Decisions For Heroes - Product Blog

New Feature: Self-Service Reporting

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 16:21:21 +0000

DUBLIN, IRELAND - You can now build your own query to analyze your data in a custom format. Editors can now build these reports and save them for a Member+ to run at any time. Reports can be configured with dynamic date ranges which remain relative to the date run, so for example, if you want to know what happened in the last 12 months you can specify that whereas other may choose to create a report for a specific year.

Try this video screen-cast to see how it works:

To access these features go to [Intelligence] -> [Reports] -> [+Add New Report]. We've got the engine built, and we've started off by adding attendance reports with more to come - please don't hold back on the comments in the community support area on what should be next.

Podcast Episode 8 - HD Hero 2 & Costa Concordia Cruise Ship Disaster

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 15:37:59 +0000

D4H HQ, IRELAND - Donnchadh Mac Cobb from Adventure Training Ireland joins us for this episode to demo his HD Hero 2 camera for recording emergency response footage and we discuss the Costa Concordia including the VHF transmissions from the Captain to the Coast Guard.

View All Episode Of Our Podcast

Improved Email Response Messages

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 00:36:33 +0000

DUBLIN, IRELAND - Ever since we added email deliverability feedback that told you which email addresses weren't receiving email, people started asking to know why it wasn't receiving email. Today see's the launch of improved email response messages.

Go to Logistics -> Email -> Status within your D4H account to see the deliverability status of each of your members email. If an email is bouncing, blocked, or spam listed, you can now click it to see the reason why.

Here's a sample screenshot:

We're hiring! International Sales & Marketing Coordinator

Mon, 09 Jan 2012 10:57:18 +0000

Decisions [D4H] is continuing to experience rapid growth across the globe. Our international operation has had particular success and we are firmly committed to growing our capacity and to continue expanding our team accordingly. We are now looking for another ambitious person to join our crew.

Primary accountabilities include the development and relationship of marketing channels to drive lead generation, coordination of our international sales agents, and account management of existing customers and annual subscriptions. Reporting into the Managing Director, this role will focus on the management of public service, corporate, local government, and voluntary organisation sales leads, bringing them through our pipeline process, from first outreach to signing, and further re-subscription.

The position is based in the D4H HQ, Dublin, Ireland.

More Info: http://www.decisionsforheroes.com/about/join/

D4H Live On Newstalk National Radio

Sun, 08 Jan 2012 11:18:52 +0000

DUBLIN, IRELAND - Founder Robin Blandford was live in studio on National Radio Newstalk 106-108FM last night speaking about D4H and the Arthur Guinness Fund for social entrepreneurs.

If you missed the live show, you can listen back below.

D4H Google Chrome Search Engine

Wed, 04 Jan 2012 14:13:53 +0000

D4H HQ, IRELAND - We've prepped a nice screencast video for you today on how to add D4H to your Google Chrome Browser as a search engine. This allows you to just type 'd forest fire' into your address bar and press return to get the results from your D4H account. Tip: [Command] + [L] on a Mac or [Ctrl]+[L] on Windows will focus the location bar for you.

1/ Open Preferences.
2/ Manage Search Engines
3/ Add a new Search Engine with D4H | d | https://yoursubdomain.d4h.org/team/search/view/%s as the options.
4/ Replace 'yoursubdomain' with the subdomain of your team account.
5/ Save and exit, then test typing 'd anything' into your Location bar.

Enjoy!

D4H Emergency Response Podcast - Episode 7 SARscene (Part 2)

Tue, 03 Jan 2012 17:27:30 +0000

WINNIPEG, CANADA - This special edition was recorded live at the 2011 SARscene Expo in Winnipeg, Canada. In this second part of the series we speak to a number of participants including Red Deer Search & Rescue, SAR Manitoba, North Avalon SAR, and CASARA.

Click Here to listen.

Merry Christmas from D4H

Fri, 23 Dec 2011 14:29:44 +0000

As we wrap up the last few hours in the D4H HQ before Christmas, we want to take time to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and A Happy New Year. On behalf of all the D4H crew, we want to thank you for all your support throughout the year.

Hope everyone is getting into the holiday spirit nicely. Hard to believe it is that time of year again! D4H has had a great year and we are heading into 2012 all hands on deck.

Although the HQ is closed December 24th - January 1st, if you need anything at all, we are monitoring the email support@decisionsforheroes.com and our voicemail at all times.

2011 You Were Awesome!

Wed, 21 Dec 2011 17:33:01 +0000

Hard to believe another year has passed for D4H! It has been a a hectic one with many changes to our team and our products. We were lucky to do a lot of travelling, meet great new people who we had interning, move into the brand new D4H HQ but most importantly we worked on improving D4H for all of our customers and making it better for you.

