Skip to main content

Automating Reports


CryWolf® has a lot of great features to make alarm administrators' jobs easier. One of the great features built in to CryWolf® allows jurisdictions to email reports easily to alarm companies.  If you don’t currently use this feature, here is how to start:
From the Reports menu, scroll down to "Alarm Company Related" and then over and down to "PDF creation for eMailing to Alarm companies".  Then over to "Accounts by Alarm Company".


In the "Accounts by Alarm Company" pop up, use the pull down menus to control the information that the report will include.  For my office, our weekly reports are meant to inform the alarm company of any new permit numbers that were issued that week, so we select the alarm company type  and the date that the account was created.  We then choose the dates that we want the report to cover. CryWolf® also allows you to click the Email Reports box option to send the reports electronically to all alarm companies with an email address on file.  The Text pull down menu allows you to select what letter you want to appear in the body of the email.  (The letter has to be available in the Letters section of Maintenance).  
For 6 months, I have been trying to use this feature to send the reports, but I could not get CryWolf® to display our list of letters in the Text box pull down menu.  It was driving me absolutely bonkers. 
In my defense, my unit processes alarms for several other jurisdictions besides our own.  This means that in the Agency pull down menu, several agency names appear along with the choices “All” and “Default”.  (For some tasks, all of the agencies use the same settings so the "All" choice helps minimize the information that must be set up in the rules of CryWolf®. The "Default" choice is used for settings that apply to all jurisdictions). Because CryWolf® sorts pull down menus alphabetically, “All” always appears in our Agency box.  (If you only process alarms for one jurisdiction, the agency that appears is most likely “Default”).  All these months of growing frustration were caused because  I should have been changing the Agency to “Default”.  If I had done so, my list of letters would have been available to me the first time I tried to send this report by e-mail 6 months ago.
I have to give a shout out to our fantastic CryWolf® rep who very patiently pointed this mistake out to me this week.  I figure that I am not the only one who ever makes these blunders, so I am sacrificing my pride so that you don’t make the same mistake.


Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Thanks for stopping by my little piece of the web. I look forward to reading what you have to say!

Popular posts from this blog

In Memory of...

I was fortunate enough to be able to travel to Washington DC during National Police Week .  While there, the Hubster ran the Police Week 5K and we visited the Law Enforcement Officers Memoria l.  The memorial is a sobering reminder that so many have given all in the pursuit of public safety.  Unfortunately, it was raining so the pictures aren't great, but the rain seemed fitting--almost as if angels were mourning with those gathered there.  The memorial itself is surrounded by a beautiful park setting with trees and seasonal flowers and is composed of two curved marble walls engraved with the names of the more than 19,000 officers who have died. Each of the memorial walls is flanked by a lion protecting its cubs and keeping silent vigil. Seal embedded in center of the memorial plaza It seems that every day a new name is added to the list that will be inscribed just before Police Week begins.  The park and memorial are beautiful and worth a stop if ...
1 comment
Read more

Albemarle County Ordinance Update

A dministrators of false alarm units are often called on to present information to the local government officials.  In preparation for my debut briefing the Supervisors in my county, I visited Albemarle County last week for their  Board of Supervisors meeting .  The Albemarle County Police Department was before the board to present some updates to their false alarm ordinance so it was a good opportunity to witness public reaction.  The great thing about local government is that the public has the opportunity to participate.  Albemarle County and many other counties allow citizens to have their time to air their opinions simply by signing up before the meeting begins.  The number of people who sign up, determines how much time each speaker is given.  For this meeting, there were so many people signed up, that the time limit was reduced to two minutes each. The agenda for each meeting is generally posted in advance but the public commentary doe...
2 comments
Read more

Queen of the Dairy

Did you know that the Dairy Queen Blizzard turned 25 last year?  I remember when the Blizzard was introduced which makes me officially...old.  Anyway, there was no Dairy Queen in the town where I grew up but there was one where my great grandfather lived.  Do you remember when a trip longer than 15 minutes lasted fuh evah?  When I was little, the 65 minute drive to my great grandfather's small town felt like an eternity.  Maybe it felt so long  because  I was hoping for that extremely rare occurrence of a stop at the Dairy Queen.  My parents were teachers  and the budget was always tight, but occasionally we would stop at DQ and we could get a small cone.  We never got to choose--it was always just that small vanilla cone, but it was a treat nonetheless. Once I was able to drive and had a job, those stops at DQ were almost mandatory when I ventured on my own to my grandparents house.  I probably tried something different each time-...
2 comments
Read more