Advanced Operations with Dynamic Contacts

Dynamic contacts allow you to fine-tune your workflows and create various scenarios of handling alarms in terms of who to contact on which occasion.

The procedures below illustrate some of the most common cases of Dynamic Contact use in workflows.

Filter Contacts in a Site Workflow

If you want to contact different people or organizations when an alarm occurs on your site, but don't want to create a workflow for each alarm type, you can filter who to contact with the help of Dynamic Contacts.

For example, you have a hotel site from where you process different types of alarms and you need to notify different work departments, but the workflow is the same for all alarms handling.

To filter contacts in a site workflow:

1. Create several regular site contacts or Contact Lists, with contact names such as, Front Desk, Kitchen, Security, Housekeeping, Night Clerk etc.

2. Add all the department contacts to a single Dynamic Contact, for example, Priority Contacts

3. Assign a Contact Role to this Dynamic Contact list. For example, Contact in case of emergency

4. Create conditions for each contact or Contact List within the Priority Contacts Dynamic Contact collection

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   For example, you can set Alarm type to Burglary for the Security contact and Schedule Matches to night working hours for the Night Clerk.

   In this case, if an alarm is a burglary one, only Security contact or Contact List will be notified. If an alarm arrives during night hours, the Night Clerk contact or Contact List will be notified. If an alarm doesn't match any of the specified conditions within the Dynamic Contact collection, evalink talos reaches out to the default contact.

   The figure below shows how to set up informing various departments about alarms coming from various zones:

5. Create a workflow and use the Contact Role Contact in case of emergency in steps that deal with contacts, such as calling, emailing or sending text messages

   For details on how to add Dynamic Contacts to a workflow, see section Add a Dynamic Contact to a Workflow.

Filter Contacts in a Workflow by Geolocation

You can handle your alarms within a single workflow based on the geolocation (ZIP code) of the site where they originate from. For example, you have a global workflow where alarms come from several sites with different ZIP codes and you want to contact a police station or a fire brigade in the ZIP code area of respective alarms only.

To Filter Contacts by a ZIP code:

1. Create several regular global contacts or Contact Lists with different ZIP codes, with contact names such as, for example, Police ZIP 12345 or Police ZIP 56789

2. Add all these contact and Contact Lists to a single Dynamic Contact, for example, Police

3. Add a Contact role to this Dynamic Contact collection. For example, Contact in case of Burglary Alarm

4. Create conditions for each contact within a Dynamic Contact and specify ZIP code as a condition option

5. Create a workflow and use the Contact Role Contact in case of Burglary Alarm in steps that deal with contacts, such as calling, emailing or sending text messages

   For details on how to use a Dynamic Contact in a workflow, see section Add a Dynamic Contact to a Workflow.

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   In this case, when an alarm occurs on a site with a specified ZIP code, if there is a contact with the same ZIP code, it is notified.

   If there are no ZIP code matches in your Dynamic Contact collection, evalink talos reaches out to the default contact of the Dynamic Contact.

The figure below shows the settings in a global Dynamic Contact used in a global workflow to inform specific contacts when an alarm arrives from a site with a specified ZIP code:

The figure below shows the settings for a global workflow used to inform specific contacts when a burglary alarm arrive from a site with a specified ZIP code: