One CAD, three very different jobs.

Most of a patrol shift is work the officer finds, not work that was phoned in. That has to be as easy to log as a dispatched call, or it does not get logged.

• Self-initiated activity — traffic stops, checks and on-views started from the unit, on scene immediately.
• The timer is the point. A stop that is not in the CAD is a unit nobody is watching.
• Beats and sectors with soft or hard coverage, so recommendations respect your districts without trapping you.
• BOLOs that expire, so the board stays readable.
• NIBRS out of the same record.

Fire dispatch is about assignments and escalation: what goes on the box, and what the next alarm adds.

• Alarm levels as waves. Every line at the current level fires together; escalating pulls the next in one action.
• Capability over call sign. Ask for an engine that is also hazmat, so a substitution does not need a plan rewrite.
• Mutual aid in the plan — ordered backup chains that reflect the agreements you actually have, not the map.
• Station alerting and paging as part of the dispatch, including volunteers' phones.
• Hydrants and pre-plans on the map, from your own data.
• NFIRS out of the same record.

The call does not end at the scene, and the system should still be useful on the way to the hospital.

• Transport statuses that record real times, so a report can answer where the minutes went.
• Closest hospital ordered by travel time, with your own destination list and capabilities.
• Move-up and posting for agencies who run system status management.
• ALS/BLS as capabilities, so the plan asks for the level of care rather than a truck number.
• NEMSIS out of the same record.

One room dispatching several disciplines, where the hard part is that each needs its own vocabulary on a shared incident.

• Per-agency configuration — statuses, colours, natures, dispositions and geography, without three separate systems.
• Linked calls. Police, fire and EMS each run their own record on one event, with notes shared across them.
• Each agency closes its own part, so nobody's reporting is wrong because somebody else picked the outcome.
• Layouts per position, because the fire desk and the call-taking desk do not need the same screen.

Regional coverage overlaps municipal coverage — the same streets, two blankets — and which one responds depends on the call.

• Overlays. A county sector sitting over several towns, with the incident type deciding whether the town or the county unit is dispatched.
• Boundaries that cut across town lines handled per location, not forced onto municipal geography.
• Scopes for areas that are not one town, named by you.
• CAD-to-CAD for incidents shared with a neighbouring centre on a different system.