The Edge of Empty

I had the opportunity to speak about alarm systems and false alarms at a self-defense workshop for women this past weekend. The event was put on by one of the members of the county board of supervisors. There were 13 speakers slotted to speak in a 2 hour period, so we only had a few minutes each. As you can imagine, each speaker had to distill their comments to the most important points. I decided to focus on the following questions: Do you need an alarm system? Take advantage of free home security survey offered by many departments Evaluate if you will actually use it Consider low-cost alternatives such as upgrading locks and lights How do you choose an alarm company? Use resources such as the Better Business Bureau Check with neighbors Don't be afraid to move away from the beginning of the alphabet Check professional associations such as ESA for members What do you need to do after install? Learn how to use the system Follow the maintenance schedule Educate al...

It is 6:45 am on the first day of the 2013 FARA Symposium. The schedule for this year is jam packed with sessions that sound fantastic, so I know it is going to be a good week. Yesterday, I attended the Board Meeting and the CryWolf® Users Conference which I will describe for you later. I will be heading down soon to sign in and take my contributions for the silent auction. I love this part--it is always so much fun to see what people donate. This year, I brought a Longaberger® tissue basket set and a set of wine glasses with a vacuum seal top with the county seal of my jurisdiction embossed on them. (The picture of the wine glasses was unusable and showed a bit too much of my jurisdiction and the basket picture isn't great--I will redo it later if I have a chance). I am hoping that there will be some fun stuff to bid on--the money all goes to support the FARA Institute so I will bid on something, but I prefer to buy something that I really want as opposed to just bidding on r...

Depending on how your auto process is set up in CryWolf®, it is possible under certain conditions for a process to not work exactly as planned.   This is usually because somehow we humans goof it up by not doing what we are supposed to do.   For example, when I was away for this year’s FARA symposium , the auto process routine was not run daily since my assistant was also out of the office.   This by itself was not enough to upset the auto process since we have a 7 day period to cover absences.  However, the days that it took to get caught back up on our return did exceed that limit.  (In my unit, we don't process alarms or send delinquent notices until payments and new registrations are entered).  Because auto process wasn't run, t his meant that a group of permits that should have received renewal letters, did not receive those letters. Unfortunately, since only permits that expired on one day were affected, we didn't notice immediate...

The other day, a member of my staff came upon two accounts that appeared to have the same permit number.   After review, it was discovered that one number differed by a comma--and that the permit number just happened to be the same as the house number for the alarm site.   We decided that someone must have attempted to do a search by entering the house number in the account number spot instead of the search box.   We came to this conclusion because of the comma—as you know, an address search using the house number requires that pesky comma.   Obviously, we couldn’t have two accounts with the same permit number so it was necessary to change the account number on one of the accounts. The easiest way to do this is using the “Change Account Number” option on the "Options" tab. Once in the "Change Account Number" screen, it is simple to enter the number to be changed.   CryWolf®  allows you to assign the new number or use the “Assign Next Account...

I'm not in the office this week because I have been at the FARA Symposium in Albuquerque.  In preparation for being away, I wrote the post below and had it queued up to automatically go live at the appropriate time. On Monday, Public Safety Corporation(PSC) held their annual Users Conference and let me tell you that some brilliant things are on the way. If you missed the conference, you can read about some of the exciting news  here . During the meeting, they asked if there were things that users would like to see added to CryWolf®.  Of course, I have a list at the office of things I would like to see, but one thing that has been weighing heavy on my mind is how to reduce our postage costs.  This is especially critical for my unit since we have already exceeded our postage budget and there are still a few months to go this fiscal year.  In pursuit of a solution, I have been examining ways to do more correspondence through e-mail, but was in a dilemma because n...

The annual FARA symposium day two started out with a great session moderated by alarm industry folks.  This session was designed to educate public safety on what the alarm industry is doing to reduce the number of false alarms.  FARA is very fortunate that some major industry leaders are willing to get involved with its mission. Several of the panelists were board members of industry associations and actively involved in working at the national, state, and local level. There was a lot of great information provided, but one of the best things brought out was the value of Enhanced Call Verification (ECV) in reducing false alarms. If your state or locality doesn't require ECV, this is one change that can dramatically reduce false alarms. Another issue mentioned was the problem solving that industry is undertaking to combat hurdles that new technology is bringing such as the dilemma caused by alarm users disarming a system with a smart phone before the alarm company has been ab...

