CAD Software - Free Open Source
A. Shore
preliminary tire-kicking at http://www.saefern.org/tickets .
(For those of you not already aware of it, Tickets is a web-based
package per subject line, OS-agnostic. Yep, it's really free, offered
in the same sense of volunteerism that many of you guys offer your
time and skills without pay. Tech-wise, you already have the desktop
software you'd need, the web browser you're probably reading this
with. Any web server will do; several easy-to-install free ones are
available.)
See information re the overall project at http://openises.sourceforge.net/
At the demo site - http://www.saefern.org/tickets - there's a guest
login available - with limited privileges. Contact me offline for a
proper set of credentials.
In addition to some usability and performance tweaks, this version has
a number of important upgrades over its predecessors. The big one is
in the general arena of much better support for response units, as
follows:
1. The Call Board function provides a display of current incident-
unit assignments. (In effect, a Situation Management tool.) Clicks
there will provide a convenient direct link to incident and unit
information. Cleared incidents are shown with a strike-through for 24
hours in order to communicate that information to later shifts.
2. Incident types are supported, with the few you'll see able to be
extended by privileged users as needed.
3. Given a new call/incident, the next screen shows its location
against existing response units, plus their straight-line distances
and driving directions - via both text and map. Driving directions
from any unit may be called up, with the closest one shown as the
initial default.
4. In writing up a new call, the automatic lookup is fairly effective
for residential land-line phones, names (with city/state information),
and street address. When found, these return map locations.
5. Any number of units may be committed to a given incident. A
closed incident remains visible for 24 hours with a strike-through
again.
6. The Reports function provides for day/week/month/year summaries,
with pie-chart displays by location, priority, and incident-type.
7. The EM Card function allows you access to the default one provided
by Bob Austin, or yr own if you have one.
8. There's a light-weight chat function available, which some teams
find useful for in-the-center chat.
Guys, this is online as a last-minute sanity check before I wrap it
into a download-able/installation zip. So don't hesitate to let me
know if you see anything that looks wrong.
Clearly, a lot of brain-picking went into this version, and I want to
thank you guys who've contributed yr ideas - it's appreciated. There's
more to come, so keep them cards and letters comin, folks!