Dispatch
Polaris is the dispatch desk. It's a single live board, shared by every dispatcher, that shows every incident as it happens.
Getting Polaris
Polaris is a desktop app for Windows and Mac. Installing the app is the recommended way to run dispatch: it opens in its own window, keeps you signed in, and stays out of the way of browser tabs and updates. Ask your administrator for the installer, or download it from your event's Crowd.
If you can't install software (a shared or locked-down machine, or you just need in quickly), use Polaris Web instead: open your event's address in any browser and sign in. It's the same dashboard. Everything below works the same in both.
Home — "Right Now"
You land on a page that pulls together whatever needs attention this minute. A strip across the top shows the counts: active incidents by priority, how many are still unacknowledged, average time to acknowledge, who's on duty, and open tickets. Under that are three lists you act on:
- Needs acknowledgement: active incidents nobody has picked up yet, most overdue first.
- Unassigned: incidents and tickets with nobody on them.
- Active, high severity: the P1 and P2 calls in progress, with their lead responder.
Click any row to open it.
The board and tabs
Incidents, tickets, and patient care reports open as tabs across the top of the workspace, like browser tabs. Open several, switch between them, close them when you're done. The board is live: when someone else makes a change, you see it within a few seconds.
Incidents
An incident is anything your team is tracking. Use New incident to log one with a title, description, and location. You also set:
Priority
| P1 | Emergency. Life safety, respond now. |
| P2 | Urgent. Needs a prompt response. |
| P3 | Standard. |
| P4 | Low or informational. |
Category
Medical, Missing Person, Theft, Disturbance, Fire/Hazard, Lost & Found, Access Issue, or Other. Categories drive filtering and the after-action record.
Status
An incident moves through New, Dispatched, In progress, Resolved, and Closed (or Cancelled). Assigning someone to a New incident moves it to Dispatched for you.
Reading the traffic lights
Every incident shows a small three-lamp traffic light with one lamp lit. It tells you the stage the incident is at, which is separate from its priority (priority is the P-badge and the colored left edge of the row):
| Lamp | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Red | Nobody's on it. Unassigned and not acknowledged. It blinks once it's overdue for acknowledgement. |
| Amber | Someone's handling it. Assigned or acknowledged, work underway. It blinks when there's an update you haven't opened. |
| Green | Cleared. Resolved, closed, or cancelled. |
Assigning your team
Open an incident and pick a lead responder. Add additional responders for anyone else on the call. Assigned staff get notified: a push notification in Voyager, and a text if they have a phone number on file. You can also send a one-off text to the assigned responder straight from the incident.
Acknowledgement timers
Every active incident runs an acknowledgement clock sized to its priority (tighter for a P1). When one goes overdue, the board flags it: the red light blinks and an "ACK" countdown shows. Acknowledgement happens on its own when you assign someone, or when an oversight user opens the incident.
Tickets
Tickets cover the non-incident stuff: lost & found, general requests, ConOps tasks. They use the same priority and status as incidents. If something was filed as the wrong type, you can convert a ticket into an incident, or an incident into a ticket, and the notes and history move with it.
Attendee messages
Attendees text your published number to report problems. Each one shows up under Messages as a conversation. A dispatcher can text back, and if it needs a response, turn the conversation into an incident in one step. The attendee's number and message carry over.
Medical reports (PCRs)
A Patient Care Report holds the clinical detail for a medical call. PCRs contain protected health information, so access is tighter than the rest of Crowd:
- You can open one if you wrote it, you're assigned to its incident, you've been granted access, or your role has medical oversight.
- If you don't have access, you'll see a Restricted panel. You can tell a report exists, but not read it.
- In a genuine emergency, anyone with the break-glass permission can open a restricted PCR. Doing so is recorded with your name and reason, and supervisors are alerted.
Tones and announcements
The Tone action on an incident sends an announcement to your standby-room screens (see Aurora): a chime, then a spoken read-out of the call. You get a short "tone sent" confirmation back.
AI suggestions optional
If your administrator turned on AI features, Crowd can suggest a category and priority from a short description when you create an incident, and flag a likely emergency. A Suggest button fills in the fields; you confirm or change them before saving. If the feature is off, none of it appears.