If you are in false alarm prevention and aren't in Albuquerque, then you are missing out on a great opportunity to learn, network, and have a bit of fun. The 16th annual False Alarm Reduction Association (FARA) Symposium has begun and the fun is just beginnning. The President opened the symposium with an introduction to the Board Members and a round of applause for all of the sponsors. This was followed by a presentation of the new website and the FARA Forums by the chair of the Website Committee.  The Conference Committee announced a sneak peek of next year's  symposium in Orlando. A super presentation  by the Albuquerque Visitors Bureau gave all a bit of history and some places to see while here.  A round of Autograph Bingo gave attendees a fun way to meet other attendees and learn a bit about them. There is so much to come and I will be updating throughout the week.

After a recent update to the .Net version of CryWolf®, I noticed what I believe is a new option to send  invoices and account histories by email while in the history of an account.  Before noticing this option, my staff was opening the history, clicking on the invoice, saving it as a pdf file, and then attaching the file to an email.  Now, a simple right click on the invoice number opens the options window where it is possible to send a pdf of the invoice directly to the email addresses on file in the account.  Simply click on the option  and slide over to the right to select an email address.  As can be seen in the sample, the account holder's address appears on top and the responsible party's  email address is below.  It is also possible to send the item to an email address not on the account by choosing the "Other Email" option.  After clicking the selection, a "Quick Email window" opens and a subject line and message may be added...

Occasionally, it has been helpful to send a letter to a group of registered alarm users. If this sounds like something that would be helpful,  scroll down to "Process Bulk Letters" on the File menu in CryWolf®. In the "Bulk Letters" window, there are 3 tabs that can help refine the account selection process: General Search, Based on Outstanding Amounts, and Letter Received. The General Search tab offers options to choose the accounts to send letters.  If the letter needs to be sent to an alarm company, choosing the "Alarm Company" radio button allows the registered Alarm Companies to be searched. The default "Accounts" radio button searches registered users.  The pull down menu to the right of the radio buttons allows the  search to be refined by 7 parameters. The "Based on Outstanding Amounts" tab, allows a search of accounts by the amounts owed and date notification was sent. My favorite tab "Letter Received" allows a ...

Have you ever wished to clear a letter from the print queue in CryWolf® without actually printing it? I can’t tell you how many times a letter with a “bad address” has cluttered up our queue.  It is so frustrating to select that letter only to realize it is “that” letter that we have clicked on several times already. Today, I accidentally right-clicked on the queue and a window popped up with the question “Who are these assigned to?” and the option “Remove from Print Queue”. After a bit of experimentation, I realized that it is possible to remove the offending letter from the queue without wasting paper by printing it.  Simply right click on the offending letter and choose “Remove from Print Queue”.  Be warned that this does not remove the letter from the account history though.  Also, if there multiple copies of the letter in the queue, all of the letters of that type will be removed. My advice would be to print all of the good letters and then delete the...

We are going to venture away from CryWolf® today to discuss other technology that can assist in the mission of reducing false alarms.  One emerging technology that can be harnessed by alarm units is the QR code. As an example, the QR code below includes the web address for this blog. A QR code is a form of bar code similar to a UPC code but with the ability to hold greater amounts of data. These codes were developed by an auto manufacturer in Japan to help them track parts.  Although the company holds the patent rights, they have chosen to not exercise those rights. This allows free use of the technology. QR codes may be formatted to hold all manner of information such as phone numbers, e-mail addresses, gps data, or a web address. QR codes can easily be added to business cards, brochures, and other printed materials.  Many Home Owner Associations in our area allow us a small space in their publications and QR codes are perfect for this space.  The codes can...

