Action Plans

An action plan is the customer's script for an emergency: who to call, in what order, with which agencies. Every installation has at least one plan and can have any number; each zone names the plan its alarms follow (the Zones module), and when the operator treats the alarm, the plan's call list is what Dispatch presents (the Dispatch module). Plans live on the Action Plans tab of Service/Data Entry (#559). This module builds the plans in the order that keeps data entry short: create the installation's plans first, put every contact and agency on plan 0, then place them on the other plans from the call list.

How the module progresses

1. Read an installation's plans, see which zones use them, and create the standard set on your own.
2. Put the contacts and agencies on plan 0 — codewords, passcards, sequence.
3. Place contacts and agencies on every other plan from the call list — one grid, every plan's sequence.
4. Route differently by date — temporary replacement and substitute plans.
5. Keep a contact from being called at the wrong times.

1. Read an installation's plans, then create the standard set

Task: list an installation's plans, say for any zone which plan its alarms will follow, and create the standard plan set on a new installation.

The tab and the details window. The Action Plans tab lists the installation's plans; Get Record [ALT+F1] (or a double-click) opens the Action Plan Details window — three panes: the plan itself with any temporary replacement or substitute plans (top), the agencies and contacts on the plan (lower left), and the zones that use the plan (lower right). That third pane is the Zones tab's Action Plan column read from the plan's side.

Plan 0 is the starting point. Every installation needs at least one plan; plan 0 is the default a zone falls back to when it names nothing else. Give it the call list every alarm should get when nothing more specific applies, and reserve numbered plans for the situations that differ — fire, medical, holdup.

Best practice: one numbering scheme for the whole centre. Decide once what each plan number means and use it on every installation, whether or not a given installation needs them all — plan 2 is the fire plan everywhere, plan 6 medical everywhere. Data entry then goes by rote, an operator reading "plan 2" on any alarm knows what is coming before it opens, and templates and Copy Zone/Plan carry the numbers across intact. Every Branch TRAIN installation carries the same seven plans:

Create the plans first, empty. A new installation comes with plan 0 only. Add the rest of the standard set before you enter a single contact — New [F3] on the Action Plans tab opens Action Plan Details in New mode with the next plan number filled in; change it if the set says otherwise, because the number cannot be changed after Save. Copy Current Record clones an existing plan under a new number when a plan is nearly a repeat. Leave the contact and agency rows empty for now.

Steps (new plan):

1. On the Action Plans tab, choose New [F3].
2. Check the plan number against the standard set; enter the description.
3. Give the plan its instructions: type the Text, and select a Msg ID where a register message applies — watch Description, Text and Std fill in.
4. Save [ENTER]. Repeat for each plan in the set.

Text and Msg ID. Two header fields on the plan carry the instructions the operator reads in Dispatch:

1. Text — the plan's own free-form instructions, typed on the plan: what the operator needs to know about this installation in this situation that the call list cannot say — "rear gate code 4471, dog on the premises". Dispatch shows it as the action plan text.
2. Msg ID — a message picked from the central register, Standard Text (#1828), where the centre writes each message once — an ID, a description, the text the operator reads, per branch or dealer when needed. Select the ID and SBN fills the plan's Description, Text and Std box from the register. Edit the register and every plan that names the ID follows.

Standard or non-standard is decided in the register. Each register message carries a Standard flag; the plan's Std box only reports it. What "standard" means is the centre's own convention — most use standard for the company-wide instruction for a situation and non-standard for messages written for particular customers — and Dispatch tells them apart: each has its own indicator — Standard Text or Non-Standard Text — flashing red until the operator reads it. Reading all of them is the Dispatch module.

A plan carries more than that. At awareness level: a plan can email or page its contacts automatically when a signal arrives, and delay queue entry with a timer — the Action Plans reference covers these plan-level fields.

Worked example (Branch TRAIN): open MILLER (TRA-00002), list its plans and say what each number is for, then Get plan 0 and read the three panes aloud: who is on it, and which zones send their alarms here.

Guided practice: on your own residential installation, create the standard set — plan 0 is already there; add the rest with their descriptions, give plan 2 FIRE the register's STANDARD FIRE Msg ID and plan 0 a one-line Text of your own, and read back what filled in on the fire plan and whether its Std box is checked. Then use the lower-right pane to answer: which plan does the fire zone follow, and which plans have no zones yet?

Independent practice: create the same standard set on your commercial installation, then answer for MILLER, from the Action Plans tab alone and without opening the Zones tab: "who gets called if the motion detector trips?" — plan, then names in sequence.

