Choosing How to Communicate
Six ways to reach people, each right for something different - and each wrong for something else.
REDENES gives you text, broadcast, voice, and video, plus the reference material for your radio. The hard part is not learning any one of them; it is knowing which to reach for at three in the morning. This page puts them side by side.
The Options at a Glance
| Method | Best for | Who receives it | Written record | Needs a signal |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chat | Conversation, detail, attachments | The people or group in that chat | Yes | Queued if offline |
| Incident comms | Traffic tied to one event | Everyone working that incident | Yes, against the incident | Queued if offline |
| Campaign | Structured announcements | Chosen campaign and user groups | Yes | Yes |
| Phone call | One-to-one, nuanced, urgent | One person | No transcript | Yes |
| Push-to-talk | Hands-busy short voice traffic | Everyone on the channel | No | Yes |
| Live audio | Monitoring a channel | You, as a listener | No | Yes |
| Conference | Briefings and planning with faces | Invited attendees | Attendance and RSVPs | Yes |
A Decision Table
| Your situation | Use this | Why |
|---|---|---|
| You need an answer but not this second | Chat | Written, searchable, and survives a bad signal |
| You need to send a photo or a document | Chat | Attachments upload and are kept with the message |
| The message only matters to one incident | Incident comms | Keeps the record with the event |
| Everyone on shift must be told the same thing | Campaign | Structured, group-targeted, and consistent |
| It is sensitive or complicated | Phone call | Voice beats text for nuance |
| Your hands are busy and it is one sentence | Push-to-talk | Press, speak, release |
| You need to hear what a channel is doing | Live audio | Listen without transmitting |
| You are briefing or planning with several people | Conference | Faces, screens, and a scheduled slot |
| You need to confirm a radio channel or zone | Communications reference | Look up the programming, then use the radio |
| You have no signal at all | Your radio, then Chat to catch up | Chat queues; live audio does not |
What Each One Actually Is
Chat
One-to-one and group conversations, with photos, video, audio clips, PDFs, reactions, and replies. Start one on New Chat, manage a group on Chat Group Details, and find everything on Messages.
Chat is the only text option that works properly with a bad signal: a message you send offline is stored, marked as not yet sent, and delivered when the device reconnects.
A queued message has not been delivered. Check the message state before assuming anyone has read it - see How Your Data Updates.
Incident Communications
The same idea, scoped to an event. The Comms Tab inside an incident carries the traffic for that incident, keeping it with the record instead of scattered through general chats. Use it for anything a reviewer would later want to find attached to the event.
Campaign
A campaign is a structured broadcast, not a chat. You choose a template or build a custom one, pick campaign groups and user groups as recipients, and fill in a name, subject, title, body paragraphs, and structured detail items - dates, descriptions, locations, and links. See Create a Campaign and Select Campaign Groups.
| Chat | Campaign |
|---|---|
| A conversation | An announcement |
| Replies expected | Replies not the point |
| Free-form | Structured fields and templates |
| Chosen people or a group | Chosen campaign and user groups |
| Works offline | Needs a connection |
If you find yourself pasting the same block of text into three group chats, that is a campaign.
Phone Call
The Phone Dialer places calls from inside the app, with contacts available from the Directory. Best for the conversation you do not want in writing, or the one that needs to happen now with one person.
Push-to-Talk
Push-to-Talk works like a two-way radio over the network: connect to a channel, press and hold to talk, release to listen. Everyone connected sees who is speaking. Pick your channels on Select an Audio Channel, where green marks a channel you can transmit on and blue marks listen-only, and choose your output on Choose Speaker Output.
It needs the microphone permission and a live connection. Nothing about it can be queued.
Live Audio
Live Audio Streaming and Streaming Channels are for monitoring - hearing what a channel is doing without joining it as a talker.
Conference
Conferences are scheduled video meetings. Create one on Create a Meeting and track who is coming on RSVP Status. Right for briefings, debriefs, and planning; wrong for anything urgent.
Radio Reference
The Communications module is reference material about your radio's programming, not a way to transmit. It shows the codeplug loaded for your agency: its zones, channels, channel details, button and switch assignments, voice announcements, and MPL configuration.
Use it to answer "which zone is that talkgroup in?" before you reach for the radio - and note that it works offline, because the codeplug is stored on the device.
Radio and REDENES are complementary, not competing. The radio is your primary tactical voice path; the app is where the record, the detail, and the attachments live.
Is It Logged?
This matters more than people expect, both for reviews and for the crew who arrives next.
| Method | What is retained |
|---|---|
| Chat | The messages, attachments, reactions, and timing |
| Incident comms | The same, tied to the incident record |
| Campaign | The campaign and its recipients |
| Conference | The meeting, its attendees, and RSVPs |
| Phone call | That a call happened, not what was said |
| Push-to-talk | Who was connected and speaking at the time |
| Live audio | Session details rather than a transcript |
Voice is fast but leaves the thinnest record. Anything a later reviewer will need - a decision, a change of plan, a hazard - should also be written down, in incident comms or in Command Notes.
Crossing a Language Barrier
Translate provides live two-way translation with a transcript on Translate Sessions. If you downloaded the languages in advance it works with no signal, which makes it one of the few communication tools that survives a dead zone.
Related Pages
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