Quite often staff members in my unit need to add a document or file to an alarm user's account. CryWolf® makes that task easy.  I am sure that most units are familiar with the upload of multiple scanned documents. However, there are other ways to add documents to user accounts.  One way is to drag the file from your document folder to the "Documents" button on the alarm user account window. This will trigger the Quick Link window to open.Simply click "ok" and the file will be saved to the account. If the file is attached to an email, another way is to "copy" the file and then right click on the Documents button to choose the Paste function. CryWolf® will accept almost any file type from .tif to .pdf.  Once my unit discovered this, we were able to have our fax machine stop printing registration forms and send them directly to email.  From email, it is a simple transfer straight into the account.  This saves several steps and lots of paper.  I hope t...

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, o ur 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 elec...

Many of us inherit the tracking and billing software that we use daily.  For those of you who have the opportunity to compare systems, I am listing the options that I have found. AOT Public Safety Corporation's CryWolf    ATB Services'  Alarm Tracking & Billing Digital Design Group's False Alarm Software EnablePoint Corporation's False Alarm Information Tracking Software Moose Rapids Technologies' False Alarm Tracking PMAM Corporations' False Alarm Management & Reduction Solution Purvis Gray Technology Group's False Alarm Reduction System Many CAD vendors also have some version of alarm tracking software as well.  Have fun comparing the options. If you are a member, FARA has published a guide to choosing software that may be helpful. If you know of other programs, please let me know so I can add them to the list.

Our unit has had a continuing problem with staff turnover.  Without a written employee handbook, this meant that what was be obvious to one person may be missed by another.  Besides creating an employee manual, I have been working to automate as many processes as possible.  Automating processes has the benefit of reducing human error and forgetfulness. Fortunately, CryWolf® has many tools to assist in this effort. Although CryWolf® has the ability to communicate with CAD (computer aided dispatch) systems, we are not taking advantage of this capability...yet.  This means that my staff must manually enter relevant information into CAD.  Unfortunately, a review of recent actions showed that some notes were added and some were not.  I find it especially disturbing that notes placing an address in No Response status remained in CAD long after the status had been removed in our office. The solution that I settled on was adding a pop up note that appears when ...

Our travels last weekend had us venturing through Columbus, Ohio.  Of course, I had to check out the local False Alarm ordinance.  My search began with a peek at  Municode .  This is one of the companies that helps local and state government organize (and create) their regulations. Fortunately for me,  Columbus is one of the cities that is listed with this service. I found the false alarm ordinance  for Columbus in the Business Regulation and Licensing section (title 5 chapter 597).  (If you are trying to find the ordinance for your area, quite often it can be found in the licensing or nuisance abatement sections but it can appear under business regulations or might even have a section all its own). Columbus has chosen the Licensing Section for the Department of Public Safety to administer the ordinance for the city.  This is fairly common across the country and is one way jurisdictions reduce costs.  It does make sense--issuing re...

My friends in Loudoun County (VA) sent word that the position of Assistant Alarm Administrator is posted here . If you live in the Metro DC/Northern Virginia area and are interested in false alarm reduction, take a look at the position.  No false alarm experience is necessary.

I pay a lot more attention these days to weather than I ever have previously.  Most false alarm units do not forgive alarms caused by weather because most of them are preventable.  However, some storms produce extended power outages or extreme conditions that may end up causing some alarms that just can't be prevented.  For example, a recent storm in our area resulted in very large hail that caused several glass break sensors in homes and businesses to send signals to the monitoring center which in turn led to a dispatch request. Anyway, the point is that I pay more attention to weather. I also document the conditions so that if there is a question about an alarm, I have some information on hand.  I shot this picture after a recent thunderstorm.  The rainbow was so vivid and we were able to see both ends where they seemed to hit the earth.  Unfortunately, I couldn't get that picture because I was in a car, but this is what I was able to capture when I foun...

The Mid-atlantic Region chapter of the False Alarm Reduction Association will hold its next meeting on September 14th.  After the meeting, a joint meeting with the Maryland Burglar and Fire Alarm Association will be held.  If you would like information about either of these events, email me and I will pass your information along to the organizers. If you have events of interest to alarm reduction units, and I will consider sharing them on this forum as well.

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...