7.13.39 Release Notes

These Release Notes are for Firehouse® release 7.13.39, and provide a listing of the defects resolved and the enhancements implemented during this release. The changes listed in the Release Notes apply to both FH® Standard and Enterprise editions.

The following issues were successfully resolved this release.

When you update to any version of FH over 7.9.14, when the Update - FIREHOUSE Software dialog box appears during the process, all the selections in the dialog box are cleared.

Workaround: In the dialog box, select Live Data, System, Queries, and Reports and then click Update.

The NemsisDemographicExport.FHz file on the installation CD and in the download from the web site contained the D07 Agency Personnel Info Main Query, which needed to be updated to include the Service field.

If you tried to print the schedule for a future date with the steps below, the schedule for the current date and time printed instead.

  1. Choose Reports → Staff, Activity, and Training Reports.

    The Reports dialog box appears.

  2. Expand Staff, Activity, and Training Reports → Staff Scheduling Master Reports.

  3. Select Print Scheduling Console, and then click Run.

    The Print Scheduling Console dialog box appears.

  4. Under Shifts & Staff Status At, change the date to a future date.
  5. Click OK.

If you added or edited a scheduling exchange with the steps below, the dialog box that appeared had an error in the title bar. This dialog box should have been named Shift Personnel Exchange or Exception.

Method 1:

  1. Choose File → Staff Scheduling → Add or Update Scheduling Definitions.

    The Schedule dialog box appears.

  2. Click Browse.

    The Query - Schedules by Name dialog box appears.

  3. Select a schedule, and then click OK.

    The Schedule dialog box populates with information.

  4. Click Add, or select an existing exchange/exception and then click Open.

    The Shift Personnel %1 or Exception dialog box appears.

Method 2:

  1. In the FH toolbar, click Sched.

    The Scheduling Console dialog box appears.

  2. Click Add Exchange.

    The Shift Personnel %1 or Exception dialog box appears.

After updating to FH 7.12.17, if you used the administrative options to enable automatic login based on the user's network identity, and then open the with Users and Security dialog box with the steps below, the automatic login setting is not saved.

  1. Choose Administration → Administrative Options.

    The Administrative Options dialog box appears.

  2. Click the General tab.
  3. Under Network, Multi-User, & Internal Messaging, select Attempt login from network identity.
  4. Click OK.

  5. Choose Administration → Users and Security.

    The Users and Security dialog box appears.

  6. Click Close.

    If you then repeat steps 1 and 2, Attempt login from network identity is no longer selected.

The following enhancements were implemented this release.

A number of changes have been made to the Journal module and daily reminders to improve the overall performance speed of FH since the release of FH 7.12.17.

In the course of these improvements, two minor interface changes were made in the Journal module. To find these changes, do the following.

  1. In the main FH toolbar, click Journal.

    The Department Journal dialog box appears. In the lower right corner of the dialog box, over the icons representing the scheduled activities, numbers now appear. When you select a day that has scheduled activities, these numbers indicate how many of each activity are scheduled for the day.

  2. In the lower left corner of the dialog box, click Filtering.

    The Filtering Options dialog box appears. The Ignore all items without Station, Shift, Unit, Staff option has been replaced with four separate items that you can select individually for filtering.

For apparatus/unit related items you have defined in FH’s Inventory module, you can now set up inventory checklists of those items in FH, to use in conjunction with FH Barcoding. The checklist and a barcode scanner can record information about item location, condition, quantity, and more, across staff and shift changes. This functionality requires licensing for FH Barcoding. You can then place the scanner in its cradle and synchronize the data it has collected with your inventory records in FH.

Detailed information on this new feature is available in the Firehouse Barcoding User's Guide.

To better pinpoint locations that department personnel must travel to for emergencies, inspections, and so forth, you can now convert addresses in existing records and add new records with more-accurate geographic coordinates (latitude and longitude), through the process of geocoding. With geographic coordinates, the locations can then be mapped and entered into Geographic Information Systems (GIS).

You can use geocoding with the following FH records.

  • Occupancy
  • Incident
  • Incident wildfire
  • EMS
  • Station lookup
  • Hydrant
  • Dispatch

Detailed information on this new tool is available in the online FH WebHelp, at http://www.firehousesoftware.com/webhelp/FH/Default.htm, under Additional features and utilities → Geocoding addresses in FH.

Note: To use geocoding with FH, you must first install the geocoding mapping tool.

For more information on purchasing and obtaining the geocoding mapping tool, contact your FH sales representative.

The geocoding mapping tool provides the latitude, longitude, and confidence percentage for the address in the FH modules, and the address is displayed as read-only.

Address information before installing the geocoding mapping tool

Address information after installing the geocoding mapping tool

Note: After installing the geocoding mapping tool, you can no longer edit address information in the affected modules in FH. You can, however, enter the address through the geocoding mapping tool.

A new query for geocoding has been added to FH, and is available whether or not you geocode addresses in the affected modules. If you filter the module's records with this query, it produces a list of all locations that are not geocoded (the confidence percentage does not have a value).

To query for locations that are not geocoded, do the following.

  1. Open the module for an incident, occupancy, EMS, hydrant, dispatch, or wildland fire record as normal.

  2. At the bottom of the module dialog box, click Browse.

    The Query dialog box for the module appears.

  3. From Select a Query, choose List <module name> Not Geocoded.

    Example: Choose List Occupancies Not Geocoded.

    A list of locations that are not geocoded ( the confidence percentage does not have a value) appear.

The following NEMSIS files have been updated on the FH installation CD in the State directory, and on the Firehouse web site.

  • NemsisFL2.FHz
  • NemsisID.FHz
  • NemsisID2.FHz
  • NemsisIL2.FHz
  • NemsisOK.FHz
  • NemsisOH.FHz
  • NemsisOH2.FHz
  • NemsisPA2.FHz
  • NemsisVA2.FHz
  • NemsisWI2.FHz
  • NemsisAR.FHz
  • NemsisAR2.FHz
  • NemsisNH.FHz
  • NemsisNH2.FHz
  • NemsisPatientExport.FHz
  • NemsisDemographicExport.FHz