Emergency Alerts Overview

Version 4.1 of the Tango Tango app adds support for Emergency Alerts. Emergency Alerting allows users to declare an emergency situation from the app. Users that have been provisioned as subscribers to feeds that are mapped to an organization’s emergency alert source will be notified via their app, or web-based admin portal. This notification will be prominent, with an alert tone and banners on the user interface. Emergency Alert notifications can be configured to break through a device’s silence or focus mode settings.

Summary

• To enable the emergency button in the app, navigate to: Alerts - Settings (top right gear icon) - Show Emergency Alert  Button
• To activate an emergency alert from the app, quickly tap the emergency alert button 4 times.
• Distribution of declared emergency alerts are controlled by an organization’s Emergency Alert source and the source’s rules. The rules determine which feeds receive the declared alerts. Feeds contain a list of users, who will receive all alerts sent to the feed.
• An organization can have only one Emergency Alert source.
• Alert distribution for a declared emergency will be governed only by the Emergency Alert source in the declaring user’s organization.
• Groups allow a single org to have emergency alerts that are sent to different sets of users, depending on which user declared the emergency.
• The user that declared an emergency, and any admin portal user receiving the alert, can clear the emergency alert, which resolves the alert and stops notification to all users that received it.
• Any app user can silence the alert, which suppresses notification sounds on their device only.
• Emergency alerts cannot be declared from the admin portal.
• When an alert is received, the admin portal will show a prominent notice on all pages, along with a link to view the alert on the portal’s map.
• When an alert is received, the app will show a prominent notice and play an alert tone.
• App users can declare an emergency using the emergency button on the following Bluetooth devices: AINA Voice Responder, Tango Tango Bluetooth button

Configuring Emergency Alerts

Emergency Alerts are configured in the Tango Tango admin portal, by admin-level users.

• Begin by creating an Emergency Alert source, if one does not already exist. Navigate to Alerts - Sources, then click Add Alert Source.
• In the right panel, enter a name for the source (e.g. “Emergency Alert”) and select “Emergency Alerts” for the type.
• Set Feed to “Create New Feed”.
• Click Save.

💡 Note:  The Emergency Alert source may have been previously created automatically by the Tango Tango system. If your organization already has one, you may skip the steps above.

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If your organization only needs a single set of users to receive emergency alerts, the next step is to simply add all the users to the emergency alert feed, which was automatically created when you created the source in the previous step.

• Navigate to Alerts - Feeds and click on the emergency alert feed.
• In the Users section, click Add Other Users.
• Select the users that you want to add.
• Click Submit when you are done.

Using Groups

If your organization needs alerts routed to different sets of users, depending on which user declared the emergency, use Groups. Create a separate group for each set of users and for each group, assign the feeds for that group.

To create a new group, navigate to Groups and click on Add Group.

Enter a name for the group, then click Save.

In the configuration page for the new group, click the Emergency Alerts tab and then click Add Feeds. Here, you can create new feeds or add existing ones.

Select the feeds to assign to the group, by clicking on the feed’s icon, or click Create New to create a new feed for the group. Then click Submit.

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💡 IMPORTANT: Don’t forget to add the required users to each feed. The rules and group configurations specify only which feeds will receive alerts. The feed’s list of subscribed users determine which actual users will receive alerts.

Viewing Emergency Alert Routing

To understand how Emergency Alert routing is configured for your organization, navigate to the Emergency Alert source and click Rules. This page shows how each group is configured to route to each feed.

In the rule settings shown above, you can see that:

• If a user from the Team A group declares an emergency, the alerts will be sent to the feed called Team A Feed.
• Because of the Default Rule, an emergency declared by any user that is not a member of the Team A group will be sent to the feed called Emergency Alert Inc2.

💡 Additional rules can be added by performing the Group configuration described in the earlier section. Alert routing rules based on the triggering user cannot be added directly from the Rules page.

App Settings

This section describes app settings for emergency alerts and the operation of alerts within the app. Note that emergency alerts are supported in app version 4.1 and later.

Enabling Emergency Alert Button

By default, the emergency alert button, used to declare an emergency, is hidden in the Tango Tango app. To enable it:

• Navigate to Alerts
• Click Settings (gear icon in upper right)
• On the Alert Settings page, in the Emergency Alerts section, click Show Emergency Alert Button
• To allow incoming alerts to break through the device’s Do Not Disturb settings, enable the Notify in Do Not Disturb setting.

💡 If a user activates an emergency from their app, but alerts have not yet been configured in the portal, an emergency will be declared, but no other users will receive it.

The emergency button can be moved to any corner of the app display by dragging it.

Location Reporting

The location of a user declaring an emergency will be sent to all other users receiving the alert, provided that the user has previously granted location sharing OS privileges to the Tango Tango app (i.e. during app installation). Emergency alert location reporting is not dependent on any app-based settings.

Browser Settings

An activated emergency alert will play a notification sound in the Tango Tango admin portal. However, web browsers have various means of restricting web pages from playing sounds. When you first load the Tango Tango admin portal in a browser tab, the notice shown below in the bottom right corner may be displayed, instructing you how to allow your browser to play sounds.

This notification also displays instructions on how to permanently allow Tango Tango to play sounds. Users needing to reliably receive alert notification sounds should follow these instructions for their browser type.

Alert Notifications and Response

From the Tango Tango app, a user declares and emergency by tapping the emergency button rapidly 4 times.

Upon activation, the app shows a prominent alert banner. The push notification badge may also be visible. Tap View to see the alert details. Pressing Clear ends the emergency for all users. The alert sounds may also be silenced by tapping the push notification or viewing the alert.

💡 An active PTT call will silence the alert notification sounds, so that the PTT call can be heard.

Any app user can view details of the emergency by tapping the View button or on the push notification badge.

In the admin portal, an active emergency is shown by a banner, which will be displayed on all portal pages.

The alert banner shows a View on Map button, which if clicked, will display the map page and highlight the alert location. If more than one alert is active, the right sidebar will display them all. Clicking on one will show the selected alert on the map.