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	SUMMER '09 IN THIS ISSUE FEATURE NC4 User Community Gathers at Readiness '09 in Dallas SITUATIONAL READINESS SPOTLIGHT H1N1 Swine Influenza Coverage E TEAM PRODUCT STEERING COMMITTEE (PSC) UPDATE PRODUCT NEWS & TIPS ESA - Improved Global Coverage and Mapping Capability ESA Product Tip: Setting up ActivWeather Alert Profiles as Easy as 1-2-3 and Fine-Tuning Alert Profiles to Remove Unwanted Alerts E Team - Security Enhancements in Release 6.5 E Team Product Tip: Deleting Reports ESP - Graphical User Interface(GUI) Project Expands to Encompass Other Portal Elements READER_CONTRIBUTIONS Do you have an interesting tip on how to best use ESA, ESP or E Team? What about input on an aspect of emergency or security management? We welcome contributions to the Readiness Report, so please contact us at info@nc4.us if you have a story idea. FEEDBACK Is there something else you'd like to see in this newsletter? Contact us at info@nc4.us. EXECUTIVE CORNER NC4 President, Jim Montagnino   As a founding member of the EM-XML Consortium, NC4 has long recognized the need to provide first responders, emergency managers, public health officials and executive management in both the public and private sectors the ability to create and immediately share critical information during an emergency or major event. NC4 is committed to supporting open standards-based solutions for secure information data exchange as demonstrated at the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association (AFCEA) Solutions Series held in May. We participated in the FEMA Disaster Management Program’s Open Platform for Emergency Networks (DM-OPEN) demo, with the E Team solution directly accessing the DM-OPEN non-proprietary interoperability foundation to communicate key incident information with multiple, diverse systems using the Common Alerting Protocol (CAP). Read the full press release.   MARK YOUR CALENDAR     ESRI User's Conference July 14-16 San Diego, CA Booth #P1630   E Team Customer Call Thursday, September 17 11am PDT / 2pm EDT   SITUATIONAL READINESS SPOTLIGHT NC4’s H1N1 Swine Influenza Coverage On June 11, the World Health Organization (WHO) raised the level of influenza pandemic alert from phase 5 to phase 6, officially starting the 2009 global influenza pandemic. It is the first flu pandemic declared by the WHO since the Hong Kong flu killed an estimated 1 million people in 1968. Since the emergence of the A(H1N1) swine flu virus in late April, NC4 has been extensively covering the situation. NC4 is issuing Public Health incident alerts and a "Swine Flu" event has been created in the ESA "Special Event" section that allows for region-specific information on A(H1N1) as well as provides a good resource for other A(H1N1) related information. Furthermore, NC4 has been issuing A(H1N1) updates on a twice-weekly basis (Mondays and Thursdays) containing the latest cases confirmed by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The NC4 A(H1N1) Swine Influenza Updates contain comprehensive information on the swine flu virus situation around the globe, including recommendations from various health agencies, up-to-date A(H1N1) case numbers, geographic case distribution, long-term trends etc. An abbreviated version of the report is available on our website. Although health officials believe that this pandemic, at least in its early days, will be of moderate severity, the situation could change rapidly, depending on many factors that vary from one country to another. NC4 will continue to utilize technology from the NC4 Incident Monitoring Center (NIMC) to compile H1N1-related information from public health agencies, local governments, and the media. Please send an email to: david.zietlow@nc4.us if you would like to be added to the NC4 “Swine Flu” distribution list. SUPPORT CORNER Tips from Rhonda for E Team users The E Team support staff would like to remind users of informational documents that are available on our support site. In addition, here are some helpful tips and reminders: We have added a new “Known Issues” section to the support site that will offer our customers valuable information on verified problems that are currently being addressed by our development department. You will find that some of our items will have a work-around for your convenience until the fix is incorporated into our next release. Updates to our “Known Issues” document will be posted quarterly. The document will be titled with the release version for easy navigation. At the support center, we maintain a list of three primary points of contact for each E Team installation. These POCs have access to support on a 24/7/365 basis. Identifying these individuals helps us to more accurately support you and helps us to communicate changes and updates on E Team more effectively. To receive a copy of your POC list or to make changes, please email us at support@nc4.us. Thanks again for your assistance in helping us maintain accurate customer records. We are excited about the excellent suggestions on both improving design and functionality we receive from our users. These suggestions