Help for Mobile App Users

This is because of the Transport Modes of the different Responders.

Beacon will allow at least one vehicle capable of patient transport (e.g., ambulance, car, boat) to be assigned to each incident when you broadcast alerts. So, if you requested a maximum of one responder, and the first one to reply was on foot, if a car replied after, Beacon would still accept it.

This is an artifact of having originally designed Beacon exclusively for ambulance services and fire departments. In a future v5.0, it will be resolved.

No, your mobile phone can’t have two SIM cards in it. Pick one SIM number to register your phone and remove the other when using Beacon.

To switch your Beacon account from DATA messages to SMS messages when you don’t have internet to connect to the app, send an SMS with 789 to your Beacon number (ask your admin if you don’t have it saved in your contacts). This will change your phone’s settings from DATA to SMS within Beacon and then resend the last Beacon message to you.

Please watch this video to see how it works in practice.

You can also read more about all the SMS Codes here

If you want to change your Messaging configuration from DATA to SMS, follow these steps:

1. Go to the Settings screen in your app
2. Click on the Messaging option
3. Select SMS from the pop-up
4. Close the app without switching to any other screens in the app

The Beacon mobile app requires data for all screens, so if you change your settings to SMS and then go to another screen in the app, Beacon will change you back to DATA so you can see the other screens. To avoid this, close the app immediately after you switch from DATA to SMS.

Or, more easily, close the app and send a text message with 789 to the Beacon gateway number (see #8 in the diagram here).

We’re seeing different maps

It’s possible your Responders are seeing  a random map in their mobile app that’s different than your catchment area.

To make sure Responders are seeing the same map as Dispatchers are, they have to be in the same data center.

The best way to ensure this is to add your Responders to the website before they register their phones through the mobile app.

If Responders register their phones through the mobile app first, they are put in a generic Data Center, called “Registration”. The map they see in their app is coming from the Registration Data Center

To resolve this:

Please send us an email to [email protected] with the Responder’s Name and Phone Number, and the Data Center you want them registered in. Or, if you have lots of Responders with the same issue, we can also give you access to the Registration Data Center where you can find your Responders and transfer them to your own Data Center.

If you can’t locate the incident marker on the map, that’s likely because the Dispatcher did not add an incident marker when they created the incident.

If you can’t locate the incident marker on the map and/or if you can’t view the Incident Card, the Dispatcher did not add an incident marker to the map when they created the incident. Send them a chat message to inform them and ask them to re-create the incident with a map marker.

You, or someone in your agency account, is likely still using the Beacon mobile app v3.3.

Log out, delete v3.3 and install v4.0 for Android or iOS.

Link

Both Android and iOS have implemented restrictions on how mobile apps can receive push notifications (i.e., “Alerts”) that effect different devices in different ways. If you are having problems receiving push notifications, follow these instructions. If you are still having issues, please contact us at [email protected] to help you resolve the issue.

For iOS users:

1. When you first install the Beacon app, make sure to give Beacon permissions to send you Push Notifications (see: Image 1 below)
2. To confirm you’ve given permissions to Beacon, go to the Notifications screen in your Settings and make sure everything is set correctly (see: Image 2 below)
3. Confirm you have the latest version of the Beacon app installed
4. Confirm you have the latest version of iOS installed
5. If all of these have been taken care of and you still aren’t receiving Push Notifications, restart your device by powering the entire phone off and then powering it back on

For Android users:

Admittedly, it’s not easy to test every Android device as thoroughly as iOS because: A) There are hundreds of different devices that use the Android operating system, and B) Device manufacturers are able to change the Android operating system however they want, resulting in different devices handling notifications in different ways.

