How It All Works
REDENES is not a pile of separate apps - it is one system with many doors into the same information.
Most of this help site explains one screen at a time. This page does the opposite. It steps back and shows you the shape of the whole app: the five tabs along the bottom, the modules that live behind them, and the way information moves between them. Read this first and every other page will make more sense.
The single most useful idea to hold on to: almost everything in REDENES belongs to an agency. Your agency decides which modules you see, what your statuses are called, which forms you fill out, and who receives what you send. Change your active agency and much of the app changes with it.
The Five Tabs
The bottom tab bar never changes. It always holds the same five tabs in the same order, and each one is a container for a grid of tiles rather than a single screen.
| Tab | What lives there | Start here |
|---|---|---|
| Home | Your main grid of tiles - status, messages, audio, calendar, weather, tools, and whatever else your agency has enabled | Home Tab |
| Logs | Record-keeping modules such as inventory and your agency's operational logs and checklists | Logs Tab |
| Alerts | Incidents and the alerts tied to them - this is the tab some screens call Incidents | Incidents List |
| References | Reference material you look things up in - maps, radio programming, agency documents | References Tab |
| Account | You and your agency - profile, certifications, memberships, notifications, and all settings | Account |
The tiles inside each tab are not fixed. Your agency administrator turns modules on and off, so your Home grid may look quite different from a colleague's in another department. A dimmed tile is a module you do not currently have access to.
The Header Above Everything
The strip across the top of the dashboard is easy to overlook, but it controls a lot.
| Header item | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Agency name | Shows your active agency and opens the list to switch. Everything below it reloads when you switch. |
| Mute icon | Tells you notifications are paused for that agency. The name turns red while muted. |
| Unread badge | Counts what is waiting for you in the current agency. |
| Scan button | Opens the QR scanner, used for joining, linking, and looking things up. |
See Main Dashboard & Tab Bar for the full tour, and Agencies, Roles & Permissions for what switching agencies actually changes.
How the Modules Share Information
The modules are not silos. An incident pulls in people from the directory, positions from the map, conversations from messaging, and forms from your agency's own library. The diagram below shows the main paths information travels.
A few of those connections are worth spelling out.
| Connection | What it means in practice |
|---|---|
| Status board to alerts | Your duty status changes which alerts reach you and how loudly. See How Notifications Reach You. |
| Incident to messages | An incident carries its own conversation on its Comms tab, separate from your general message list. |
| Map to incident | Positions, shapes, and saved maps can be attached to an incident and seen by everyone working it. |
| Command board to records | Units, tasks, timers, and accountability checks build the record that outlives the incident. |
| Settings to everything | Your units, theme, date format, default screen, and alert rules are applied app-wide. |
A Shift From Start to Finish
Here is the same app described as one working shift rather than a list of features.
- Sign in. You enter your email and password on Sign In, confirm which devices should be logged in for each agency, and wait while the app downloads your agency's data. See Downloading Data.
- Land on your default screen. The app opens to whichever tab you set as your default in App Defaults.
- Go on duty. Open the Status & Availability board and set your status. Your team sees you move into the right group, and your alert rules for that duty state take effect.
- Receive a dispatch. An alert arrives as a push notification - silent, normal, or critical depending on your settings. Tapping it takes you to the incident; you can also find it later in Notifications.
- Open the incident. The Incidents List shows active incidents with a running timer. Tap one to open the tabbed workspace described in Incident Overview.
- Read the facts. The Info Tab holds the incident record - address, type, operational period, and history.
- Talk to people. Use the Communications Tab inside the incident for incident-specific traffic, or step out to Messages, Push-to-Talk, or the Phone Dialer. Choosing How to Communicate helps you pick.
- Work the map. The Maps Tab and the wider Map give you positions, directions, drawing tools, and Saved Maps you can share.
- Run command. When the incident needs structure, the Command View adds the command board, the tools menu, and timers. Accountability checks live in Personnel Accountability.
- Record what happened. Forms, checklists, and reports your agency built appear as dynamic screens - see Why Some Screens Look Different - and signatures are captured on Incident Signature.
- Close it out. A closed incident stops its timer and shows a fixed total duration, and stays available in the closed view for review.
- Go off duty. Change your status back, and if you are leaving the device behind, use Sign Out.
Step 4 is where most new users get stuck. If dispatches are not reaching you, the cause is almost always one of three things: a denied permission, a mute that is still running, or an alert level set to None for your current duty state. How Notifications Reach You walks through all three.
What Keeps Working When the Signal Drops
REDENES is built for places with bad coverage. The app keeps a copy of your agency's data on the device, so lists you have already loaded stay readable, downloaded maps still draw, and changes you make are held in a queue until there is a connection again.
That behaviour has its own two pages: How Your Data Updates explains where information comes from, and Working Offline tells you module by module what still works.
Offline does not mean silent. Anything you send while offline - a message, a form, a status change - is queued rather than delivered. Nobody sees it until your device reconnects, so never assume a message got through while you had no signal.
Where to Go Next
| If you want to understand... | Read |
|---|---|
| Who can see and do what | Agencies, Roles & Permissions |
| Where information comes from | How Your Data Updates |
| Life without a signal | Working Offline |
| Why your phone did or did not ring | How Notifications Reach You |
| What the app asks your phone for | Device Permissions Explained |
| An incident from start to finish | Life of an Incident |
| An unfamiliar word | Glossary |
Related Pages
Next: Agencies, Roles & Permissions ➡️