By Toby Prescott, Director of Development
(This is the 4th and final in a series of blogs about the upcoming update to ManitouNEO, and what new features and improvements will be included.)
ManitouNEO was released to customers at the beginning of 2017, and since then, I’ve enjoyed talking to our early adopters to get feedback on both the features they find the most useful and the improvements we can make. From that feedback, the Bold development team has been diligently working on version 2.1, and we are excited about the new features that will be offered in the very near future! In this blog series, I’ve been talking about these features and improvements, so you can get an idea what to expect. In the last three weeks, we discussed Alarm Handling Improvements, Information Improvements, and Video Improvements that are forthcoming. This week is a little different. We are looking at all the other changes that don’t exactly fall into one specific category.
First, a couple of new reports have been added:
Authority Response Time – A new system report, similar to the Alarm Response Report, but now focused on Authority response times, has been created. This shows the time from the initial alarm, to the operator dispatch, and then to the Authority on-site.
Call History by Authority – A new system report to show all calls made to an Authority over a period of time. This will list all Authorities in the system, even if a call has not been made. This provides the ability to audit the authority list in Manitou periodically to see which Authorities are being used, and how frequently.
Next, some schedule improvements were made:
Linked Open/Close Schedules – It is now possible to build O/C Schedules at the Dealer level and then link to these from lower levels. This is true from account or sub-dealers levels. This allows for fast modification in one place to master schedules that many accounts will use.
Linked Reminders – Similar to the O/C Schedules, Reminders can be set at Dealer levels and then linked at lower levels. Changes at the master level will propagate to the different sub-dealer and accounts. This includes recalculating the randomized reminders if set.
Finally, some more general upgrades to report:
Enhanced Notification mechanism – This allows automated email notifications to be sent out based on customizable triggers. It is subscription-based and can be managed from an account or contact level. Customized scripts and customized email templates can be created which get filled out when the trigger runs. Included are User Scripts that consist of a series of questions that will be asked of the operator during an alarm. The answers to these questions can be used as variables in Enhanced Action Patterns, as well as used in the email notification that is sent out. A record of all script use is added to the activity log.
Launch External Programs – In the Supervisor workstation, external programs can be set up to be launched by ManitouNEO through Enhanced Action Patterns. This includes the ability to pass command line argument variables if the external application supports that functionality.
Active Directory Support – This integration provides the ability to manage users in Manitou directly through Active Directory. This is based off Manitou user groups and Active Directory organizational units. It does not allow the permission setting to be managed in Active Directory, but will automatically create/deactivate users in Manitou to track Active Directory. When logging in, Manitou will also use Active Directory to validate the user password. This means users can maintain their password in one place and passwords would not be stored in Manitou for this user. Manitou-only users will still be supported.
TLS 1.2 Initial Support – The database interface layer has been updated to support TLS 1.2 communication. This is the initial step in adding support throughout the entire Manitou product line for this standard.
That pretty much covers everything I have to share with you! Again, the development team has been working hard to get ManitouNEO version 2.1 ready for release before the end of the year. We want to thank all our customers who have been so integral in providing feedback to help us shape this new version of ManitouNEO. Remember, if you are still running the legacy version of Manitou and haven’t gotten on the upgrade schedule yet, now is the time to do it! The new UL827 deadline is January 15th. Put in a support ticket to get on the upgrade list today.
Now that you’ve seen them all, which features are you most excited about using on your ManitouNEO system?