News

Genesis Blog

Incident Aware - Our Latest Solution for Guided Incident Tracking & Alerting

by Nathan December 3, 2021

Nearly all businesses face challenges with internal collaboration, procedure management and auditing, and effective communication... Especially when it comes to incidents or emergencies. We've designed our latest solution, Incident Aware, to solve several of the most common issues your organization faces.

Information is often located in multiple places, separate email chains & text messages, and in productivitity tool groups, which makes it difficult to keep track of all the details and to ultimately see the big picture. It can be a huge undertaking to compile and organize everything, to remove duplicate information, and to create a timeline of events to understand exactly what happened, and when. Additionally, since this all happens in the days, weeks or even months following incidents, any missing details aren't discovered until it's too late for staff to recall them.

Incident Aware captures all communications (including emails, sms and app user input) and provides you with a complete, overall picture of everything related to an incident. You can review the timeline of events, see all the multimedia and related staff-attached content (audio, photos, video, chat), review locations of incidents and staff. You can easily see if any important or useful details are missing, and ensure they are collected before it's too late. 

Managing ever-changing procedures can also be a struggle, especially when new policies, changes or different reporting requirements are put into place. It takes staff and management considerable time to keep current with procedures, to update documents and forms with changes, and to communicate new policies to everyone within the organization.

Incident Aware provides guided incident tracking, which uses your pre-configured templates to ensure the correct steps and policies are followed and the important details are collected. Changing a procedure or policy? Just update the template, and in a matter of seconds your organization's new policy is in-place and enforced. Management can receive status updates as items are completed, and outstanding details and actions are clear and obvious to ensure nothing is missed.

 

Ensuring staff are alerted to incidents and emergencies is important, especially in time-sensitive situations. "The office" for many has changed forever, and staff working locations are now unpredictable. Determining who's on-site during evacuations and lockdowns, for instance, is now a serious concern since you need to ensure staff are all safe and accounted for.

Incident Aware not only provides simultaneous alerting via app push notifications, email, sms and several different on-site hardware paths (overhead paging, strobes, on deskphones, and more) to ensure your staff are alerted regardless of location, but also allows you to see who's on-site, when they arrived and left, and their real-time locations. Alerts can require actively respond or check-in, and can report whether they are safe or need assistance.

These are just three of the many problems Incident Aware solves. Contact us at 888-993-2288 or sales@buygenesis.com for more information on our latest solution, and find out how we can help you solve these common issues, and many more.

 

Genesis Systems Corporation Expands Partnership with RingCentral to Advance Emergency Notifications

by Nathan May 26, 2021

APRIL 30 2021 — Genesis Systems Corporation, a leading communications management software developer, today announced an expanded partnership with RingCentral, a leading provider of global enterprise cloud communications, video meetings, collaboration, and contact center solutions. The expanded partnership includes RingCentral support for Genesis’ GenAlert Emergency Notification solution, delivering enhanced on-site emergency response and awareness capabilities for mutual customers. 

 "The GenAlert solution provides RingCentral users with unparalleled emergency visibility and greatly enhances response time - critical in emergencies, where every second counts. When combined with built-in RingCentral features, GenAlert gives you the ultimate solution for detecting, alerting and recording emergencies.” – Randy Mennear, CEO Genesis Systems

 GenAlert helps businesses to immediately recognize in-progress emergencies and alerts staff via on-screen messages, voice alerts, emails, SMS text messages, and more. GenAlert also records each call’s audio and details, and conferences in security staff to listen to and validate each call in real-time, improving detection of accidental calls and improving on-site response. GenAlert for RingCentral is a fully managed, cloud hosted solution.

“As a RingCentral Partner, we’ve had access to unparalleled developer support and resources which have enabled us to quickly adapt GenAlert’s capabilities to meet the needs of users” – Nathan Mennear, Sales Manager Genesis Systems

"Reliability, security, and scalability are the core components of RingCentral's cloud communications platform," said David Lee, vice president, product management at RingCentral. "The integration of GenAlert with RingCentral will offer customers a scalable platform that provides them with greater on-site emergency response and awareness.” 

-----------END----------

 Genesis Systems specializes in telecommunications-related software products for leading UC solutions. The first Genesis software was installed in 1984 and today there are thousands in use worldwide managing from a few to tens of thousands of phones. Over our long history, Genesis has established and maintained an excellent reputation for outstanding customer service and satisfaction, product flexibility, ease of use, and reliability. This combined with our expert Technical Support services and constant product development has resulted in Genesis becoming an industry leader in communication management solutions for businesses of all sizes.

 Media Contact:

Nathan Mennear

1-888-993-2288

info@buygenesis.com

Building on RingCentral: Developing GenAlert's Real-time 911 Alerting & Reporting Capabilities to Improve RingCentral Users' Safety

by Nathan May 10, 2021

In today’s world where public safety is a major concern, it is important that all possible tools are available to assist the respondents when managing emergency situations.