Fortunately, most Androids don’t have problems with push notifications, but we have seen that, in general, the cheaper Android devices are more likely to have problems with push notifications (as well as most Huawei devices). If you run into problems, here are some steps to take to troubleshoot (see images below for more details):

1. Go to the Settings screen and click on the “App Notifications” screen, then select the Beacon app
2. You should see two different types of notification options:
   • “Other” which handles chat messages
   • “Siren” which handles alert messages
3. Select each Notification type and adjust the settings to look like images 4 & 5 below
   • Please note that every Android device has different Settings so you may not see the same display as is pictured below (this is from a Samsung Galaxy, which never has problems with Push Notifications). Whatever the case, make sure you are changing the notifications to be “Urgent”, to always display the badge, to always vibrate, and to override “Do Not Disturb”
4. If you continue to have issues, here are some other settings to check (We told you — this is far more complicated than it should be. See the images below for more detail):
   • Settings>Notifications:
     • Turn off Notification Snoozing
     • Turn off Hiding Silent Notifications
   • Settings>Lock Screen
     • Turn on Notifications on Lock Screen
     • Turn on Wake Screen for Notifications
   • Settings>Battery Optimization
     • Don’t optimize battery use for Beacon
   • Settings>Adaptive Notifications
     • Turn off
5. If none of these solutions work, then we have run into the limitations of Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM, the “cross-platform messaging solution that lets you reliably send messages at no cost.“)
   • According to the FCM site: “The Android framework advises that apps that have been stopped (not in background) should not be started without explicit user interaction. FCM follows this recommendation and thus does not deliver messages to stopped apps.”
   • What this means is that in order to receive Push Notifications from Beacon, you’ll have to keep the app open in the background.
   • Fortunately, we’ve only seen this happen on the low-end Android devices, but at least you now know. But if you’re still having problems, please send us an email at [email protected] and we’ll try to help you resolve it
   • We wish it were easier to straighten out, but we know we’re not alone — other apps built for emergency services are having the same exact problems.

For Mobile App Users

Both Android and iOS devices have a number of restrictions in place to make sure that mobile app users are only sharing their location when desired. The following criteria have to be met in order for you to see the location of other responders in your mobile app:

1. The responder has to have “Supervisor View” permissions which are given when the responder is first registered by a dispatcher
2. The responder has to give their device permission to share their location with Beacon
3. The responder has to set their GPS Tracking settings to “Always” or “Only during incidents” in the mobile app (watch this video or read this page to learn more)

Once those criteria have been met, then the mobile app user must have their phone turned on and the Beacon mobile app in the foreground to share their most recent location.

*Note: If you click on a responder’s icon in the sidebar of the mobile app, and it says “Location Unavailable” that happens for two reasons:

1. The responder is using Beacon via SMS or
2. The responder has not met the criteria listed above

For Web App Users

If responders comply with the criteria above, then dispatchers will be able to see the last reported location of the responder. This may or may not be the most recent location — if a responder doesn’t have the phone on, the app in the foreground and/or hasn’t changed their GPS Tracking settings to “Always” or “Only during incidents”, then the dispatcher will not be able to see the most recent location (even if they click the Ping button on the home screen map).

We’re sorry to belabor this point, but we have gotten enough complaints from users saying “The web app isn’t showing my current location”, when the reality is that they don’t understand how GPS Tracking works. Please keep in mind that Android and iOS do not allow mobile apps to track a user’s location all the time no matter what. Permissions have to be granted, the phone has to be on, the app has to be in the foreground, and the settings have to be configured correctly. (For example, if the responder allows Beacon to track their location “Only During Incidents“, and there is no active incident, then their current location will not be displayed until they are assigned to an incident and they interact with Beacon.

Similarly, if responders install the app for the first time, and they have set their GPS Tracking settings in the app to “Only During Incidents“, their location will not appear until they have been assigned to an incident and they interact with Beacon.