are entered as enhancement requests into our tracking system, and then they are reviewed and prioritized by our Product Steering Committee annually. After the prioritization, the list goes to the Product Management and Development team to determine the release schedule. The “Future Enhancement” list is then published to our user community. Please continue to keep those enhancement requests coming so that the E Team application can continue evolving into a more productive application for our users. If you have further questions, please contact us at: Email: support@nc4.us Call: 1-800-209-2312 Support Website: https://support.nc4.us	FEATURE NC4 User Community Gathers at Readiness '09 in Dallas It was a great pleasure to once again have the opportunity to come together as a community to share information, experiences and lessons learned at this year’s Fifth Annual User’s Conference in Dallas. This year’s program provided plenty of opportunities to hear about how peers are using NC4 solutions to enhance their own readiness programs, as well as to get the latest training and product updates. Monday morning got off to an early start with a group breakfast followed by training sessions for both ESA and E Team products. Taking a break from training in the afternoon, some folks opted to step out the hotel's backdoor to enjoy 18-holes of golf on the Tom Fazio designed course, while others choose to join the tour to the DFW International Airport, the third busiest airport in the country. Participants on the DFW EOC tour got the chance to see the four primary operation areas: the Airport Operations Center, the EOC, Airfield Operations and the Department of Public Safety dispatch area, getting a much better sense of how DFW officials coordinate their work. Monday evening’s Welcome Reception gave everyone a chance to relax and network with NC4 personnel and colleagues from around the nation. For the more adventurous, a game of Texas Hold ‘Em capped off the evening. On Tuesday, Dr. James Kendra, coordinator of the Emergency Administration and Planning Program at the University of North Texas, officially opened the Conference with the keynote address. The day continued with user presentations from Ernst & Young, Mike Augustyniak from New Jersey State Police, and Rik Wilson and Jessica Baldwin from Wachovia. Each shared their use and experiences with External Situational Awareness (ESA) and the E Team product. Training was also a large part of the day, with a variety of workshops for users and administrators for both ESA and E Team. Tuesday concluded with a group dinner and another opportunity to interact with peers from other organizations and with those of us at NC4 who value you as a customer. Wednesday continued with an informative user presentation by Christine Grist from British Columbia Ministry of Health Services on the model they employ for system administration across their network. The morning was rounded out with the product roadmap sessions for both ESA and E Team. The conference concluded with lunch, for those that didn’t have flights to catch or other appointments until later in the day – and that still had room to eat! Thank you to everyone that joined us in Dallas at this year’s User’s Conference and provided feedback on the event. We worked diligently to put together a program for you that was productive, informative and enjoyable and, from the responses we received, this year’s conference met or exceeded users needs and expectations! If you are interested in viewing pictures, presentations or the recorded video of our Product Roadmap session from Readiness ‘09, click here to login to our support site. E TEAM PRODUCT STEERING COMMITTEE UPDATE Jaclyn Barcroft, PSC Chairperson In Jaclyn's absence from this year's User's Conference, Michelle Kleckler, GIS Specialist, Michigan State Police Emergency Management and Homeland Security Division provided the following update: The 2009 NC4 Users Conference in Dallas Texas was a great success! The conference allowed individuals a great opportunity to network with other users, as well as learn about their individual project accomplishments. The user presentations were educational and helped spark ideas on how to improve project efficiency here in MI. The NC4 staff presentations brought insight to view future E Team software enhancements, including the new Atlas function. This function allows users to view multiple data sources such as Google and Yahoo maps. Atlas can also integrate social media such as blogs and photos that can help users share disaster information. Overall, the conference was a great experience that also included a beautiful hotel with excellent accommodations and food! ______________________ E Team PSC Members: Jaclyn Barcroft, Michigan Department of State Police, barcrofj@michigan.gov Canadian User Group, represented by Lynn Menard, lynn_menard@phac-aspc.gc.ca and Shelley Emmerson, EMMERSSR@gov.ns.ca Coleen Bell, Oakland Fire Department Office of Emergency Services, cabell@oaklandnet.com Joe Casey, Federal Communications Commission, joseph.casey@fcc.gov Preston Cook, Orange County OEM, preston.cook@co.orange.fl.us