Take a look at 2011 for D4H in pictures:

A great way to start a great year for D4H is to move into brand new office!

Toasting to the new office in our Operation Orange party

New feature added which allows teams to bulk add exercises and events

Robin presented D4H at at the first 'Social Media in Emergency Management Camp' at the National Emergency Management Association (NEMA) conference in Virginia, United States.

Our booth at SAR 2011 in Bournemouth UK.

Irish Government invests in D4H

We have many inters in D4H working on various products to research and development, analytics and market research.

In April we launched a new feature which allows teams to bulk-add members by manual entry or by uploading a spreadsheet

Claire joined the D4H team as International Coordinator.

Robin attends the first of many trade shows - NASAR in Nevada.

D4H is now in seven countries and has users on all ends of the globe.

Guinness invest €100,000 into D4H as part of The Arthur Guinness Fund.

Ex SAR pilot Roy Rodford joins the D4H team as International Business Manager.

We launch secured document and photo storage with internet sharing, and collaboration features free on all D4H accounts.

Our new marketing site goes live!

Preparing for the many trade shows ahead.

The new Equipment feature is launched!

D4H Trade show tour begins! Robin and Gary attend Hotzone in Texas.

Robin visits Houston Hazmat.

Another possible use for D4H stickers?

Irish postcards sent as invitations to come visit D4H at SARscene

We are invited to be adjudicators at SARscene 2011 games

The team at SARscene 2011

Roy and Claire meeting some customers at SARscene

D4H are awarded a Water Safety Award for our community contribution in running the Irish National Drowning Database.

D4H stickers are popping up everywhere!

We receive gifts from the lovely Toby in Canada TF2.

David Doran is the latest to join the D4H team - just in time for the Christmas party!

We went to CHC to run a workshop and training on requirements for tracking SAR equipment usage and medical supplies.

While there we got to practice our winching!

Fridays Beer Call!

We add Email Deliverability feedback to D4H accounts.

2012 is going to see D4H expand even more with many new features to come! 2011 was great to us but here's to an even more awesome 2012!

Happy New Year everyone!

Welcoming David Doran to the D4H HQ

Tue, 20 Dec 2011 18:23:16 +0000

They say any good company to work in as a developer has you shipping code to the production environment in the first week, well I'm pretty pleased to say David didn't only get to ship code to production, he shipped a whole new feature! Fair play - this guy is quick!

But there's more... in typical D4H style, he didn't get to just ship code in his first week, he also got to hang under one of our customers heavy lift marine rescue helicopters while out at the airport doing a workshop on how to manage equipment inspections and expiry dates within our emergency response team equipment module.

Now you're talking!

So it's with great excitement that I'm actually welcoming David Doran back to the D4H HQ as he was one of the original team who represented D4H at Seedcamp in London in 2008 when things were just ideas, and he wrote lots of the original core code for our initial prototype - much of which is still in production today. David will be undertaking a lot of the heavy lift engineering and software development you will see from now on. Welcome David!

-Robin.

Email Deliverability Feedback

Tue, 20 Dec 2011 17:20:19 +0000

We've added Email Deliverability feedback to your D4H account. Once you send an email to other members of your team, you'll start to see realtime deliverability reports as they arrive at the other end. If the user has an invalid email address, or the message bounces, we'll let you know on your dashboard.

If you go to Logistics->Email->Email Status you can see a real-time view of the current status of each members email. If if's delivering, bouncing, invalid, or messages are going to spam.

We want to make email more reliable for you when in emergency response situations and deliverability reports are our start on that.

D4H Visit CHC

Wed, 14 Dec 2011 12:01:05 +0000

On Monday, the [D4H] crew got to visit CHC in Dublin to run a workshop and training on requirements for tracking Sar equipment usage and medical supplies. While we were there, they very kindly gave us a tour of the offices and of course the helicopter!

Our luck didn't run out there though because we got a short flight in the helicopter and got to practice our winching skills!

A huge thank you to everyone in CHC for having us!

Convert Exercises to Events

Tue, 13 Dec 2011 12:32:58 +0000

You can now convert Exercises to Events and vice-versa. To convert an activity make sure it is in draft form and press [Update Details] on the top right. If the activity has already been approved you must convert it back to draft.

Now press [Convert] at the very bottom below the delete bar.

Your activity will be immediately converted. You can now publish and approve to add the activity in its new form to your statistics.

There is a discussion in our support forum on this topic.

DECISIONS [D4H] at The Emergency Services Show 2011

Tue, 06 Dec 2011 12:17:23 +0000

The final leg of the DECISIONS [D4H] tour was The Emergency Services Show 2011 at Stoneleigh Park in Coventry.