To resolve this, try these steps:

1. Tell the responder to temporarily change their GPS Tracking settings to “Always”, and then ask them to click the MyLocation button on the home screen of their app
2. Create a new incident and assign the responder to that incident. Once they reply to a message, Beacon will update their location (assuming they have followed all the other steps)

We wish it more straightforward but, like Push Notifications, there are restrictions placed on mobile apps by Android and iOS that require developers and users to meet certain criteria. At least in the case of GPS Tracking, this is a good thing for protecting privacy. But once you understand the criteria and educate your users, we are certain you’ll see the GPS Tracking works quite well.

There are several things that could cause Beacon to skip messages:

1. Technical Error: If you’re using Beacon by SMS, it might be because of the local infrastructure, for example:
   1. The mobile phone signal was bad
   2. Your telecom carrier refused the message (this can sometimes happen when sending messages internationally)
2. User Error: You may be having an issue on your end if:
   1. Your SMS inbox is full
   2. You don’t have credits on your phone
   3. Your phone has two SIM cards installed (it only can only have one installed, the same one that’s registered with Beacon)

It’s also possible that you may not understand the sequence of messages that Beacon sends. Depending on Beacon’s settings and how the incident goes, you may or may not receive all of the messages that you’re expecting.

Here are a couple resources to help you figure it out:

1. Download the Responder Type practice pdf to walk through each sequence and see how the messages can change
2. Visit this page to see a video and learn the difference between Broadcast Alerts and Manual Assignment

Incidents can be closed in three ways:

1. All the responders complete the incident
2. The dispatcher cancels the incident manually
3. The Confirmation Windows close*

If you’re using Beacon to run simulations, it’s very likely you’re going to move through the incident very quickly — faster than in real life. This will result in you completing the incident before the Confirmation Windows close, so the incident will stay open until the Confirmation Windows close.

*To learn more about the importance of Confirmation Windows, see: Dispatch Automation on the Settings page

If you’ve ever used Uber or Lyft, you know that these ride-sharing apps use GPS to find the driver that’s closest to you, so it makes sense that Beacon should be able to do that, too, right?

Not exactly.

There are several reasons why Beacon doesn’t use the GPS location of Responders to decide who’s closest:

1. Not all Responders have smartphones and/or Internet connectivity all the time. If Beacon only relied on GPS locations, then Responders using Beacon via SMS would never get assigned to incidents because Beacon wouldn’t know their location
2. Beacon doesn’t know where you are unless you have your phone turned on and the Beacon app open in the foreground. As soon as you turn the phone off, lock the phone screen, put the app in the background or swipe close it, Android and iOS no longer allow apps to track your location. As a result, once the Beacon mobile app is no longer open and in the foreground, Beacon only knows your last reported location, which may or may not be your current location.
3. Uber and Lyft drivers do it to get paid, while many Beacon users are volunteers. This makes a big difference: When an Uber or Lyft driver gets assigned to a call, they usually take it because that’s how they make money. If you’re using Broadcast Alerts in Beacon, it’s very likely you’re working with volunteer Responders. And as we all know is the case with volunteers, they often get alerts for emergency incidents that they don’t respond to — even if they’re the closest person to the incident. So, telling the closest Responders to an incident that they’re needed, only to learn that they’re not going to respond, is just a huge waste of time.
4. Hailing a taxi is a fairly simple transaction; when someone asks for a taxi, they only need one vehicle to come pick them up. Emergency dispatching is very different. For starters, not all emergencies are the same. If someone slips and falls, you may only need one ambulance to respond. But for a motor vehicle collision with multiple victims, you’ll likely need more resources. While it’s possible in theory to automate all of the different response combinations that exist, we’ll be very impressed to see it when it happens. Until then, we’ll rely on Dispatchers to figure out the type of resources they’ll need for each incident, and then let Responders decide if they can or can’t go.

The bottom line is: Don’t be fooled by how “easy” technological solutions look at face value. It may be easy to compare emergency response apps to pizza delivery apps, but in reality, it’s a lot more complicated than that. Anybody who wants to make that comparison has never worked in an emergency service.