Dispatch Module

This is an optional module intended to make it easier to dispatch guards or emergency services, particularly for larger monitoring stations.

Requirements

• The Dispatch module must be registered.

Initial Setup

Open Maintenance -> Users -> User Types.

Create a new user type that will be listed for dispatch. Set their User Kind to Dispatch User.

Creating a new Dispatch User Type

Add a second new user type. Set their User Kind to Select Dispatch.

Creating a new Select Dispatch User Type

For Select Dispatch user types, a selector will appear below the User Kind option. Pick a user type that will be loaded for dispatch.

Open Maintenance > Users > User Maintenance. Assign the newly created Dispatch User type (in this example "Patrol") to a user. When editing a dispatch user from the User Maintenance window, a Dispatch tab is shown. This tab contains a list of cities that the user is able to be dispatched to. At first this is a blank list, so you will need to add cities to the list.

To assign all cities in a State, click on a city in the list, and then click the assign all button. This will assign all cities belonging to the same State as the currently selected city. If no city in the list is selected, then clicking the assign all button will assign all available cities.

To include a user for dispatch, you'll need to either add a city to the list or assign a default rank to the user by checking Include for Dispatch.

Assigning dispatch cities to a user

Enter a default Dispatch Ranking, and any rank overrides for particular cities if needed.

Dispatch Coverage Map

To set the coordinates for each city, you'll need to geocode the cities using the Utilities program. Open the Utilities program then navigate to System -> Data Utilities -> Geocode Addresses. Geocoding the cities will automatically assign the map coordinates by searching based on the location details.

Note: To ensure the correct coordinates get displayed, it is important that each city name, address and details are correctly entered.

Response by User Type

You can set up a response plan that includes the new Dispatch user type.

Assign this response plan to action plans in the Response tab of a client.

Note: When using a By Type response plan, you do not need to assign any Dispatch or Select Dispatch users to the client in the Users Tab. You only need two things for a dispatch user to become available for a client:

• Select Dispatch user type included in the response plan
• Cities assigned to the dispatch users or default rank assigned to the dispatch users in User Maintenance.

Response By User

For a more fine-grained approach, you can set up response plans that include specific users rather than user types. Note that if you use By User response plans, you need to assign a Select Dispatch user to the client, under the users tab.

A By User response plan that includes a Select Dispatch user.

Dispatching from the activation screen

Activations with Select Dispatch user types assigned to them will have an add dispatch button available.

When you click the Add Dispatch button, it will insert the next dispatch user, based on their dispatch ranking for that city.

After clicking on the Add Dispatch button, our next dispatch user (First Patrols) appears on the call list.

Once all the available dispatch users have been added to the call list, the add dispatch button will disappear.

Dispatch Rankings

Dispatch users can be assigned to specific cities, and also given priority ranking according to the city that an alarm occurs in.

The default dispatch ranking can be overridden for a particular city.

Enter a default dispatch ranking at the top, above the city list.

Ranking overrides can also be entered for each city. If the Dispatch Rank Override box is blank, that city will use the default ranking. Otherwise you can override the default ranking by entering a number into the Dispatch Rank Override.

Valid Dispatch ranking values are as follows:

To be able to view a particular cities dispatch response order, so you can see how the city overrides affect the default order, open the city maintenance screen and check the Display Dispatch Response Order checkbox.

The dispatch response order for a city can be shown in the city maintenance screen.

You can override the dispatch order at a client level from the Response Tab of a client or at a dealer level from the Dealer Maintenance. There is an extra tab control that displays dispatch rankings for the current user.

Client level rank override

Dealer level rank override

This tab displays a user type selector which filters the list to only show users of the selected type. Here you have the option to override the users rank. Patriot will follow this procdeure to decide which rank to use.

1. If rank is overridden at a Client level, use the client rank override.

2. If not overridden at a Client level check Dealer Override, if rank is overridden use dealer rank override.

3. If not overridden at a Dealer level check Cities Override, if rank is overridden use city rank override.

4. If not overridden at a City level fallback to user default rank.

Related Pages

• Users Tab
• Response Plans
• Action Plans