Bobby Dockery, Georgia Emergency Management Agency, bobby.dockery@gema.ga.gov John Dosh, Escambia County, john_dosh@co.escambia.fl.us Diane Fernandez, Arizona State Division of Emergency Management, diane.fernandez@azdema.gov David Finch, State of Missouri Department of Public Safety, david.finch@dps.mo.gov Shirley K. Ono, Macy's, sono@fds.com Lou Vargo, Ohio County, WV, Emergency Management Agency, lvargo@wocema.com ESA PRODUCT NEWS Improved Global Coverage & Mapping Functionality The ESA service now includes two new features that improve global coverage and increase ESA mapping functionality. The first is a new layer of incident data called TranSecur Daily Alerts. This data is provided by NC4’s partner, TranSecur, and significantly improves the ESA coverage of global situations. The new data is updated once per day at 09:00 EST and is provided free of charge to all ESA Global subscribers in brief 150-character segments. ESA subscribers who are also TranSecur members have access to the full description of the event or situation. This new content further strengthens ESA’s superior coverage by providing relevant information from TranSecur analysts stationed around the world. They provide additional information about incidents that are common in ESA, like security and health incidents, but also provide information about key arrests (see image above), important political shifts, and socio-economic developments. We are also excited about providing later this year, a new real-time travel tracking offering in partnership with TranSecur’s best-in-class service. More information on this exciting new solution can be provided by your NC4 account manager. The second enhancement that is now available in ESA is a new Proximity Warning feature. The Proximity Warning is a flashing series of red rings that appears around your registered location on the mapping console. The warning appears whenever an incident is determined to be potentially threatening for one of your locations. It is defined as part of your custom alert profiles, so that when the profile is triggered, you now have the option of getting an alert, or viewing the warning and incident on the map or both! This new feature is primarily aimed at helping command center staff become aware of incidents in a simple and highly efficient manner. By running the mapping console in the command center, all staff in the room can be warned of a potential threat and can more effectively investigate and respond to it. Of course, the mapping console can be used on any laptop or desktop computer anywhere, as long as there is an Internet connection! For questions pertaining to these new features, please contact your NC4 account manager or ESA support at support@nc4.us or 1-888-NC4-4411 (1-888-624-4411). ESA PRODUCT TIP Setting up ActivWeather Alert Profiles as Easy as 1-2-3 ActivWeather allows you to select from 47 desired weather situations (42 NWS weather categories and 5 sensor conditions) that will trigger alerts only when the selected weather situation enters the location area you've defined. For example, in the following image the weather condition is signified by the blue polygon. You would get an ActivWeather alert with the names of the 4 locations that are shown circled in red along with the details of the weather situation. To set this up, create one ActivWeather profile for any/all of the 42 NWS categories. Then create a separate ActivWeather profile for any/all of the 5 AWS sensor categories. Click on Alert Profiles from the left navigation. Select the ActivWeather Profiles tab, then the Create a Profile tab. Enter your ActivWeather profile name. For the 42 NWS conditions, click All-Including Location Updates. For the 5 AWS sensor conditions, click Initial Only. Otherwise, you might get alerts every few minutes. Uncheck All Types in the box for Incident Type, and check off all of the weather conditions you are interested in for all of your locations. Note: you will only get alerts when one or more locations are within a weather condition’s polygon. Click the Locations tab and select the location(s) for this ActivWeather profile. To quickly select all locations shown, click the box to the left of “Name”. Click Save and you are done! Keep these instructions handy, as our soon to be released ESA R5.2 will bring you even more NWS categories to choose from! Fine-tuning Alert Profiles to Remove Unwanted Alerts Are you getting NC4 ESA alerts that you don't want or need and can't figure out why? It's easy to fix now! At the bottom of every NC4 ESA alert, the following is displayed: Tracking Member ID: D3EDED5B9278E29790C33207AC0B34D7, Member Name: John Smith Tracking Profile ID: 64797ae2a9e4116f0362fcad7ad9c501, Profile Title: Security in North America If you get an alert that you don't want, just login, find the Profile Title listed in the unwanted alert, in this case Security in North America, adjust the profile's type, perimeter, etc., and save. Please contact NC4 Support if you have any questions on setting up ActivWeather alert profiles or making adjustments to any of your other alert profiles, support@nc4.us or 1-888-624-4411. E TEAM PRODUCT NEWS Security Enhancements in Release 6.5 NC4's E Team Release 6.5 incorporates rigorous security features, which meet or exceed NIST 800 requirements, making it the only certified security focused crisis management application on the market. These security features include: Password Security – Optional use and enforcement of strong alpha numeric passwords. Password Expiration - Optional password expiration feature. Users will have the option to enable/disable the use of password expiration as well as set expiration duration. When enabled, users will be notified of pending expiration beginning 7 days prior to expiration via email and at log in. In addition, password change will be enforced at first successful login after expiration. Password Change Prevention – Optional ability to prevent users from changing their own passwords. When enabled, all users retain the ability to change their own passwords. When disabled, the change password fields will be hidden on the user profile document. Note: when this keyword is set to disable, the Password Expiration feature can not be used. Login Lockout – Optional feature that prevents a user from logging into the E Team application after making a specified number of consecutive invalid attempts. Login error is based on entry of invalid username and/or password. Errors entering the CAPTCHA string are excluded from this process. Consecutive attempts are confined to those made within 30 minutes. Previous Login Notification – Users will be presented with information regarding last login date/time as well as number of unsuccessful attempts made since last logon. This information will be displayed on each user’s personal profile document. User Activity Logs – This optional logging feature provides the means by which a customer can monitor use of their E Team application. Logs can be viewed by users with administrator rights by selecting the Logs option found within the menu item Administration. When enabled, multiple user activity logs (User Access, User Actions, Invalid Login Attempts) will be automatically generated each day on a 24 hour cycle beginning at 12:00am. These logs are not editable, however, they can be downloaded and saved to file. Each day the previous days log will be sent to history and the view will be cleared as the new daily log is created and displayed in the active view. Log history will only be retained in E Team for a seven (7) day period beginning Sunday at 12am (Sunday 00:00:00 thru Saturday 24:59:59). Customers who wish to retain all log data must download and save these logs to file on a regular basis. System Configuration Logging – History has been added to multiple E Team configuration documents, i.e., keywords, color coded status, system menu, position based menu, general configuration, etc. E TEAM PRODUCT TIP Deleting Reports Recently, we've received requests from users wanting information on deleting reports in E Team. NOTE: In order to delete a report from the system, the user must be authorized by having the role of "Manager" assigned to them in the Access Control List (ACL). For these users, a Delete button will be visible at the top of the report. To delete a report, you'll need to access one of the views associated with a single report type, for example: Incident > All (Includes Closed), etc. NOTE: E Team doesn’t allow deletion of reports from the All Reports view. Check the box next to each of the documents you wish to delete. If you want to delete all the reports in the view, you can simply check the leftmost box in the top header row as shown below, and the system will select all the reports in the view. Click the Delete button. Clicking the Delete button causes the deletion process to begin. When complete, the report(s) will only be available in the History file. Repeat for each report type. If you have further questions regarding deleting reports, please contact us at 1-800-209-2312 or support@nc4.us. ESP UPDATE Graphical User Interface(GUI) Project Expands to Encompass Other Portal Elements The ESP product line is undergoing major improvements to streamline the look and feel and usability of the graphic interface. Based on the positive response we received from customers to our recent updates to the general navigation and look and feel of our secure communication platform, we plan to continue these improvements across each of the discrete communication tools. Focusing on the tools that our customers utilize most, the first round of GUI enhancements will be made to the Secure Messaging and Library Tools. The improvements will help to decrease the number of clicks required to receive, send and collaborate on information, as well as bring an overall fresh look and feel to the platform. We plan to continue GUI enhancements to the balance of our secure communication platform tools later in the year, to improve customers experience with our secure communication tools. NC4 is committed to continually enhancing the products and services we deliver to our customers. We welcome your input as we proceed in this effort, info@nc4.us.
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