Communication in FireServiceRota

There are several ways to communicate with other users within your organisation in FireServiceRota, and we will describe them next. If you have any questions, don't hesitate to reach out to us [e-mail]

Messages

If you go to your inbox (messages section in the dropdown shown under your name)

You'll be able to manage incoming messages as well as send (this is also available in the app).

When composing a new message, the recipients you have available will be the users that are part of the stations, clusters or regions you have access to. For example, if you are a member of the On-call cluster, you'll be able to send messages to all people within that cluster. If you only have access to your station, then you'll only be able to send messages to your peers in the station.

You can filter recipients by station, skill, team or watch, or even whether they have a schedule or not (plannable/not plannable). Also, you can start typing someone's name and you'll be able to select specific people you'd like to send the message.

You can add a subject to the message and then you'll need to select what type of message this is. The priority will decide the channels used to send this message to the recipients.

There are three types:

• Prio1 (only communicator and higher roles)
  • Depending on each user's profile, this message will be received as a push notification, email, SMS and/or pager alert. It is limited to 147 characters.
  • Note that SMS cost £0.09 each.
• Prio2 (default)
  • This sends the message as an email and as an internal message within the system. Although it is not set as a push notification, it is still visible in the Messages section in the app.
• Prio3
  • A message within the system, only visible when going to your inbox section on the website or the app. This does not send an email to the user.

Last, you'll be able to add attachments and polls to your message. Polls are described later on in this post.

Announcements (only communicator and higher roles)

You can post announcements to be shown on the home page (dashboard) for every user. These announcements can be station, cluster or region-wide. 

You can create them by clicking the paper icon next to the "Announcements" title, or when clicking the Station menu item, one of the options in the dropdown is "Announcements" (use this at a cluster and region level if you want to post an announcement for all the stations within a cluster or region)

These announcements can be visible for a specific period of time or indefinitely, and you can add attachments, some widgets, polls, attachments, etc. 

If you want this announcement to show in your station display, keep the "Show on station monitor" option on.

Polls (only communicator and higher roles)

These can be used to ask quick questions with specific options to users in your station, cluster or region.

These polls can be part of an announcement or a message. You can create them directly in each of these, or you can create a poll by going to the Station menu item and clicking on the Polls section (same applies to Cluster and Region menu).

The difference between an announcement and a message is the people you are able to reach. The announcement will be shown to all people within a station/cluster/region context while in a message you can filter (as described above in the messages section) by skills, stations, team or watch, or selecting specific people.

The question asked will be in the announcement or message body. And then you can create up to 5 options for the poll. 

You can review polls results by going to the polls section, and clicking on the poll:

As you can see, you can also send messages to people who have selected each option by clicking on the message icon next to the option or send a reminder for people who haven't voted.