# Internal Communication Website



## pghmedic580 (Jul 13, 2016)

Hey all.. 

Does your department or company use and internal platform for communication? A place for the higher ups to communicate policy changes,  important memos... things like that? Lost and Found, Shift Swaps and giveaways? 

I am trying to get an idea of some of the different platforms out there and see how there work for EMS. 

Thanks!


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## DesertMedic66 (Jul 13, 2016)

Policy changes and important memos are sent via email and posted at all of our deployment locations. The really important memos require us to sign them and turn them in to the on duty supervisor. 

Shift stuff is all done via pager system, and online schedule system. Supervisors will also call off duty employees and ask them to pick up a shift.


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## MMiz (Jul 13, 2016)

A decade ago I created an "intranet" using a forum (Invision Power Board).

There are a ton of great intranet applications online these days, but they're all absurdly expensive.

I'd likely use something like https://www.exoplatform.com/ or a forum like XenForo or Invision Power Board if I was looking to be cheap.

If I had the money I'd use something like Jostle, Igloo Software, or Noodle.

Good luck!


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## planetmike (Jul 13, 2016)

We’ve been using a private Facebook group, combined with email. Sucks. We also have a desk calendar mounted on the wall of the day room, which works, but you have to be at the station to check for schedule changes or coverage requests.

We’re testing a few systems. First up is EMS Toolkit, which apparently is now the wonderfully-named vairkko.com.


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## gotbeerz001 (Jul 13, 2016)

We have also been using (several) private FB accounts based on the area of interest (union issues, shift trades/give-aways, lost and found etc). We are working on a forum-based platform similar to this (and other) forums to eliminate the need for a FB account. 


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


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## Tigger (Jul 13, 2016)

Thinking about using google docs with email notifications since it's free. Not everyone has facebook so that was deemed unworkable.


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## pghmedic580 (Jul 14, 2016)

Thanks for all your feedback everyone. 
Right now I work for a private company and we use Jive Daily... but we are thinking about using something else. 
We want it to be useful, intuitive and easy to use...


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## exodus (Jul 19, 2016)

MMiz said:


> A decade ago I created an "intranet" using a forum (Invision Power Board).
> 
> There are a ton of great intranet applications online these days, but they're all absurdly expensive.
> 
> ...


 Our EMSA out here has a vbulletin for that as well. I haven't seen another EMSA with a forum before.


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## NomadicMedic (Jul 20, 2016)

Wouldn't digital signage be a great way to do it?


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## DrParasite (Jul 20, 2016)

I'm a huge fan of every employee having a work email address, and a condition of employment being you need to check your email.  
Need to communicate a policy change?  send an email.  have an important memo that need to get to everyone?  email everyone.

Lost and found?  send an email.  shift swaps and give aways?  email the proper groups who can pick up the shift.

Everyone has a personal email address, which probably has hundreds of unread emails (mine is currently sitting at 4462 unread emails).  but actually giving them a WORK email is for WORK use, that is separate from their personal one allows them to know that anything sent to them is WORK related, and they should probably read.  Don't inundate them with useless crap (like my college likes to do, bake sale, delete immediately), but let them know they need to check their email at the beginning of their shift, and they can set it up to go to their phones if they want.

My department finally has email for all personnel.  And while the Chief insists on using his AOL account for business communications, the deputy chief uses the company one for all work and work related stuff.  and it cost us maybe $120 a year (would have been 60, but our provider lied to us, and wasn't able to maintain the level of service they promised for the price they offered).


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## N0TOK (Jul 27, 2016)

DrParasite said:


> I'm a huge fan of every employee having a work email address, and a condition of employment being you need to check your email.
> Need to communicate a policy change?  send an email.  have an important memo that need to get to everyone?  email everyone.
> 
> Lost and found?  send an email.  shift swaps and give aways?  email the proper groups who can pick up the shift.
> ...


Another thing to use is read receipts and or a link to a read and sign of some sort.