Genesis for RingCentral

In today’s world where public safety is a major concern for all organizations, it is important that all possible tools are available to assist the respondents when managing emergency situations. Genesis developed GenAlert, a Ring Central solution that not only notifies the pertinent individuals when a 911 emergency call has been placed, in real-time, but also allows customizable additional actions to be taken such as Glip instant messaging, generating emails, sending SMS or text messages, triggering custom alarms like strobes, etc., plus many more…

The decision to begin developing GenAlert for RingCentral was a easy. Our development cycle typically begins with evaluating the available integration points, APIs and any other accesses to the necessary data. Typically, access to the necessary data is the difficult part; APIs are often not available or accessible externally, system design isn't condusive to integrating third-party solutions, data isn't available in a timely manner, etc. During the evaluation phase it was apparent we'd be able to work with RingCentral due to the extensive catalog of APIs, and additionally be able to provide features that were not possible on other systems. This gave us the confidence to engage deeper and start planning the addition of these features uniquely for RingCentral users.

During the development of GenAlert, Genesis recognized the requirement to perform many different tasks when a 911 call is placed. Genesis utilized many of Ring Central APIs such as Events & Notifications Subscriptions, Call Control, Call Recording, User Settings, Device, Call Log, GLIP, etc. to determine when calls happen, where the caller is, who to add to the audio stream, whether to record the call, etc. Since these requirements are fairly comprehensive, there are a variety of events occurring at the time a call is detected, during the call, and even after the call that need to be considered, monitored and recorded.

While developing GenAlert we were impressed with the knowledge and responsiveness of the Ring Central development team to our questions and concerns. The Ring Central development team added features and enhancements to APIs which helped both us and the customer in accomplishing what was required. They also explained in detail some caveats and issues that were not as well documented and the side effects or real-world implications of these. Initially in the early development stage of GenAlert we had almost daily email & voice communications with them to better understand the features and capabilities of the API’s. Also, the Community Pages were of great assistance in resolving some of issues we encountered during development.

In short with Genesis’ vast Telecom knowledge and experience combined with the exceptional help and support of the Ring Central development team and the development API tools available to us, the development of GenAlert went quite smoothly. Genesis GenAlert is our latest hosted solution available as a monthly service add-on for Ring Central users.

GenAlert Real-Time 911 Alerting Now Supports Mitel!

by Nathan April 21, 2021

Genesis is excited to announce our GenAlert real-time 911 alerting solution is now compatible with Mitel Phone Systems!

Many Mitel users already use our Call Tracking solution for managing staffing resources and telephone use (and misuse), and can now add real-time alerting to greatly improve on-site awareness and emergency response time. The issue with standard call-accounting-based alerting solutions is that they only notify you once the call has completed (hung up).

Since real emergency calls are rarely terminated prior to emergency services arriving on-site, staff often have no idea anything is happening until help is already on-site. Since staff are the closest responders - and are certainly more familiar with the premises - they need to be the first people to know when there's an issue requiring emergency help. Response can then start immediately, staff can coordinate and both attend to the emergency and be ready to direct Fire, Police and EMS services prior to their arrival. 

Mitel users can receive alerts via a combination of desktop-based alerts, in-app notifications on Android & iOS devices, emails, SMS messages, and custom integrations with strobe lights and other equipment. Combining all these paths, it's nearly impossible for your staff to not be immediately aware there's an emergency in progress that requires their help.

 

When adding in our call tracking & reporting solution and our app-based incident tracking & mass notifications, the overall solution provides the most comprehensive reporting, tracking, and alerting solution for Mitel users of any size.

Contact Genesis for more information on our Mitel-compatible solutions and how we can help you meet your custom requirements! 

Genesis Supports Microsoft Teams 9-1-1 Notifications + Call Tracking & Reporting

by Nathan April 16, 2021

Genesis Systems has recently added support for Teams in both our GenAlert 911 Alerting and Call Tracking & Reporting solutions!

Now, locations using Microsoft Teams (either solely, or as a component in their telephony environment) can extend their real-time emergency awareness and greatly improve on-site emergency response time.

You simply cannot be too informed in the event of emergencies, and this is why GenAlert provides flexible, real-time multi-path alerting which includes emails, SMS, desktop alerts, triggering on-site physical equipment, in-app alerts, and even integrations with social media platforms.

Likewise with call tracking; many Teams users complain about the reporting and data natively available, especially when attempting to generate consolidated reports for business units and specialized reports, not to mention users who rely on call analytics in day-to-day operations.

Genesis Call Accounting & Tracking provides Teams users with flexible, easy-to-use reporting that can be customized to your requirements, delivered on any schedule you need, and can even alert you to misuse or account compromises. Genesis has been the standard for many of the largest organizations for over 35 years, and this legacy continues now for Teams users.

Contact Genesis Sales for more information!