2. Put the contacts and agencies on plan 0

Task: enter every contact and every responder once, on plan 0 — contacts with codeword, passcard and sequence; agencies picked from the lookup.

Plan 0 is where everyone is entered — once. Every contact and every agency the installation will ever call goes on plan 0, even one that only the fire plan will use; the other plans get their sequences from the call list, so nobody types a name twice. Rows live in the plan's Passcard Holder and Agency table, and the Sequence number interleaves contacts and agencies into one calling order.

Contacts are typed. In Change or New mode, click into a blank Name cell and complete the contact: name, up to three phones, the Sequence, and the Codeword if this person may authorise on the installation — the codeword is what a caller must say to prove themselves. Contacts can carry a Start Date (not yet active) and an expiry (Delete/Exp Date) — a contact can be scheduled in and out of a plan.

Agencies are picked, not typed. Double-click an empty Agency Type cell and choose the type — police, fire, medical, patrol. The lookup that follows offers the agencies linked to the installation's postal code (the Zip Codes link from the Agencies module); pick one and SBN fills the ID, name and phone. Zooming on an agency row shows the register's full record — address, all phones, comment lines.

Passcards are the identity. A passcard number plus its extension identifies the holder across SBN; the Passcards check box on the Basics tab switches the feature on for the installation. A contact typed on plan 0 becomes a passcard holder, and the same passcard can then sit on any other installation — pick the passcard instead of typing the person again, and the name, phones and codeword follow it. Change the phone number once and every installation that carries the passcard sees the change; the Ins menu in the contact details lists them all — the keyholder company, the property manager, the family member with three properties.

Contacts an installation borrows. Two Basics-tab settings add other installations' contacts to this installation's call list at alarm time, without copying anything:

1. Call List Account — another account whose plan contacts are merged into this installation's Dispatch call list (the referenced installation's plan with the same number is used). Call List First puts them ahead of the installation's own contacts; otherwise they follow.
2. Dealer First — the dealer's own call-list account (the Default Account in Dealer Profiles, #1537) merged in and listed first. With both boxes checked the order is dealer, then Call List Account, then the installation's own.

Use them for contacts that belong to a group of installations rather than to one — a guard company, the dealer's duty desk — so the group's list is maintained once.

Authority level. The Level says what the holder may change: 1 or 2 may make schedule changes; 0 may not — 0 is the usual level for agencies. It gates real behaviour: open/close schedule changes check it.

Steps:

1. Open plan 0 in Change mode.
2. Contacts: click a blank Name cell; enter name, phones, codeword, Sequence.
3. Agencies: double-click a blank Agency Type cell, pick the type, pick the agency from the lookup, give it a Sequence.
4. Save [ENTER] — then Get a contact to zoom into its full details.

Worked example (Branch TRAIN): on your residential installation's plan 0, enter the two contacts from your workbook row — names, phones, codewords, passcards from the sheet's passcard series, sequence 1 and 2 — then the seeded training police agency at 3 and the seeded training fire agency at 4. Plan 2 FIRE gets its own order later, from the call list.

Guided practice: zoom into your first contact and read the Basic tab: which fields would matter to an operator at 3 AM, and what does the Medical column's flag on the plan row promise before the zoom? Then zoom on the police row and check the comment lines and response time survived from the register.

Independent practice: attach your first contact to your commercial installation as well, same passcard, then open the contact from either installation, read the Ins list, and say in one sentence why the customer now updates this person's phone number only once. Put the police agency you created in the Agencies module on that installation's plan 0 — if the lookup does not offer it, name the two places you would check, in order, fix the cause, and prove the lookup now offers it. Then on your residential installation's Basics tab set Call List Account to your commercial installation with Call List First checked, and write down the call order Dispatch will show for a plan-0 alarm, and what changes if the box is cleared.

3. Place contacts and agencies on every other plan from the call list

Task: give each contact and agency its sequence on every plan that calls them, from one grid — and re-sequence any plan from the same place.

View Call List [SHIFT+F8] opens a grid of every contact and agency on plan 0 across all the installation's plans — one row per contact or agency, one column per plan, the cell holding that row's sequence on that plan. In Change [F2], type a sequence number in a plan's column and SBN adds that row to the plan; a blank cell means the plan does not call that row. Renumber Contact Sequences [ALT+F1] rewrites a plan's sequence numbers cleanly after rows moved, and Copy Current Record / Paste copies one plan's whole sequence column onto another.

