title. When a vote closes, its members can see how each person voted, unless the vote was marked anonymous.
Plymouth Harbor's board office administrators can see everything in Helm, including the record of who opened which papers, so they can support the board and keep its records.
Where it is kept
Helm runs on Microsoft Azure in the United States, and its email is sent through Microsoft. Information is encrypted in transit and at rest. Microsoft and Apple process it only to provide those services.
How long it is kept
Your account is kept while you serve on the board or a committee. When you leave, the board office switches it off. Meeting papers, minutes and vote records are kept as part of the corporation's records.
Your choices
- You can turn off notifications for Helm in your device's Settings at any time.
- You can ask the board office what Helm holds about you, or ask them to correct it.