The Emergency Services Show is the key event for anyone involved in planning, response or recovery, both in the UK and abroad and with over 4000 visitors, this year was the biggest year yet! With four exhibition halls and and outdoor display visitors were spoilt for choice!

It was a busy two days for us but we still managed to capture some snaps for you!

No more trade shows for us in 2011. If we didn't meet you this year, I'm sure we will next year as 2012 has many more trade shows we will be attending!

[D4H] Podcast Episode 6 - SARscene Special

Fri, 18 Nov 2011 16:42:31 +0000

Enjoy Part 1 of our 2 Part SARscene special podcasts. This episode focusses on the new and innovate products and concepts on display at the SARscene Expo in Winnipeg, Canada 2011.

You can listen to all episodes at http://www.decisionsforheroes.com/more/podcast or subscribe in iTunes.

DECISIONS [D4H] Exhibiting At This Year’s The Emergency Services Show

Thu, 17 Nov 2011 12:15:18 +0000

DECISIONS [D4H] will be exhibiting at stand number 243 at The Emergency Services Show 2011, taking place 23-24 November at Stoneleigh Park in Coventry.

The Emergency Services Show is the key event for anyone involved in planning, response or recovery, both in the UK and abroad. Now in its sixth year, this firmly established annual show promotes multi agency collaboration by bringing together all stakeholders involved in an emergency – from the strategic planners and first responders, to the manufacturers and suppliers of equipment and services used by these leading professionals.

"The Emergency Services Show offers the unique opportunity to meet with specialist equipment and service suppliers from the UK and abroad to facilitate mutually beneficial buying arrangements and discuss new important innovations and products.” David Brown, Show Organiser.

You can register for free at www.emergencyuk.com and don't forget to come say hi to us!

SARScene 2011 Photos

Thu, 17 Nov 2011 10:46:27 +0000

We've got our albums up from the SARScene 2011 Games . If you were there and taking part, we should have a photo of you! (Full Album)

You can see the album with all the action shots here on our Fan Page.

We also ran the demo booth for the duration - it generated some serious excitement! (Full Album)

Great to meet you all! The SARscene Podcast is coming!

Tralee, Texas, Winnipeg - Did We See You Along The Way?

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 14:07:08 +0000

It has been a very busy few weeks for the D4H crew. We have been on a tour attending conferences and trade shows going from Kerry Ireland, to Texas to Winnipeg! And it's not quiet over yet, with still another show in the UK at the end of November.

The Red Cross Conference in Tralee was our first stop. This was a great day and we had a great time. It was a good chance for us to meet up again with our customers from Ireland.

Next up was Houston, Robin and our US rep Gary attended Hotzone in Texas! This was the first time D4H were at Hotzone and it was a great success. Robin had the chance to meet some of our existing customers but also to see how different teams use D4H.

The whole D4H crew was reunited in Winnipeg, Manitoba for SARscene 2011. We were asked to judge the SAR games again this year and of course we were delighted to do so. On the day of the games, we rose from our slumber at the early hours of the morning and braved the minus temperatures as we were briefed on the days events and our duties as adjudicators.

The two days of the conference were very busy! We all enjoyed it and had the pleasures of meeting some of our new customers from Canada and introducing D4H to other teams.

We even got to dress up for Halloween in Winnipeg!

So far, it has been a very enjoyable and successful trip and we have just one stop left now. We will be attending The Emergency Services Show 23rd - 24th November so if you are going to be there, be sure to drop by and say hi!

D4H Crew Start iGAP Today

Wed, 12 Oct 2011 10:43:23 +0000

Today the crew at Decisions [D4H] start 'The Internet Growth Acceleration Programme' (iGAP), an intensive management development programme aimed exclusively at high potential internet companies. Over six months, iGAP will equip our management with the practical tools needed to formulate aggressive international growth plans and scale our business.

iGAP is operated by Enterprise Ireland, and brings the industries very best speakers and mentors to Dublin, Ireland for the very best in strategy development for global sales.

We Are Hiring Developers.

Fri, 07 Oct 2011 11:09:26 +0000

We are looking for an ambitious engineer to join the [D4H] crew!

Why should you join our team?

Outcomes, not incomes: Success is measured by tangible human outcomes. Your hard work and dedication is valued & appreciated.

Connections, not transactions: We encourage networking, co-creation, and collaboration. We work hard, but play harder.

Creativity, not productivity: We create new value, not shift around the old. Come and visit us to see for yourself - our office is a little unconventional, just like us!

People, not product: We invest in people and always give real responsibility. Our weekly Friday 'Beer-Call' is an open forum for sales, engineering, business, and international contacts to review and question the weeks activities. We openly share performance figures with all employees.

If you like the sound of this, send your CV to robin.blandford@decisionsforheroes.com, using the word "freedom" in the subject line.

Interested but still not sure? You can find more information on our careers page.