1-888-993-2288

Register for our 911 Alerting with RingCentral Webinar Now!

by Nathan February 19, 2021

 

We're excited to announce our latest collaboration with RingCentral:

Genesis for RingCentral: The value of an E911 solution

RingCentral Webinars

Join this webinar to learn how to enhance RingCentral’s E911 functionality to provide unrivaled safety and awareness. Combining Genesis’s GenAlert with the RingCentral platform gives you the most complete hosted safety management solution available. In this webinar, checkout how to improve emergency response time, create detailed information-rich alerts, make automatic call recordings to fulfill recordkeeping requirements, and more! Genesis Systems is the proud winner of RingCentral's 2020 Application of the Year.

Register for our latest webinar to learn a bit more about how GenAlert can help dramatically improve safety for your organization, and why we were recently selected as Application of the Year by RingCentral.

We're honored to continue as a RingCentral Premier Partner into 2021 and look forward to discussing your emergency alerting needs - both on and off-site.

Contact us at: 1-888-993-2288 or sales@buygenesis.com 

Genesis Systems' GenAlert Awarded RingCentral's Application of the Year!

by Nathan February 9, 2021

Genesis Systems is proud to be the recipent of RingCentral's 2020 Application of the Year award! Genesis has worked tirelessly since 2018 to build and enhance our RingCentral-compatible alerting solution. This award recognizes the ongoing efforts of both Genesis and RingCentral staff to improve on-site safety for organizations of all sizes.

 

GenAlert is the most feature rich, cost effective emergency management solution for RingCentral & compatible platforms (including Avaya Cloud Office, Office@Hand, TELUS Business Connect, etc.). Add our Incident Aware alerting & mass notification app and expand your capabilities to additionally include smartphone push notifications, location tracking and alerting, manual incident creation and tracking, real-time 2-way communication options and much more.

Check out GenAlert in the RingCentral App Gallery and contact us at sales@buygenesis.com or 1-888-993-2288 to find out more about GenAlert for RingCentral, and how we can help you dramatically improve your on-site emergency response.

Genesis Team: Still Here, Just Working from Home

by Nathan March 25, 2020

In an effort to help prevent the spread of COVID-19 and do our part in helping 'flatten the curve', Genesis staff have transitioned to working remotely from home. Along with diligent social distancing and diligent hand washing, we believe these measures will help and hope others able to do the same will follow.

Rest assured, we are still operating at full capacity and access to your hosted solutions, updates, our support staff and services, and sales team will be completely unaffected. Our hope is that these measures are only needed temporarily but we are fully set up and prepared to operate remotely as long as is required.

Feel free to contact Genesis Systems at 1-888-993-2288 should you have any questions or concerns.

 

 

What's Minimally Involved in Keeping Safe?

by Nathan March 18, 2020

For many, the current and upcoming 911-related legislation is a bit confusing. Some compliance deadlines have already passed, others are upcoming, and there's general confusion around which of these deadlines affect you.

Even though many organizations aren't explicitly required to (yet), I strongly encourage everyone to minimally start with implementing on-site alerting. This is both the least expensive component and where the greatest enhancement to on-site safety and response is realized. Additionally, it's either mandatory now or will be for your organization in the not-so-distant future.

Getting the location information to the answering PSAP is important, no question. This information helps PSAPs and their responding agencies in determining where to respond to (especially important for large campuses, multiple location organizations, or multi-floor buildings). Especially when help is several minutes away already, routing responders to the correct area is absolutely critical in ensuring help is not delayed in any way.

But what about those who are in the best position to provide immediate assistance? The often under-appreciated reality is that help is already on-site and available. Whether it be your security, first-aid, or in reality, any staff, you already have resources on-site and ready to assist prior to first responders arriving. This help comes in the moments when it is most critical.

On-site staff are able to respond immediately, and are in a position where they can start providing care immediately. Additionally, staff can prepare access for first responders, and be ready to direct them efficiently to where the emergency is once on-site. These realities all dramatically improve response time both prior to, and once first-responder help has arrived on-site.

Contact Genesis Systems for more information on E911, immediate emergency on-site alerting, and the features available to help improve your on-site emergency responses. These solutions provide improvements in response time of several minutes, at a time when every second counts.

Genesis Solutions Support Mixed Avaya + RingCentral Environments!

by Nathan February 18, 2020

It's becoming more and more common for UC delivery to be either fully-cloud-based, or using a combination of hybrid/mixed solutions. While very few organizations are fully cloud, and most are relying on a number of different cloud and on-premises solutions for providing their overall UC solution.

Since last year's announcement of Avaya / RingCentral Strategic Partnership, many Avaya users' migration paths have shifted. Where Avaya-hosted IP Office or CM-based solutions may have been the logical, simple path before, there is uncertainty with the shift and just how RingCentral will fit into your overall UC solution, the potential complications, and how you'll manage everything.

The Good News is that you're not alone, and that you're covered with Genesis whether you're using Avaya, RingCentral, or a continuously changing combination of both.

We've designed our solutions with specific features for users of Avaya and RingCentral. Migrating to RingCentral is extremely simple for current or prospective Avaya (or other) system users - our solutions are feature rich and handle the day-to-day administration automatically. Genesis solutions are portable to the cloud as well, we can move your software to the cloud anytime. Contact us for more information.

Archive