Overview

To help prevent last minute emergencies from multiple councils we recommend doing a trial run at least two weeks before your season starts.

This way, if you find issues with asset data, contacts or anything else, there is time to find a solution from Datalink or from your own IT department.

Planning

You should plan how to conduct your fire prevention program and how to use Crisisworks for fire prevention.

Will you be importing high-risk properties to inspect at the beginning of the season?

The FPN module provides a way to import high-risk properties to plan inspections, but doing so changes the way you plan your inspections, as it changes the number of planned inspections in the system.

You should learn how to use inspection areas and draft inspection workflow, and understand the best way to load inspections into the mobile app.

Do you have an FRV zone in your municipality?

Not all municipalities has FRV zones, but our advice is that those with an FRV zone need to make changes to their mail merge templates to accommodate different legislation, based on whether the property is in our out of the zone.

Will you be assigning officers to inspection areas?

Councils with many officers and large numbers of properties often allocate areas to officers. If this applies to your council, it is useful to set up those inspection areas in the system.

Will you be creating your merge letters within Crisisworks?

If you are creating your merge letters using Crisisworks, you will need to import your property owner database. If you are merging the letters in another system, you will need to understand how the export system works and confirm that the export format matches your external system’s import format.

Will you be setting up an integration between systems?

Some councils have integrated Crisisworks into their other business systems.

Is your device compatible?

Crisisworks supports Android and iOS phones and tablets using an app that needs to be downloaded from the app store. The web interface is not recommended for field inspections.

Do you have offline areas to inspect?

Offline inspections are a feature of the system, and there are some better practices we can advise in order to work best offline.

Configuration

Use the following guide to confirm the system is set up correctly for your use.

Create FPN events for the season

We recommend creating two events for your FPN season.

For each event:

Set up FRV and inspection areas

This applies only for councils that are within both MFB and FRV areas.

Check the form and workflow

The form has a series of questions that relate to the letter.

Confirm the mail merge template is configured correctly

If you are a repeat user, your mail merge template may be set up already, but still perform these tests to confirm no changes are needed.

If you have an FRV zone:

Edit your Notice Template if needed, and ask Datalink for help if needed.

Set up your user’s profiles

For each officer, set up their profile:

Note: when giving your officers competencies, choose based on the following:

• an “FPN Officer” can't assign records and can only edit records assigned to themselves

• an “FPN Coordinator” can assign and edit records other than their own

Set up your contractors

Contractors are used in Crisisworks for grass cutting and hazard clearance.

Set up any NEW contractors as follows:

Check existing contractors are set up as follows:

Import property owner data

If you are planning on using Crisisworks to generate the letters, you need to import property owner data.

Crisisworks has property data from Vicmap, which uses multiple codes to track properties. Most councils use PROPNUM as the assessment number, but other codes are available including CREFNO, SPI and PROP_PFI.

This import can either be handled manually, or set up automatically using our API.

Import high-risk properties for inspection (if required)

Some councils import a list of high-risk properties to ensure these properties are inspected during the season.

The following status codes can be used for the import:

• 3 for Draft

• 10 for 1st inspection required

• 20 for Hazard Exists

Some options for importing these properties:

Confirm your integrations are working as expected

If you have any integrations, you should test these ahead of the season, even if they worked fine last season.

Test manual exports and imports

Some councils export data from Crisisworks as part of their workflow when printing notices and integrating with other systems. For these councils:

Testing Plan

Following is a series of tests we recommend you carry out to familiarise yourself with the FPN module, and to confirm your devices, systems and data are working as expected.

Testing the web application

Set up your mobile users' devices

Each mobile user should perform these steps.

Testing the mobile app

Contractor testing

Training

Datalink has some training resources to help your staff and contractors use Crisisworks effectively.

For council staff:

For council contractors: