Your Silvertrac GSX 2018 Recap

Trackforce

October 17, 2018 · 8 min read

Editor’s note: this is our original recap of GSX 2018, published in October 2018 when Silvertrac exhibited in Las Vegas. Silvertrac is now part of Trackforce, and every capability previewed below ships today in TrackTik. Each section closes with a short note on where that capability stands now.

GSX is a blast every year, but this year was a special treat.

The 2018 event in Las Vegas marked the 4th consecutive year that Silvertrac attended. At GSX 2018, our team got the opportunity to meet customers, offer sneak previews of new features, and chat with industry leaders. This year, we secured a bigger booth to show off what Silvertrac can do, and brought along more team members to join in the excitement.

We also got the chance to give our customers a sneak preview of some new features that we’re releasing next quarter to help improve officer performance and drive client success:

Key takeaways

GSX 2018 was a preview, and the roadmap landed.
The four capabilities shown on the floor in Las Vegas, checkpoint sequencing, geofenced reporting with a live map, pass down orders and GPS routing between sites, are all standard in the TrackTik security guard tour system today.
Checkpoint order and pacing are what make a tour defensible.
Sequencing stops an officer skipping ahead, and pacing rules stop a site being cleared faster than the work can honestly be done.
Geofencing ties a report to a place, not just a time.
When position is captured with the record, a patrol log stops being a claim and becomes evidence a client will accept.
Pass down orders close the gap between shifts.
The next officer starts from the current picture of the site rather than a verbal summary in a car park.
The 2019 booth became a platform.
Silvertrac, TrackTik and GuardTek now sit under Trackforce, and the operational record from tours, incidents and dispatch lives in one security operations system instead of four.

Improved Guard Tours

We’re excited to launch new industry-leading features designed to improve your ability to sequence checkpoints on a patrol or site walk. Using this feature in conjunction with advanced checkpoint optimization software and individually assigned checklists will help to create a more efficient and thorough security detail.

Another new guard tour feature we are launching will prevent officers from speeding through checkpoints too fast. By controlling speed on patrols and site walks, Silvertrac will help ensure that officers are doing their due diligence on the job, taking time to properly investigate hazards and prevent incidents. New improvements will allow officers to notify supervisors of exceptions on their patrol during a shift, rather than after.

Where this stands today: checkpoint sequencing and tour pacing both shipped, and both are core to the TrackTik Security Guard Tour System. Officers run tours from the Security Guard Tour App on their own device, every scan is timestamped and geotagged, and exceptions are raised mid shift rather than discovered the next morning. Supervisors watch the same data land in Guard Management as it happens.

Geofencing and Livemap

We’re launching a geofencing feature designed to limit where officers can report from. Using GPS technology, security leadership can set up boundaries around the reporting area that will ensure that site walks and patrols are properly executed.

We will also be launching a live map of where officers are, designed to help security teams find out where their officers are in real time. Combine that with up-to-the-minute checkpoint data and you have unmatched oversight on your officers that’s available from anywhere.

Where this stands today: geofenced reporting and live officer mapping both shipped. TrackTik Mobile Patrol handles vehicle based rounds across multiple properties, while the Command Center gives a dispatcher one live view of who is on shift, which sites are covered and which are not. Because position travels with the record, a security incident report can be tied to the exact spot it was raised from.

Pass Down Orders

Keeping communication channels clear helps prevent incidents from spiraling out of control. To help, we are improving your ability to pass down orders using the Silvertrac platform, thanks to a new feature that will allow you to leave a note from one officer to the next. Pass down orders help to keep different shifts up to date on incidents and potential hazards to ensure full coverage.

Where this stands today: pass down notes are part of the shift handover in TrackTik and sit alongside post orders and site tasks, so nothing depends on one officer remembering to mention it. ReportPro AI now drafts the narrative from what the officer actually logged, which keeps handover notes readable instead of rushed.

Easy Directions

We are also streamlining your ability to easily manage multiple properties. In the next quarter, we’ll be launching new features in our software designed to route patrols to a property with GPS directions based on pre-loaded address. This is a valuable tool for supervisors who may not know the lay of the land as well as their officers.

Where this stands today: GPS routing between properties is standard in TrackTik Mobile Services. A supervisor covering an unfamiliar site now gets the route, the site profile and the post orders together, rather than an address and a phone call.

Summary

Perhaps the best part of GSX is getting to engage with our customers. We love hearing what you have to say about Silvertrac, and we get excited when you positively respond to our hard work. We get a lot of really valuable feedback from you on Capterra, but talking face to face is always a treat.

We’re coming out of GSX with a bang. We were inspired by the great conversations we had, the new members on our team, and by new features we got to preview designed to make Silvertrac even better.

Looking back, GSX 2018 was the point where that roadmap turned into what security firms run every day, with the reporting layer on top of it in Business Intelligence. If you want to see how the features previewed in Las Vegas behave in a live operation, you can book a TrackTik demo.

Frequently Asked Questions

Four things: checkpoint sequencing with pacing controls on guard tours, geofenced reporting paired with a live officer map, pass down orders between shifts, and GPS routing between properties. All four shipped, and all four are now part of the TrackTik Security Guard Tour System rather than separate add ons.

Silvertrac is now part of Trackforce, which brought Silvertrac, TrackTik and GuardTek together under one company. TrackTik is the flagship security workforce management platform and the direct path forward for former Silvertrac users, because it carries the guard tour, reporting and dispatch capabilities Silvertrac customers relied on and adds back office, billing and analytics on top.

Two controls do most of the work. Sequencing forces checkpoints to be scanned in a set order, so an officer cannot start at the far end of a building and work backwards. Pacing sets a realistic minimum time between scans, so a tour cannot be cleared faster than the work can honestly be done. TrackTik applies both on the Security Guard Tour App and flags the exception to a supervisor during the shift, not after it.

Yes, and that is the point of geofencing. TrackTik captures GPS position with each checkpoint scan and each report, and a geofence limits where a report can be raised from at all. Rounds run through Mobile Patrol carry the same position data, so a security incident report arrives with a place attached rather than a description. That is what turns a patrol log into something a client will accept as evidence.

A note left at the end of one shift is attached to the site, so the next officer on post sees it with their post orders instead of hearing it in a hurried handover. Open incidents, outstanding site tasks and access notes travel the same way. Supervisors see the full thread in Guard Management, which means a recurring problem on nights is visible rather than folklore.

Book a walkthrough against your own site list. A TrackTik demo covers tour sequencing, geofenced reporting and the live map on real sites rather than sample data, and we can map your current patrol routes into it as part of the session. If you would rather meet in person, our conferences and events page lists where the team will be next.