FireWatch Mobile 4+

Not quite perfect but a step in the right direction

This app is a massive improvement over accessing FireWatch via a mobile browser (trying to access the map view on a small mobile screen was painful!), however there are some teething problems.

When I attempt to log in I get a various different error messages that don’t provide any clue as to what the actual issue is eg. “Invalid_clientID” or “Unexpected character encountered while parsing value” which means absolutely nothing to me. I then have to press login again to access the app even though I am using the same login and password as the first attempt.

The ability to reset you own password would help SO much - at the minute we have to ask a line manager to reset it which causes a delay with accessing the app to book on/off. This can make a big difference to appliance availability and could literally mean the difference between life or death for someone - PLEASE could you fix this issue?

The ability to login using a PIN (every FireWatch user has one) rather than a password with special characters and numbers would be useful, especially when you are in a rush to book on/off, again similar to the above issue.

Developer Response ,

Hello,


Thank you for taking the time to provide a review and we are glad the new App is making a difference for you.


I believe the login messages you mention should already have been resolved following a server update at your Fire Service site.

In terms of the ability to reset your own password form the App – I am pleased to let you know that this functionality has already been worked on and will be coming in a future release. The exact timings of when this gets to you will be somewhat dependent upon the next planned upgrade with the FRS as it is both a server and App update.

Kind regards,
Infographics

FW app

The app is far from perfect. When compared to other 3rd party apps, it is way short of where it should be. To improve it - where do I start. The 12 hour view is simply, totally insufficient. The station status view is awful, only needs to show 3 colours. Red - off, yellow - non ba and green - on. Doesn’t need all the numbers in the colours, just confuses the issue. Need to be able to move between days that give a 24 hr view of our station, showing the people booked on at that particular time showing where the gaps are, plus a service map in the app, showing the state of other appliances would be extremely useful. Without these enhancements we will struggle to get people to use it.

Developer Response ,

Hello,

Thank you for your review and for taking the time to provide feedback. We have already made changes in an update to enable you to select any date/time and view the station status. There are some valid reasons why we try to restrict the amount of data brought back to the App (screen real estate, unnecessary server load etc.). We are also implementing right now the ability to see the availability of other stations (not just where you are contracted) and to book on/off directly from that location on the station status page.

We do have the Web-based availability map and also the Organisation Status tile in the App that lets you see the status of vehicles across the county (some of these elements are only visible based on how your organisation has configured your permissions to see them and it may be a number of the tiles/features cannot currently be seen by you as an end-user).

We will look at your comments as a whole and see where we could provide further improvements to the layout/visibility of the information during this coming development sprint and push out another update of the App soon. Most of your comments should be addressable with purely an App update (rather than the server needing updated) meaning we should be able to do that and for you to see the result relatively quickly within the next few weeks.

Thank you again for the valuable insights into your use as a new end user. We have in general had very positive feedback from the FRS customer base regarding the App however specific direct comments where we can make improvements are excellent and give us an opportunity to respond quickly and further improve the App which we genuinely want to continue to do.


Kind regards,
Infographics

Incredibly buggy

Incredibly buggy, laggy, freezes and crashes regularly, try to book on/off and the app constantly restarts itself to the log on screen, takes about 5-10 minutes trying to do simple tasks just because of the crashes that happen