Our 2009 Year in Review
We've had a lot of changes this year. Our parent company, Affiliated Computer Services, Inc. (ACS) is currently in the process of being acquired by Xerox Corporation. This acquisition is expected to close in the first quarter of 2010. FIREHOUSE Software customers should expect no changes.

FH Mobile 1.6.58 was released this year and development of FH Mobile 1.7 began. More information about the FH Mobile 1.6 release can be found at What's New In FH Mobile 1.6.

The 2009 Customer Satisfaction Survey was completed. Once again, the survey showed great consistency and loyalty from our clients.

• 89% intend to continue doing business with FH in the future.
• 87% will recommend FIREHOUSE Software products to other agencies.
• 79% feel FH modules contain the features/functions necessary to meet their department's needs.  

The 2009 FIREHOUSE Software^® Education and Training Seminar (FHETS) at Disney's Coronado Spring's Resort was a huge success with nearly 400 participants in attendance. Conference attendees were introduced to the upcoming FH .NET, FH Sketch, and updates to the existing FH Desktop and Mobile applications.

Work continued on the FH .NET application with a goal of going live in the state of Indiana with a handful of customers toward the beginning of 2010. The application will include incident reporting and report creation with other modules to roll out over time.

Near the end of 2009, we implemented our new long awaited customer relations management software.

In the end, we would like to extend our warmest wishes to you and yours and thank you for being our customers. We appreciate your business and strive each day to improve our products and processes to serve you better.

2010 FHETS Dates and Location Announced

We're pleased to announce the dates and location of the 2010 FIREHOUSE Software Education and Training Seminar. This year, the seminar will be held Tuesday, November 2nd through Friday, November 5th at The Westin Seattle , in the cultural core of Seattle, Washington. Located in the downtown financial and shopping district, the hotel offers a perfect Northwest escape. We anticipate hundreds of attendees to join us for this year's event. 

The seminar price will be $745 for the 3 day event. Website registration for FHETS 2010 will open before the end of February. The hotel rooms will be available for $139/night, with this special event rate available to our attendees 3 days prior and following the seminar, based on guestroom availability. Breakfast, lunch, and between class snacks will be provided for the attendees during the seminar.

The winner of the free FHETS 2010 registration for completing the 2009 FHETS client satisfaction survey is Michael Benenati from LaGrange Fire District, NY.

NFIRS January 2010 Change Cycle and the FH 7.5 Maintenance Release
On October 15, 2009, the National Fire Incident Reporting System (NFIRS) announced that the January 2010 NFIRS change cycle would be deferred until January 2011. This move comes because of major NFIRS infrastructure upgrades, changes to maintenance procedures for NFIRS, and an upcoming relocation of the NFIRS production site. This means that there will be no NFIRS specification changes in 2010 and that any planned 2010 NFIRS specification changes would be deferred until January 2011.  

However, the distribution of the FH 7.5 maintenance release is underway for several states. Shipments to certain states have been delayed to address specific recent NEMSIS feature updates. This maintenance release will address the NFIRS January 2009 changes, most notably the canceled en-route time validation and Fire Spread in association with the Object of Origin for the Structure Fire section of a fire report. Many new items have been introduced for NEMSIS reporting departments. A NEMSIS Configuration Information form has been introduced to validate the setup of NEMSIS areas within FH. FH will now validate the NEMSIS export file against the NEMSIS national validation as it is being generated. Should any validation fail, the errors will be displayed and the file will not complete.

To bridge the time before the maintenance release can be sent to some departments, an installable .FHz containing a system rule and browsing query has been created to assist departments. The system rule will require the correct Unit Action Taken code and the browsing query will display previous incidents entered in 2009 needing to have the record edited.

The .FHz file is available under the Downloads column on the FH Support page http://www.firehousesoftware.com/sup/index.php.

Design documentation for the 2009 specification cycle, including specification changes and corrections, is available at http://www.nfirs.fema.gov/documentation/design/. 

ISSUE: FH Standard Edition Version 7.5 and FH Software Backup Utility
A new issue has been reported with FH Standard version 7.5.  The FIREHOUSE Software Backup Utility program will no longer run as an automated task when running FH Standard v 7.5.  At this time, it has only been reported as affecting FH Standard.  There have been no reports of this occurring with the FH Enterprise or FH Web editions of the software. This issue will be our top priority to fix in the new year.  

Our current recommendation is to either update to 7.5 (if you haven't already) and run your backup manually or wait until the issue has been resolved to update to a future version of 7.5 if that is possible. 

Thinking Differently About FH Software
A new series of articles designed to help you think strategically when using FH

Over time, FIREHOUSE Software has proven useful to our customers for incident reporting and department information management. At the 2009 FHETS, Jason Trotter presented a new way of looking at FIREHOUSE Software. In his presentation, he challenged the participants to look at FH as more than just where they recorded incidents but as a solution to many more of the issues facing the fire and emergency medical services today.  He asked them to think about using the data they were already collecting strategically to solve problems. 

Over the next few issues of the FH newsletter, we are going to bring you some of the new and interesting ways that specific fire departments and EMS agencies have extended their use of FH beyond the everyday and solved issues using the data they are already collecting.  While we know of a few stories our customers have told us, if you have innovative ways that you are using FH and FH data, we want to hear from you.  Write to us at FHDocumentation@acs-inc.com and your story could become part of this series.

FH Customer Uses FH Software with Mobile Data Terminals
James Mallinger, Assistant Chief of the Cedar Park Fire Department in Texas wrote a story for Texas Fire Chief Magazine detailing his department's conversion from paper inspection reports to using mobile data terminals (MDTs) to file inspection reports. The department combines these powerful tablets to avoid duplication of effort by directly entering inspection records, eliminating the need to have paper forms.  See more information about how the Cedar Park Fire Department utilizes the MDTs and FH Software at http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/naylor/TXFB0209/#/30.