Empower Your Technicians to 'Respond Like a Pro' with These Automatic Trouble Instructions

If your alarm monitoring system provides clear instructions for alarm response, you will benefit (whether you're an entry-level technician or the CEO).

Let's start by looking at an unclear alert from the technician's perspective:
You have plenty of technical knowledge, but you're new at this company. If you're sitting at your workstation and "Mtn West Twr Light Fail" pops up on your screen, what should you do? It's some kind of tower-light problem, but what's the proper procedure for that? Do you drive out to the site? What parts and tools do you need? Should you notify your supervisor?

Now, let's add some clarity:
You're sitting at your workstation again and "Mtn West Twr Light Fail" pops up. Below that is this instruction: "A tower lighting problem has occurred. Call the FAA IMMEDIATELY at 559-454-1600. Latitude: 36.3N, Longitude: 119.6W, Height 160', Elevation + Height: 1585".

Isn't that better? Imagine how secure you'd feel receiving that message. You don't have to track down a busy supervisor. You don't have to guess and hope. It could be your first day on the job and you'd react like a pro because you were given clear, unambiguous instructions.

If you're a supervisor, manager, or chief executive, which one of those scenarios do you want for your people? This tower-lighting example involves huge potential for FCC/FAA fines and liability if it's not handled correctly. Even your more mundane network problems lead to a lot of wasted resources if your staff can't react quickly and confidently. Imagine the reduction in training and waste that a few lines of text can bring you.

This is exactly why T/Mon master stations include two important functions to deliver clear instructions to your team: Trouble Instructions & Trouble Logs.

1. Trouble Instructions
   This function is what you saw in the example above. It's a short text instruction associated with a particular alarm condition. You start by having your best in-house experts write instructions into T/Mon. Later, when that alarm is triggered, your NOC staff will receive the instruction and know exactly how to react.
2. Trouble Logs
   You're not always the first person to deal with a particular alarm. Maybe a co-worker has already scheduled a repair to occur a few days from now on a routine site visit. Maybe he tried an inital fix, it failed, and now you're waiting for a parts shipment. All of these various events can be logged against the alarm point as a "Trouble Log" in T/Mon. When the alarm pops up, you can review the complete Trouble Log history and quickly get up to speed. You won't have to waste time asking others for help or duplicating effort.

Trouble Instructions and Trouble Logs are fairly simple concepts that deliver powerful results for you and your team. Whether you're writing messages, reacting to them, or managing a large team of technicians, they will increase your confidence and help you get better results for your company.

Call DPS today to discuss this and other cost-reducing functions in the T/Mon platform:
1-800-693-0351 or sales@dpstele.com