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PulseCAD integration

If you run PulseCAD, the radio console can live on your dispatch board.

Turning it on

In PulseCAD, go to Admin → Integrations → PulseRadio and press Turn On.

That is the whole link. Your community becomes visible in PulseRadio and its radio settings are created the first time anything asks for them. There is no key to copy and nothing to configure on the other side.

Turning it on is a restricted action

It is done from the owner's admin screen, and while PulseRadio is in closed alpha it may also need PulseTech to switch the community on at our end. If the panel is not there, or Turn On returns an error, ask PulseTech rather than assuming the integration is broken.

Turning it off again is non-destructive: your channels, codeplugs, positions and recordings all remain, and turning it back on restores them exactly as they were.

What your dispatchers get

  • A Radio panel on the dispatch board; add it from Edit Board.
  • A full-screen Radio tab, for a seat that works comms rather than incidents.

Both are the same live radio session. Moving between them, or dragging the panel around the board, does not interrupt a transmission; the console is mounted once and simply repositioned.

Agencies can follow your CAD departments

PulseRadio has its own notion of an agency: the outfit a member works for, and the thing a codeplug is assigned to. It works with or without PulseCAD.

Once you are linked, each agency can be mapped to one of your CAD departments under Departments. Membership then arrives on its own: anybody CAD says is in that department is in the agency, and their radio is programmed from that agency's codeplug without anybody being rostered twice.

Those members do not appear in the agency's roster list and cannot be removed there; move them in PulseCAD, or clear the mapping. See Channels, agencies and codeplugs.

Accounts join up on their own

Your PulseCAD account and your PulseRadio account are still two separate records, but if the same PulseTech sign-in owns both, PulseRadio works that out and joins them the first time you sign in. There is nothing to fill in and no code to paste.

That join is what puts your callsign on the board, and what lets a channel be opened to a whole department rather than to people one at a time.

Being in PulseCAD does not put you on the radio

Joining the accounts grants nobody radio access. An owner or admin still lets each person in: a join link or an approved request on Invites, and a role on People. A PulseCAD role gives nothing here on its own.

The reverse is not true, and that is deliberate. If somebody is suspended or banned in PulseCAD, they come off the radio at once, cannot reconnect, and lose any channel their department was giving them. A PulseCAD admin restoring their membership puts it back.

Anybody can see whether their own account is joined, and to which PulseCAD account, under Connections → PulseCAD. If it ever names the wrong one, unlink it there and sign in again; the right one is worked out from your sign-in.

Your callsign is not shown there. It comes from whichever unit you are signed on to in PulseCAD, so it belongs to a shift rather than to the link, and it appears on the board where you use it.

Push-to-talk

Your talk control works anywhere on the CAD board: while you are writing a call, looking at the map, or anything else. You do not need to click into the radio panel first.

CAD forwards the key to the radio, so only the keys you have actually bound as talk controls are passed through; everything else stays with CAD.

One thing to avoid

If you bind your radio talk control to one of CAD's own shortcuts (F4, F5, F8, F10, F12), the radio takes it, and that CAD shortcut will stop working. Pick something else: a backquote, a caps lock, or a mouse side button.

Callsigns

In a linked community the console shows a dispatcher's CAD unit callsign where a name would otherwise appear, so the same person is not called two different things on two screens of the same product.

This works for accounts that existed when the products were separated. A PulseRadio account created since then has no CAD counterpart to look up, so it falls back to its radio alias or account name until single sign-on links the two.