This article has highlights from the Things You Aren't Doing, But Should Be session at Axon Accelerate 2019. It includes the basic content with links for more information.
The goal of the session is to give you some pro tips that help you get more out of the products and services you've already purchased. Specifically, we hope that you will:
- Learn something new
- Use and implement it today
- Without spending more money
Tired of Login Issues?
- “I can’t login in”
- “I forgot my username”
- “I forgot my password”
- “I’m locked out”
SSO literally eliminates a step for users. Once they are logged in and authenticated on their machine or on your network. They can go straight to Evidence.com and skip the login step.
For more information, Talk with your CSM or Axon representative.
Want a better Evidence.com web experience?
- Faster page loads
- Better video playback
- Cleaner looking page
Using a modern browser will literally make your page load times faster. Internet Explorer 11 (IE11) takes 4 times longer to load than Chrome or Edge. Additionally, with modern browsers your video streams will be more reliable.
- Since Jan 2016, IE11 only receives “security updates and tech support”
- IE11 on Win7 will only be supported until Jan 2020 and no Flash updates after Dec 2020.
About 1/3 of agencies and users are already using Chrome. This is great as they are getting the best web experience possible. If your concern is enterprise tools, Chrome offers IT tools to manage versions and to roll out updates.
Recently, Microsoft announced Edge will use Chromium going forward and they have already released a developer version of the browser. Chromium is the open source code behind Google Chrome. This means there will be more technology alignment between the two browsers, though each company will unique capabilities.
Struggling to manage devices?
But you know the location where it’s “supposed” to be?
Add a device home for each borough, precinct, or station. The device home metadata is added to a device profile, so you can search and filter by it. You can even add a point of contact for each home location if you have device managers for each location.
Struggling to find evidence?
But you know the device it came from.
In the Advanced Search filters, we group all body camera models--Body 1 & 2 and Flex 1 & 2 --under Body Worn. Same for Fleet and CEWs.
Similar to Device Home, not many agencies are using this. This isn’t a feature that we expect you need to use everyday, but we want to make sure you were aware that it exists and we suspect usage would be a bit higher if it was a well known capability.
Struggling with third-party evidence?
From DVDs, USBs, email attachments, cellphones, or home security video
Evidence Upload XT is a Windows application that you install on your computer. It allows you to upload any digital file to Evidence.com so you can take advantage of your existing storage plan, security, management, and sharing tools.
An Evidence Upload XT user can bulk upload evidence without worrying about their browser timing out or an interruption in network connection--if that happens Evidence Upload XT will retry and continue where it left off.
Users can bulk edit metadata, upload directly to a Case in Evidence.com, and even designate a folder on the computer for automatic uploads. Administrators can managed access and permissions for Evidence Upload XT through Evidence.com and even set bandwidth limits globally or by installation.
For third-party evidence that is more incident-specific and one-off, check out Axon Citizen.
One of the inspirations for Axon Citizen is the amount of cellphone video being recorded by incident bystanders. So we developed a workflow from within the Axon Capture mobile app that allows an officer to send a text to the bystanders so they can directly upload the video from their phone to Evidence.com. It has worked great and we’ve gotten positive feedback. But that is only one way that Citizen can be used.
- You can send a Citizen request directly from Evidence.com from a browser. That means you can use citizen where ever there is desktop, laptop, tablet. You don’t have a mobile phone or use Axon Capture.
Officers can use Axon Citizen from their MDT to send a text or email request to Citizens. - Second, the request doesn’t always have to go to a citizen or be used for cellphone video.
We’ve seen agencies use Citizen to send request to businesses via an email address or to collect Ring home video or photos.
We’ve also seen agencies using Citizen to send requests between agencies--especially those not on Evidence.com--to digitally and securely transfer evidence between departments. - If you have a front desk that receives complaints, they can send requests to collect evidence from the complaintant.
- One agency that is responsible for a large geographic area has used citizen in the dispatch center asking callers to send in a photo or video of the issue to better understand the severity and priority before dispatching an officer to make an hour drive to the scene.
In short, this is a powerful and flexible feature that I think is worth trialing. You may find it addresses a need that we haven't thought of.
Need to know basis
You need to get your work done, but you also need to protect sensitive and confidential information. Sometimes those two requirements are at odds, which adds challenges.
Some agencies give “view all” evidence permissions to everyone, except patrol officers. But is that because everyone truly has a need to see the evidence or is it because it is just too much work to add specific user to the access list of every evidence?
In conversations with customers, we find it is often the latter.
As you might expect, we have received requests to address this issue. So we added some new capabilities to Groups.
Last year, we updated Groups functionality so that you could add a Group to an evidence Access list. This cut down on the number of people you needed to add to an access list, but you still had to add a group to every evidence.
In February we automated Group access to an evidence with Evidence Groups. On a users profile, you can now designate which Group or Unit, their evidence should belong to. This does some important things:
- First, it means that every member of that Group will automatically get access to that evidence—without any manual work. We also added a new permission option, in case there are members of the Group who shouldn’t have access.
- Second, it means that when a user transfers to a new unit, the old unit will retain access to evidence that was collected while they were on that team.
Previously, if a user was listed as the Owner of an evidence, when they changed units and were removed from a Group, they “took their evidence with then.” By associating a Group with the Evidence, we can ensure that the members of that Group retain ongoing access to that evidence. For the user that changes units, you just have to update their Group and Evidence Group association, and so future evidence will be available to their new team. - Finally, this allows you to search and report on evidence by Group or unit. If need to find an evidence from an incident and you know it was recorded by Sector 2 Graveyard shift, you can filter by that and get to the evidence from that squad.
Redaction Studio is another feature that we’ve talked about before. It was released in 2018. We wanted to mention it now because after releasing, we got a lot of feedback. Based on that feedback we spent the next 3 months on quality, performance, and polish.
Then we spent several months on adding incremental enhancements, which highlighted in the above image:
- Half speed playback
- Timeline zoom – top request for long videos where you need to focus in on a couple minutes.
- Detailed start/end inputs
- Blur level – if you change the blur level, Redaction Studio will now remember your last selection and default to it going forward.
- Audio masks – making it easier to add and control audio masks alongside video masks
- Segments – adding segments to the timeline so you can see all your masks, how they line up, and which one is currently selected in the video.
- And since this is a sophisticated feature we added an in-product help short cut
We have also added Redaction Assistant, which automatically scans a video, identifies MDTs, License Plates, and Faces, and creates masks for all of them. Reducing the users work to reviewing, accepting, rejecting, or editing masks. While Redaction Assistant is a paid add-on, you can trial it for free.
Know before you go
This tip gives you a sneak peek at what is coming for Body Worn Cameras.
Early Access device support has been available for Body 2, but in the last year we also added support for Flex2 and Flex2 Controllers.
We also want to mention that we do Early Access for major software features. Part of the Partnership ask of Early Access is that we ask agencies be active participants and willing to commit time and people to using and testing the features as this is critical to ensuring we have build something valuable and that it is ready to release.
Most used features
We have been covering tips and features with low usage. But here are 3 of our most used features - just to make sure that everyone knows about them.
If you are unfamiliar with these items, contact your CSM, sales person, or Axon Support.
Buy at work like you do at home
Axon E-Commerce - The fastest and easiest way to manage agency purchases.
This was just launched in April, so it is new. It will make purchasing CEW cartridges or new mounts much easier.
Be sure to look at the Law Enforcement Store FAQs.
If you contact Axon sales, CSM, or support, we can customize the store to reflect your contracted pricing, and limit selection to purchased devices.
When you need help
Finally, don't forget to take some time to look around the Axon Help Center.