PSAP Lookup Service
Overview
The PSAP Lookup Service finds the emergency responders that serve a monitored location. A PSAP (Public-Safety Answering Point) is the 9-1-1 center responsible for an address, and for each installation this service looks up the police, fire, and medical agencies that cover that address — their name, phone number, and contact details — so SBN can dial the correct authority when an alarm needs to be reported.
On a fixed timer the service reads installations waiting for a lookup, sends each address (or its GPS coordinates, where available) to a lookup provider, and records the responder agencies it gets back against the installation. If no agency entries exist in the installation's action-plan call lists, no lookup is made; if no responder data can be found for an address, the service logs that result so it can be reviewed.
One of three lookup providers is selected in the service properties: Pitney Bowes or Intrado performs the actual address-to-agency lookup, or No Psap disables provider lookups. The service can also be limited to run only on chosen days and within a chosen time window, and can be capped on how many records it processes and retries each cycle.
The service requires a working SBN data-server connection; if the connection cannot be established at start-up, the service logs the reason and stops.
Service Manager
Instructions for installing and interacting with this service is found here.
Service Properties
Only properties specific to this service are listed here. Common service properties (SBN Server connection, Logging, SMTP) are found here.
Timer (In Seconds)
How often the service runs a lookup pass. The service waits this many seconds between cycles, then processes any installations waiting for a PSAP lookup.
Max Records
The maximum number of waiting installations the service pulls from the queue in a single pass. Limits how much work is done per cycle.
Max Retries
The maximum number of times the service retries a lookup that did not succeed before giving up on it.
Verbose Logging
When enabled, the service writes extra detail to its log, including the addresses sent for lookup and the responses received. Normally left off to keep the log concise; turn it on only when troubleshooting.
Lookup Service
Selects which provider performs the address-to-agency lookup. Pitney Bowes and Intrado each look up responder agencies for an address; No Psap disables provider lookups.
Username
The account name used to authenticate with the selected lookup provider. When Intrado is selected this field becomes Path to Certificate and holds the location of the client certificate used to connect to Intrado instead of a user name.
Password
The password used to authenticate with the selected lookup provider. When a certificate is used with Intrado, this is the certificate's password.
URL
The web-service address of the selected lookup provider that the service connects to.
When enabled, the service also resolves an installation's address to map coordinates using Google before processing it. Leave off unless coordinate lookup is required. When enabled, the accompanying Google URL and Google Password fields hold the address and key used for that lookup.
Limit Active Time
When enabled, the service only performs lookups on the selected days of the week and within the chosen time window. The day checkboxes and the Active From / Active To times define that schedule. When disabled, the service runs at all times.
Active From / Active To
The start and end of the daily time window during which the service performs lookups. Only used when Limit Active Time is enabled.