During fast-moving crises and major scheduled events, commanders often discover that they lack sufficiently detailed information on their most critical assets, as well as awareness of the threats and hazards that pose the greatest risk to their areas of operation. This missing information can slow decision-making and severely hamper response operations when every minute counts.

Haystax public safety and enterprise security solutions provide much-needed context and an information-sharing platform designed from the ground up to give operators, analysts and decision-makers the instantaneous and continuously updated domain insights they need to respond rapidly and with confidence, all on a single screen.

Integral to the operation of our Haystax security risk-management ‘ecosystem’ is heavy reliance on mobile applications. These apps mirror the structure of their web-based versions while enabling field teams to operate untethered and share information instantaneously with those who need it most. They also give decision-makers full visibility into their biggest threats and hazards and into their own teams and assets — anywhere and at any time.

In the past several months, Haystax developers have rolled out a number of feature and capability enhancements aimed at helping commanders and deployed personnel to get the maximum benefit from their Haystax mobile apps, even if they are far from the ops center or working after hours.

Recent Android and iOS mobile app enhancements include:

• Field Reports: The newest mobile app in the Haystax platform replaces our long-serving Mobile Indicator. With Field Reports, an alert is submitted with a pre-selected category, plus one or more photos and supporting text information that can be entered manually or by using talk-to-text. All submissions are automatically geo-tagged and time-stamped, and are displayed instantly in the cloud-based Haystax web application, where intelligence analysts can search and sort, and cross-reference new alerts with existing data. Individual field reports may be edited and updated as needed, and each can be ‘promoted’ to a full incident in the Haystax Incidents app if considered sufficiently important.
• Multimedia intel: There is a rich trove of actionable information available in photos and videos, and Haystax mobile apps can now take full advantage of the intelligence to be gained from them. Users can capture geo-located photos and video from their devices that will embed within whichever app they select. They likewise can upload any existing file, regardless of whether it is a still image, a video or a document in PDF or Word.
• Search: A Global Search app that functions across all of the other Haystax web applications — Assets, Assessments, Incidents, Field Reports, Events and Threat Streams, plus the Map and Timeline viewing environments — is now also available to Haystax mobile users. In addition, the in-app search capabilities featured on the Haystax web apps now function on their counterpart mobile apps. This means that a commander in the field can conduct a single search and turn up any reference in the system, say, related to incidents, events and field reports associated with a particular asset.
• Offline mode: Sometimes an emergency will occur when there is no WiFi or other means of digitally sharing intelligence and updates. With Haystax mobile apps, no signal is no problem. Our offline mode ensures that data can be continually collected and stored, ready for uploading as soon as a signal is reestablished.
• Single sign-on and multiple account support: SSO has been available on our web apps for some time, and this capability has now been extended to include mobile sign-on. Support for multiple accounts on the same device means that users can simply log out and back in, without the need to do an initial download again. Touch ID, another valuable feature for fast and secure logins, is supported as well.

Additional capabilities that have recently been introduced on Android devices (and which will be rolled out soon on iOS devices) include:

• Quick launch: Quick launch shortcuts can create an asset, assessment, field report, incident or event with one tap from a user’s home screen.
• Blue-force tracking: This new option constantly updates each user’s location on the Haystax server, allowing for ‘blue-force’ tracking in real time. Team member locations are displayed in the Team Locations data layer on the Haystax map, and this information can be shared across the entire tenant or just within specific groups and users. In order to save battery life, users can choose to have the system update locations less frequently.
• Filtering and sorting: In a typical Haystax deployment, the number of assets, incidents, events and field reports grows quickly. In the web application users have always been able to filter on specific subsets of data, such as an asset name, an incident’s level of importance, an event date range or a field report category. Now this filtering ability is built into the mobile app as well, along with interface features to support left-side filters, top-right action buttons, and data table list views, and new interface elements feature flyovers that stay out of the way until needed. Sorting is also possible on name and date fields.
• Leveraging native Android features: For the first time, users can record an audio file and save it in the Haystax mobile apps. This is useful for making observations during suspicious activity reports or safety assessments, for efficiently capturing eyewitness accounts and for preserving important radio transmissions. Haystax also supports the Android Dark Mode, which allows colors and themes that are at the darker end of the color spectrum, reportedly relieving eye strain at night and sparing battery life.

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Note: To learn more about Haystax mobile apps, please visit the app store corresponding to your mobile device’s operating system:

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/mobile-constellation/id1089193863

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.haystax.constellation