Attending to an alarm

An Activation Report is displayed by double-clicking on an Activation in the signals window or the current activations screen. This area enables operators to deal with all matters concerning an alarm activation. It also keeps a record of all activity related to the alarm signal. Enterprise versions of Patriot also provide an Activations Window to the right hand side, accessible at all times, so that alarm activations can be dealt with quickly and efficiently.

Activations in the right hand panel

Double click the activation description to open an activation Report.

Activation Report

The Patriot 6 Activation Report compounds all client information found on the client maintenance section into one easy to use screen including:-


Operator Activation Ownership

Once an operator opens an Activation Report their ID is displayed in the operator column of the Current Activations window. They are said to now have 'ownership' of this record. If another operator opens the record, a message appears detailing the operator who last updated 'owns' the Attend Report and asks if you still wish to make changes to it. By choosing Yes the new operator will take ownership of the Attend Report and all of its contents. The report is then marked with the new operator ID replacing the ID of the previous operator.

In a network situation if an Activation Report is currently open, a warning message will be displayed if someone else tries to open it. They may still open it, but any changes made could be overwritten.

When an activation is first picked up by an operator, the operator response time also gets recorded. The response time is the amount of time between the activation creation time, and when the operator first picks up the activation. Putting an activation straight on hold (as you can do from the Current Activations Window) also sets the response time.

Dispatch Instructions

Any dispatch instructions that have been entered for users or emergency services will be displayed in the contacts window.


Response Plan

Emergency services and Users e.g. patrols, technicians etc, who have been assigned to the Response Plan of the alarm event's Action Plan will be displayed in the Response Plan contact list along with the type of service they are and their contact phone and pager numbers. Check boxes are provided to indicate whether these services have been contacted or not and whether they attended the activation. The site (client) is automatically added to the response plan if it has a site call order of 1 or higher with the Special Request instructions being displayed as the dispatch instructions.

Note: If you double-click on a phone number the Auto Dialer program will automatically dial the number for you and add an event to the response notes window to record the time. In general Patriot utilizes windows features to deal with this. For this option make sure that the Auto Dialer has been correctly set up in Windows. See Auto Dialer for more details.

New Contact

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The New contact button allows a new user not already assigned to the client to be displayed in the Response Plan for this Activation Report only. Clicking on the New button brings up the New User window.

Enter the required information and click OK. The user will be displayed in the Response Plan list for this activation report only.



Import Button

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The Import button allows Emergency services not already assigned and site users not assigned to the current response plan to be displayed in the Response Plan list for this Activation Report. Clicking on the Import button opens a window listing users and services either loaded in a specified user template on the clients user tab or in the pool of available users. Highlight the user or services required and double click. The user will be added to the response list for this activation report.

Response Notes

The Response Notes sub-section window lists all responce notes associated with this Activation such as operator comments and system generated reports of call attempts. Each report is time stamped allowing easy tracking of operator responses to activations.

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Clicking the New Note button at the bottom left of this window will add a new time stamped report entry allowing any additional comments relating to the activation to be entered.

Reason

The reason for the Activation can be chosen from the drop down list. Click on the arrow at the end of the field to display the list of reasons. These reasons can be customized using the system's Monitor Maintenance menu. Double clicking on a reason will make it appear in the reason field.


Charge Type


Here, various callout/monitoring charges can also be assigned via the Charge Type drop down menu. For more information see the BILLING section.

Complete Button

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To complete the Activation Report, click the Complete Button. The activation report window will close and take you back to the current activations screen, where the signal will be removed. If there are no other activations pending the attend icon will stop flashing and the sounds will cease.

Sleep Button

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The Sleep Button allows a pending activation to be removed from the Current Activations Window for a specified period of time. For example, if a low system battery alarm is activated and a technician will fix it in two hours the Activation Report can be put to sleep for 2 and a half hours while it is fixed. When it becomes active again it can be removed if the situation has been remedied.

To Sleep a Activation:

  1. Click the Sleep button to bring up the Sleep until window.

  2. Enter the length of time the Activation Report should be put to sleep for in terms of Minutes, Hours, and Days.

  3. The time that the record will become active is displayed in the Time and Date fields.

  4. The Activation can be transferred to a lower priority action plan when brought back from sleep.

    (To cancel the selection and leave the action plan unchanged press the X button beside the dropdown menu.)

  5. Click the Save button to save the changes or the Cancel button to exit without saving.

  6. The record will be removed from the Current Activations window. To view any records that have been put to sleep, click on the Sleep tab in the Current Activations window.


To return a record to the Current Activations window before it's sleep time is up:

  1. On the Sleep tab of the Current Activations window double click on the record to be restored.
  2. Put this activation on Hold or Complete it.

Double clicking the time specified for "sleep until" results in a quick select date and time window for easy configuration.

On Hold Button

The On Hold Button can be used to put the Activation on hold but keep it in the Current Activations window. The operator can come back to this Activation to make further amendments and complete it when they are satisfied the activation has been resolved. If all current activations are on hold the alarm sounds will cease and the on hold alarm sound will be played as set in the sounds task. If a new Activation comes in the alarm sound will return alerting the operator.


Activation List Tab

Handling multiple alarms from one client

If more than one pending (including sleeping) Activation exists for a client, inclduing alarms from from mutiple areas, the Activation List tab will be displayed. This tab lists the details of all activations including any sleeping Activations.

To view this tab, the operator must have Client Activation List security rights assigned.

From the Activation List Tab:

Activation List Tab

If the Activation List Tab is loaded as when an operator is responding to an alarm then the activation that is loaded will be displayed above the list of other activations for this client.

Double clicking on another Activation will close the client and reopen it with the new Activation loaded into the Activation tab. This allows the operator to respond to a higher priority Activations.

The Activation List tab heading also displays the number of Activations for the client so you can see at a glance how many total Activations have been received. If a new Activation appears that has not been viewed the heading will automatically change to a Red Warning colour.

Activation List Header

Finding an existing activation

If the client is opened from the client search window and an Activation is pending for this client then the Activation List Tab will be displayed. This makes the operator aware that a pending Activation exists for this client and also allows the operator to quickly select one of the Activations to respond to it. This can be very useful for finding an activation in another area of a client however the operator must have Client Activation List security rights assigned.