About Zone and Group Tags
Zone/Group* Tags help dispatchers be more selective in which responders receive broadcast alerts. They are especially useful if you have a large number of responders spread out across different geographic areas or with different attribute types (e.g., specialties, training, resources etc).
By using Zone/Group Tags when creating incidents, dispatchers can select which responders will receive broadcast alerts and which ones won’t.
*Please note: We use the terms “Zone” and “Group” interchangeably because they function the same way by allowing dispatchers to better organize their responders.
Watch the Zone/Group Tags video here or continue reading below:
Step 1: Setting Up Zone/Group Tags
To set up your Zone/Group Tags:
- Go to the Settings page on the Beacon Web Pages and scroll to the bottom where it says Zone Settings
- Enter the Name of your Zones/Groups
- Click Create
- You will see your Zone/Group appear
- You can edit or delete the tags using these buttons
When you’ve finished, go back to the Dashboard.
Step 2. Add Zone/Group Tags to Responders
Next you will want to add the correct tags to each Responder, so go back to Manage Responders page and select the Responder you want to assign tags to.
For each Responder, complete the following steps:
- Scroll to the bottom of the page and click on the Zones/Groups selector
- Select the correct tags from the pop up; they will then appear in the selector space
- Once you’ve selected all of the desired tags, click “Save”
Repeat these steps for every Responder. When you’ve finished, go back to the Dashboard.
After you’ve finished adding tags to all your Responders, go back to the Dashboard:
- Open the Resources Tab
- You should see all of the Zone/Group Tags appear under each Responder’s name
Step 3. Create an Incident Using Zone/Group Tags
To create an incident use Zone/Group Tags follow these steps:
- Open the Incidents Tab to the Create New Incident Panel
- Find and place the Incident Map Marker on the correct location
- Confirm that the correction location appear in the Address Bar
- Click on the Zones/Groups hyperlink
- A new Dialogue Box will appear
- Click on the Zone/Group Tag(s) that you want to receive the Broadcast Alert from the Available list
- The Selected Tag(s) will appear above here
- When you’ve selected the desired tag(s), click the Select button
- After closing the Dialogue Box, the Selected Tags will appear here on the Create New Incident form
Additional Notes
Here are some other points to keep in mind when using the Zone/Group Tags:
- Zone/Group Tags are very useful for specifying which Responders will receive Broadcast Alerts and which won’t
- When no Zone/Group Tags are selected, all Available Responders will receive the Broadcast Alert
- When one or more Zone/Group Tags are selected, only the Responders with those tags will receive the Broadcast Alert
- When all Zone/Group Tags are selected, Available Responders with no tags will not receive the Broadcast Alert
- If you select specific Zone/Group Tags, you can still assign Responders that don’t have those tags to an incident
- For example, if you Broadcast an Alert to Responders tagged with Zone-X, you can also assign a Responder tagged with Zone-Y
- When using Zone/Group Tags to organize responders by geographic area, tags should be given to Responders according to where they can respond, not where they live
- For example, if a Responder lives in Zone-A, but works in Zone-B, and is able to respond to Zone-C, then all three Zone Tags should be given to that Responder
- Zone/Group tags have no direct relation to Zones that are drawn using the map editing tools
