Event Dispatch Console Project
From UtahRadio
Revision as of 17:17, 6 August 2009 by RyanSimpkins (Talk | contribs)
These are just notes right now, playing with the idea.
Introduction
This document describes what features would be required for a custom event dispatch system. This system would be used by Utah Radio volunteers listening to their scanners, and would send alerts of important events to the community at large (as a free public service).
Current System
Currently there are two ways alerts are sent by Utah Radio volunteers to the community:
- Radio Reference Forums
Goals
The goals of a custom system would be:
- Reduce/eliminate event reporting lag time.
- Right now people are getting alerts 10-15 minutes after an event happens. Using custom technologies it should be possible to redue that time significantly.
- Encourage (but not strictly enforce) standard message formatting.
- Permit volunteers to submit events via a web page, e-mail, or SMS (cell phone).
- Ideally, update all sources at once (web site, e-mail, twitter, RR forum, RSS feed).
- Have ability to send different messages to different sources.
- Keep a log of who did what, when.
- Permit 'follow up' information to be attached to a previous alert.
- Easy to use.
- Possibly add the ability to collaborate with other dispatch volunteers real time.
- This could be done with a chat system on a web page, for example.
- Restrict access so that only approved volunteers can post everywhere at once.
- Other people can still post to the RR forums or twitter directly if they already have accounts).
- Interfaces with RR database (where possible) to get latest meta data.
- Support 400-1000 followers.
- Support 5-10 'posts' per day.
- Support 1-5 volunteer dispatchers.