RE: 911:: Positron Power 911 System-Any Input?

[Guest guest]

In a message dated 9/3/2003 2:10:01 AM Mountain Standard Time,

mchapman@... writes:

> Is there anyone currently using the Positron Power 911 System? If you

> have any input pro or con, it would be greatly appreciated

These are just my opinions on the system - it's not a bad system but I'm old

fashioned, I guess .

First the pro's

I really enjoy the stats that are retreived from the system. If you have one

person who constantly says " oh, I was just slammed with phone calls " you can

pull up the stats. We run monthly reports to show how many calls each employee

answered, how many calls during each hour, how long calls last, how long

calls are on hold, incoming/outgoing, you name it you can get stats.

I enjoy having all kind of numbers programed into the system so that at one

touch you can dial numbers. Unlike speed dials, you just click one button per

number and you can put what ever you want in. I think there is room for up to

500 pre-programed numbers... Might not be that many but there's lots of

room.

Cons.......

Don't get touch screens. We have them and 80 percent of the time you end up

having to touch the screen 2 or more times to answer a line or to disconnect.

I end up using either the keyboard or the mouse to answer phones.

There is no " add-on " feature. The old lifeline system had a feature called

" add-on " where if you were on one phone line and wanted to patch it with a

second phone line you could. Not with the power system.

The " instant playback recorder " ... is FAR from instant. None of us has

figured out how to make it work for immediate retreival of the last radio

transmission (it records both phones and radio traffic if you set it up to do

so, we

did and it's worthless in my opinion).

Each user has to have their own unique log on into the system. So if I'm

working solo (which happens a lot at my dept), and the phones are ringing off

the

hook, no one else can come in and help. I'd have to go sign onto another

station for someone else to answer. It's discouraged by the company to have a

geneic sign on.

Because there is no " button " that lights up when you're on the phone, you

can't easily tell if someone is on the phone.

And I'm sad to say, because of this same reason, it's easy to forget that

someone is on hold, or which line is which caller.

It's just so very different.

Kathy

[Guest guest]

>>It's just so very different.

Kathy<<

Yup, stats are great and you can program a gazillion phone #s into it. We have

it programmed so that when dispatchers are required to answer phones that we

only get the 9-1-1 lines, not anything routine.

On the minus side......when calls are backed up, you can't see how many are

waiting (unless y ou have the obnoxious reader board the ding-ding-dings when

calls are " in que " )...you don't just put a call on hold (at least here, you park

it then unpark it then move it to another slot then put it on hold but if it is

on hold toooo long, then it reactiviates itself and starts ringing on the inline

again). ..it's a windows type thing, you have to make sure you are in the right

window when you want to manually dial a # or when you hit the enter key it calls

whoever you last called....it seems to just take more steps to do something

simple like answer a phone.

I believe the majority of us in this center think the mechanics of the system

sucks...but it's progress and progress is good...:-)

We also have forced ACD.

I really liked the old 105 button phone board....it was straight forward, you

could see everything that was going on, transfer with one button, anyone could

plug in and answer at any position. Of course, then, I also liked " Beer " beer.

Bob