Sent from my Nexus 6P using Tapatalk


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## akflightmedic (Jul 27, 2016)

What Dr.Parasite said x 1000. I operate by the policy of if it is not in your email, it did not happen. If I have a one on one verbal chat with someone and there is a directive, action, policy clarification...you name it, I put it in an email to them later. I always tell them to do the same. If you stop me on the fly or ask a question off hand of some significance, you better follow up with an email recapping the conversation. Sounds redundant and laborious, however it has helped many staff with their issues. Short and brief in the email...such as "AK, just recap of me requesting 2 weeks off next month from X through the Y...thanks"

Same with any comms between staff...shift changes, issues or concerns...this is a big one. When an employee complains...I say put it in writing, then we discuss. If you cannot take time to put it in email, then it is not important.

Email chains and historical date are gold mines for arse covering, protection and ensuring effective communications are taking place within a corporation. Forget all the FB page stuff or other platforms...send an email!


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## TransportJockey (Jul 27, 2016)

We have two ways. We all have an agency email and we are required to check it. We send out End Of Shift reports for each unit to all employees (the Team Captain on the truck does), we get all official notifications, and we get interaction with our medical director via email.
We also use When to Work as a secondary means of communication as well as scheduling, and a means of sending out pages via text to everyone's cell phones w/ open shift callouts, important short announements, reminders of meetings, etc. We can also message through this service as well.
All in all it's not a bad setup.


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## Handsome Robb (Jul 29, 2016)

We've got email, sharepoint, TeleStaff...I probably forgot something. 


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


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## NPO (Sep 8, 2016)

The crews where I work use a Facebook group to communicate for shift trades and stuff. Management does management things.


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## planetmike (Aug 22, 2018)

After a period of time looking at Vairkko, we ended up using Aladtec. I'm not thrilled with the communication aspect of it between members. I'm now evaluating Slack.com. Does anyone have any experience with Slack?


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## NomadicMedic (Aug 22, 2018)

Slack is great, IF everyone uses it. 

We use EPRO for all of our internal communication, training, documents and it’s the time clock. If you have things that staff needs to see, put it up before they can clock in. 

They still ignore it... but I know they at least saw SOMETHING.


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## NysEms2117 (Aug 22, 2018)

There are many different technology messaging solutions- Skype for business.... slack.... cisco spark is my fav as a tech person. GroupMe is also a good one if you want to separate groups. @planetmike Free or paid solutions ?


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## planetmike (Aug 23, 2018)

Free is always good. Paid is possible, depending on the actual cost. Improving communications would be nice, so I'm guessing I could get some money from the coffers.


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## NysEms2117 (Aug 23, 2018)

planetmike said:


> Free is always good. Paid is possible, depending on the actual cost. Improving communications would be nice, so I'm guessing I could get some money from the coffers.


my list would go:
Skype for business
Cisco Spark- being renamed/rebranded to cisco webex
GroupMe(Very very easy to manage, but it's strictly messaging, very minimal regulation on the administrator side.)
Slack


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## hometownmedic5 (Aug 23, 2018)

We use PlanitEMS for scheduling, time and attendance recording, time off, certification tracking, internal communication, and announcements.

The announcements have a feature that could be useful to some. If the administrator posting the announcement deems it mission critical, they can check a box that requires you to acknowledge that you read the announcement, which is logged and viewable on the admin side. You cant advance beyond that announcement to do anything else in the system, without acknowledging the memo. 

If your agency is serious about communication and so forth, they will pay for a service that does the job well. If they dont give a hoot, they will use something like facebook, google, or some other nonsense solution. If they don't care, I don't care.


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## Peak (Aug 23, 2018)

We have a very extensive intranet but that is mostly just for storing information rather than for any communication. We have staff meetings every one to two months and any policy changes are sent out by email. Since we often have patient information or other sensitive data in our emails we all have work emails that we are required to check at work and staff have access to through a virtual network with two factor authentication. The is used for all of our division services including the hospital services, HEMS/CCT, specialty transport teams, et cetera. 

Back in the day... My old fire service had department email addresses for all staff and policy changes were sent out through email. We also had an intranet site but it was very underutilized and functionally did almost nothing. Staff could communicate shift swap requests via our scheduling software and it was pretty easy to set up trades. Most of our non-critical communication was on white boards in the bay or during our monthly staff meetings.


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