Steps:

1. On the Action Plans tab, choose View Call List [SHIFT+F8], then Change [F2].
2. In each plan's column, enter a sequence number for every contact and agency that plan calls; leave the rest blank.
3. Save [ENTER] — open one of the plans and confirm the rows arrived in sequence.

Worked example (Branch TRAIN): on your residential installation, open the call list: your two contacts and two agencies sit on plan 0 in sequence, with blank cells under every other plan. Under plan 2 FIRE, give the fire department 1 and your first contact 2, Save, and read the fire plan's details to see both arrive.

Guided practice: fill the remaining plans of the standard set from the grid in the order each plan's purpose suggests — police first on DURESS, contacts only on OPEN/CLOSE — then swap the two contacts' order on plan 0 with Renumber, Save, and verify in the plan details that every sequence followed.

Independent practice: the customer says "for fire, call my husband before the fire brigade arrives at position one — actually, no: brigade first, then both of us, mobile numbers first." Make the fire plan match, and defend the final sequence numbers from the call-list grid.

4. Route differently by date — replacement and substitute plans

Task: make a plan hand over to another plan for a vacation, a weekday, or a holiday — and predict which plan answers on a given date.

Temporary replacement is for short absences: in the plan's details, set Replace to another plan with a start and end date/time. The end date defaults to 14 days after the start and cannot exceed it. A replacement can be reused up to three times, and yearly/monthly recurrence exists where enabled.

Permanent substitute is for patterns: the substitute grid marks weekdays (double-click to set the X), a From/To time (blank means 0:00), and the plan to substitute (Replace Plan Index). The grid's columns 1–9 are holiday day types: holidays are defined in Scheduled Holidays (#1746), dated in the Holiday Calendar (#1747), and a substitute plan marked for a day type answers on every holiday of that type.

Precedence: SBN checks the temporary Replace field first; only when it is empty does the substitute grid apply.

Worked example (Branch TRAIN): on your residential installation, set a one-week temporary replacement of plan 0 by your fire plan — start today — and read back the end date SBN offers.

Guided practice: give plan 0 a permanent substitute for Mondays 08:00–17:00, then answer: which plan answers next Monday at 12:00 while the temporary replacement from the worked example is still running — and why?

Independent practice: the customer wants their holiday coverage plan to answer on every statutory holiday. Lay out the full chain — day type, calendar, grid — and state what happens on a holiday that falls on a Monday given your guided-practice substitute.

5. Keep a contact from being called at the wrong times

Task: enter a contact's do-not-call windows and predict how Dispatch shows them.

Call times are exclusions. Each contact carries three Call Time lines; each line selects days and a time window in which the contact must not be called. During an exclusion window the contact grays out in the Dispatch call list — visible, but marked unavailable. There is no "available" schedule: availability is what remains after the exclusions.

Steps:

1. Zoom into the contact from the plan.
2. Change mode; on a Call Time line, mark the days and enter the window's start and end time.
3. Use the second and third lines for windows the first cannot express.
4. Save [ENTER].

Worked example (Branch TRAIN): your first contact works nights and must only be called weekdays 08:00–17:00. Enter it as exclusions: one line for weekdays 17:00–08:00, one for the whole weekend — then read the lines back as "when will Dispatch gray this contact?"

Guided practice: for each of these moments — Tuesday 14:00, Saturday 14:00, Thursday 06:30 — say whether your contact is callable, from the exclusion lines alone.

Independent practice: an operator reports a contact "always grayed out". The customer swears they said "call me any time except Sunday morning". Predict what the three Call Time lines probably look like, and write the lines that express what the customer actually wanted.

6. Quick reference

One-liners: entry order — create the plans, contacts and agencies on plan 0, place them on the other plans from the call list · one plan-number scheme for the whole centre · plan 0 is the fallback for zones that name no plan · plan Text = action plan text (typed on the plan); Msg ID = a Standard Text (#1828) register message, Std flag comes from the register — Dispatch lights a separate Standard Text / Non-Standard Text indicator for each · the zones pane in plan details is the Zones tab's Action Plan column read backwards · passcard + extension is the shared identity across installations — pick the passcard, don't retype the person · Basics tab Call List Account / Dealer First merge another account's or the dealer's contacts into the call list at alarm time (Call List First = ahead of the installation's own) · Level 0 = agencies, 1–2 = may change schedules · agency lookup offers agencies linked to the installation's postal code · temporary Replace beats the substitute grid; 14-day cap · Call Time lines are exclusions — gray in Dispatch while active · holiday day types come from #1746, dates from #1747.