Rolling out Responserack to Members ...

Transitions are challenging, and bring risk. Firefighters have increased risk during transfer of command, and incident reports have increased risk during system changes. When migrating from paper to Responserack, or from one legacy systems to Responserack, mitigate your reporting risk with planning.

Roll out Responserack to your membership in phases, with the primary objectives being to not overwhelm them, but also to NOT lose incident data during the transition. Belt and suspenders, digital and paper, or whatever fallback you need.

Pro Tip: Chiefs / Administrators should monitor reports during the early stages of rollout to ensure no report goes missing, and a backlog or gap does not build up.  Start as you mean to go on.

Firefighter Onboarding Phases:

"There are two things that firefighters hate: change and the way things are" -  Chief Alan Brunacini

• Phase 1: You do not need every firefighter to log in to Responserack. Some may love it immediately, some may warm to it, some may never log in. Some departments only have administrators log in, some have officers, and some have all. Pick your battles. Maybe only invite in officers and start by training them on completing reports.
• Phase 2: Allow members to sign-up for Responserack - suggesting they use email address / password - and no more at this time, unless they want to. They'll receive the weekly briefing email, and get a taste for what Responserack has to offer.
• Phase 3: Allow members to log in to Responserack and view the "Briefings" page. Here they can learn what Responserack has to offer them, on demand and not just once a week but without them having to navigate Responserack.
• Phase 4: Teach members how to complete incident reports, teach officers about the "Overhead" site and .
• Phase 5: Teach members about the calendar, and signing up for trainings in advance. 
• Phase 6: Teach members how to complete truck checks and check Truck status.

Note: Wether you invite members into Responserack or not, do ensure you have a good transition plan. At 02:00 having a paper form as backup is better than losing a report 'cos a firefighter could not figure out Responserack. Be flexible.

Time passes / Change can be accepted...

At first the change is awkward, but over time firefighters come to appreciate viewing their numbers, they will want the reports completed so they can review them (to see what they missed, or to see if it is accurate) and in time they'll not want to be without the system.