Setup

This is the guide to getting your Department configured in the resgrid system. This setup guide is a high level overview of the settings to get your department up and running with Resgrid both the OnPrem and Hosted versions of the system.

Note

Only one person in your department or organization needs to sign up for a new Resgrid department, when you create an account from the Resgrid homepage this happens automatically. If this is an on-premises installation, use the default department information to log in.

Getting Started

Once you have your first user registered with Resgrid (or using the default OnPrem department) you can log into the system. The first page you will land on will be the dashboard page or home page. Here is a list of your personnel, groups and their statuses. You can also set your status and staffing level on the widgets on the right hand side. In the top of the screen you can click your name in the left hand side to view or update your profile. The 2 icons in the middle are your active calls and your inbox messages. The menus on the right are your Department Menu (it’s the name of your department) and is the primary location to configure your department, a help menu and a logout button.

Department Menu Items
Item Visibility Description
Department Settings Admins Only General Department settings like name, main address, time zone and resets.
Stations & Groups Admins Only Create and Manage Groups and Membership in those Groups
Call Import Settings Admins Only Call Email Import Settings and Call Auto Close (Prune) Settings
Custom Statuses Admins Only Create Department Specific Personnel and Unit Statuses and Staffing Levels
Text Messaging Admins Only Type of Inbound Text Messages allowed (Call or Command)
Api Settings Admins Only Allocate a System level API Key and Key for Active Calls RSS Feed
Types Admins Only Manage Department Wide Types (Call Types, Call Priorities, Unit Types, Certifications)
Distribution Lists Admins Only Create and Manage Membership is custom defined email distribution lists
Security & Permissions Admins Only Configure Permissions (i.e. who can create calls) for the department and view Audit Logs
Subscription & Billing Admins Only Manage your departments subscription and billing information. (Hosted Version only)
Orders Everyone Your Resource Order Requests and those from other departments (i.e. Mutual Aid)
Links Everyone Links with other Departments in Resgrid (i.e. sister stations)
Notifications Everyone Create and Manage your custom notifications (i.e. be notified if a unit goes out of service)
Commands Everyone Create and manage Command definitions for call types (for the Commander app)
BigBoard Everyone A configurable dashboard where you can see your departments info at a glace on a TVMonitor

Note

Main administrative operations (both department and group) are only available to be performed via the website. The Mobile application (like Resgrid Responder) are intended for personnel specific functions, like setting ones own status or staffing level, or viewing call information.

Department Settings

After you log into the website, click your department menu, it’s the name of your Department in the upper right hand corner of the web application next to the Help menu. The menu will drop down and expose a list (detailed above), click on Department Settings.

Department Settings Options
Setting Description
Department Name The name of your department or how you want it displayed in Resgrid
Time Zone The primary time zone your department is in. If your department is in multiple time zones, this should be the time zone of your headquarters or main office.
Use 24-Hour Time Do you want time displayed in 24 hour format for your department? For example 8:00PM is 2000 in 24 hour format.
Managing User This is the ‘master’ admin for the Department and that user cannot be removed from the system.
Disable Auto-Available By default the Resgrid system will ignore personnel statuses (instead just showing “Standing By”) submitted after an hour when displaying their current status in a list. Checking this box will disable that feature.

The Address section should be your home office, headquarters or main location. This will be used as the default center for most of the maps. Centers can also be adjusted in each map as well.

Personnel Staffing Reset will add a Staffing level (selected in ‘Reset Staffing Level To’) for every user in the Department at the specified time. For example if you want to ensure all personnel staffings are up to date every day at 0800, you can have the system set a default staffing, like Unavailable, at 0200 so you know if there is a different staffing it’s accurate as of that morning.

Personnel Status Reset will add a Status (selected in ‘Reset Status To’) for every user in the Department at the specified time. For example if you want to ensure all personnel statuses are up to date every day at 0800, you can have the system set a default status, like Standing By, at 0200 so you know if there is a different status it’s accurate as of that morning.

Force Department Update will clear out all of the in memory cached information for your department. This is a scheduled job and can take up to 15 minutes to process. Resgrid caches a lot of static data, like groups and group names, personnel names, etc that don’t change frequently and store them in memory for fast access. Forcing a Department Update will clear that cache and force it to be pulled from the Database. This will negatively impact your performance until all data is recached.

Warning

Forcing a Department Update to clear the cache should only be used it some data, i.e. a group name or personnel name, is not updated for EVERYONE, not just one computer or phone. That device may have cached the output or call itself. This operation will slow down the system for ALL USERS until the cache is rebuilt.

Creating Groups

After you log into the website, click your department menu, it’s the name of your Department in the upper right hand corner of the web application next to the Help menu. The menu will drop down and expose a list (detailed above), click on Stations and Groups.

Resgrid has 2 types of groups Station and Organizational. Station groups require a physical address and are the only group types allow to have Units under them. A Station group is intended to denote a physical location that personnel or units may be responding out of, or responding to (i.e. to pick up some equipment or staff). Organizational groups have no physical location and are intended to allow users to be grouped together. For example you can use Organizational groups like East or West denote which users are in those response areas.

