Noting accounts is vitally important for ensuring our Central Station knows exactly how to handle your customers’ signals if your parameters are outside of normal protocols.
If the notes are permanent on the account, it should be placed on the actual account’s notes.
Sometimes, though, things happen that require temporary notes that supersede the normal protocols for a limited time. Often these can be alternate instructions due to vacations (both personal accounts and business ones), construction on personal or business properties, or even items being out of order and waiting for parts or service personnel.
This is where temp notes come into play.
Temp notes need effective and expiration dates and times. Unlike notes on the old Microkey that would stay visible forever and often had no end dates, so operators were prone to follow them whether they were still pertinent or not, the end date on these notes will remove and hide the note once the end time has lapsed, much like test times.
This WILL NOT delete the notes from the account permanently, simply archive it as no longer valid, but still able to be viewed if needed.
The key to ensuring our operators see these notes is your ability to require acknowledgment when the operators pull a signal.
As seen above, the little black box is what will require the operator to click a note acknowledgment.
If and when you choose to require the note to be acknowledged, you should also understand that this means every time a signal comes up, they’ll have to click the acknowledgment…so on trouble runaways or multiple zones going off, this pop up note will keep requiring acknowledgment until the operator has caught up with all the signals your customer’s alarm may have sent out prior to them receiving the signal. This is why we don’t recommend using this for anything except temporary and important notes.
Also, keep in mind that when you are creating alternate instructions like vacation notes, the more details the operator has, the better it is for your customers and the operators.
Strong Notes can look like this:
Customer ABC is out of the country on vacation. In the event of an alarm, call Tom Jones at 777-777-7777. He will have access to the home and has been given a temporary code of __________. If unable to reach, call Susie Smith, their daughter, at 888-888-8888. She knows the code and has keys to the home. If no answer or they are unsure, dispatch, then log.
There are times our business requires us to be flexible like during these vacations, or staffing changes, so clear, detailed instructions from you for those limited time periods are priceless to our team because we always want to do our best by you and your customers.