Note

Users can only be in 1 group at a time, but a user can be a part of many roles. Ideally you would use Groups to define something static like Stations, Districts, Response Areas, etc and use Personnel Roles to define more dynamic information like if a person is a Paramedic or HAZMAT Technician.

On the Department Groups list you’ll see columns calls “Dispatch Email” and “Message Email”. These are unique email addresses for those groups. The “Dispatch Email” address will create a call for that specific group and dispatch all personnel and units under that group. The “Message Email” address will create a in-system message in Resgrid to all personnel in that group.

Organizational Groups

Organizational groups are intended to organize groups of users. This group type can only have personnel assigned to it.

Station Groups

Station groups can have personnel and units assigned to them and must have a physical address. This address could be a building or open staging area.

Add Group Page

Creating a Group Options
Setting Description
Group Type The type of group you want to create Organizational or Station
Group Name The name of your group
Parent Group You can have a group under a group, if you want this newly created group to show up underneath another group select the parent group here
Address Optional. If you have selected a Station group you need to supply a physical address for this group. An example would be a Fire Station, Staging Area, Ambulance Bay, etc.
Group Admins These are the administrators for this group. Group Admins can modify personnel in the group, for example updating their profile
Group Users Personnel that are in the group

Note

You do not have to add personnel here, you can leave both Group Admins and Group Users blank and add users to the groups when you add the users or edit their profiles. For very large groups the list of personnel in the group will be too big to maintain here and is best maintained at the personnel profile level.

Personnel Roles

After you log into the website, click the Personnel module from the left hand module list, it’s under your name, Home and Calls buttons. This will take you the Personnel Section, there is a blue button on the right hand side of the screen, below the top bar with “Help” and “Log out” named “Manage Roles”, this is where you can administer your Personnel Roles.

Personnel can be in any number of Roles; roles are used to define attributes of your personnel, for example it could be an MOS or Job Function like Firefighter, Paramedic, Officer, etc or could be ranks or roles within your organization like Manager, Supervisor or Coordinator. Roles allow you to filter personnel when making calls, sending messages, assigning trainings and the like. For example say you have a training for your EMT’s, you can have roles for your EMT’s, AEMT’s and Paramedics and assign the training just to them.

Once you create the role, you can click “Edit” in the roles list to assign personnel to that role. Additionally the recommended way to assign personnel to roles is via the personnel profile view (accessible by editing the person from the Personnel list, or clicking their name on the dashboard). When adding a person to the system you can assign roles at that time as well.

Adding Personnel

After you log into the website, click the Personnel module from the left hand module list, it’s under your name, Home and Calls buttons. This will take you the Personnel Section, from here you can add personnel in 2 ways, manually or via an invite.

Add a Single Person

Clicking the turquoise “Add Person” button on the Personnel list page will allow you to add one user one by one. This is the preferred way to add personnel into the system by Department or Group Admins as it allows you to specify all the information for the user at the time of entry.

Creating a Group Options
Setting Description
UserName The Username that the user will use to log into the system with
Password The password that the user will use to log into the system
Confirm Password Ensure the password is correct
ID Optional, the Identification number for the person. This could be a badge or employee number.
First Name The users First Name
Last Name The Users Last Name
Email Address Email address for the user, this email address is used for communication and is the “Forgot Account” email address.
Group The Group (Station or Organization) that the user should be placed under
Is Group Admin Do you want this user to be a Group Admin for the group they are assigned
Roles Personnel Roles that are applicable for the user
Mobile Number The mobilecell phone number for the user
Mobile Carrier The mobile carrier for the users mobilecell phone. This is required as Resgrid will route text messages directly to the carrier for the cell phone.
Call Options How do you want this user to be communicated to for DispatchCalls
Message Options How do you want this user to be communicated to for Messages
Notification Options How do you want this user to be communicated to for Notifications
Notify User Do you want Resgrid to email the user with their account information

Send Out Invites

On the Personnel list page you can click the green “Manage Invites” button to invite personnel by sending out an invite email to their email address. On this page you will see the email address you have sent invites too and when you sent that invite. Also on this list you can see if the user has completed the invite and resend the invite if the user has not completed it.

To send invites to email addresses you can enter them in, one or many at a time, in the “Email Addresses” textarea inside the “Send Invites” card. Email addresses in this textarea need to be comma “,” separated. For example “user1@yourcompany.local, user2@yourcompany.local, user3@yourcompany.local” without the double quotes. Once your list is populated you can click the blue “Send Invites” button.

Note

It’s recommended to send 20 invites or less at a single time to ensure the POST request length is not too large which could cause failures for browsers with a poor connection. If an email address supplied in the textarea doesn’t appear in the list there was an error processing that email address and an invite was NOT sent to that user.

Units Metadata

Adding Units