Setting up a Spillman Flex Data Exchange Integration

Owned by Kendra Islam
May 02, 2022
5 min read

The active911-connector application

The active911-connector is a Windows application that connects to your Spillman Flex Data Exchange’s HTTP Rest endpoint, pulls alerts from that connection, and sends them to Active911 via SNPP.

Obtaining the installer

Currently the Spillman Flex Data Exchange Integration is still in beta. Please have one of your agency admins email activealert@active911.com if your agency would like to join the beta testing, and we will send you the installer for the application.

Setting up the application

1. When you receive the installer (a .exe file), double click on the file to install it onto your Windows machine. Once it is installed, open the application and you will see this log in page.

2. Enter the email and password you use to log into the Active911 console and click the login button.

 

3. Next you will see the Set Up page where you will configure the application to connect to your HTTP Rest endpoint and connect your FlexDex agency identifier to an ActiveAlert agency alerting email.

HTTP Rest Endpoint

The first section is to input your credentials and URL for your HTTP Rest endpoint.

1. Put your HTTP Rest endpoint URL into the first box.

2. Put your username for the endpoint into the second box.

3. Put your password for the endpoint into the third box.

4. Click the VERIFY CONNECTION TO “FLEX DATA EXCHANGE” button and double check that all fields are highlighted in green and that the button changes to say CONNECTION VERIFIED before continuing. Any invalid entries will be highlighted in red and will require you to fix them before continuing.

Changes to any of the three fields will require you to verify the connection again.

 

Active911 Connection Options

The Active911 Connection Options currently only has the selected options. When the options expand to have more choices, this document will be updated to include details on each one.

 

Configure Agencies

The last step is the Configure Agencies section.

  1. Select your FlexDex agency identifier from the drop down titled Internal Agency Identifier (which will be filled with the available options for your endpoint).

2. Copy and paste your ActiveAlert Agency alerting email into the ActiveAlert Agency Email/Endpoint field.

Note: We recommend creating a new test agency to use while validating that the alerts being sent are correct before sending them out to your first responders. You can do that by creating a new trial agency and using the alerting email for that agency.

The email can be found by logging into the web console and going to the Agency tab. Directly underneath the pie chart is your agency’s alerting email address (titled Alert email), which should end in @alert.active911.com. Copy and paste the full email address into the ActiveAlert Agency Email/Endpoint field in the active911-connector application.

3. You can add as many connections as you’d like by clicking the + ADD ANOTHER CONNECTION button, and remove excess ones by clicking the trash can.

4. When you’re done adding connections and all fields are filled, click the VERIFY CONNECTION(S) TO ACTIVE911 button. All valid email fields will be highlighted in green and any that are invalid will be highlighted in red. Once all fields are verified, the button will change to say CONNECTION VERIFIED and you can continue.

Changes to any of the fields will require you to verify the connection again.

 

Begin sending alerts

Once all fields are valid, the START ACTIVE911 CONNECTION button will be enabled.

 

Clicking the button will close the Set Up page, bringing up the main view, and you can start receiving alerts. You can go back to the configuration page by clicking the SETTINGS button.

The table will show the last 50 alerts sent to Active911. The first column is the Message ID from Flex Data Exchange, the second is the status of the alert, and the third is the time it was sent to Active911. Messages that fail to send will be retried up to three times.

 

There is also a status indicator at the top of the page displaying whether or not the application is actively connected to the HTTP Rest endpoint. The two options are Disconnected and Connected. No action is needed to reconnect, the application automatically attempts to reconnect while disconnected.

 

Above the SETTINGS button will be a periodic message that runs when the application is actively looking for new alerts in the Flex database, which runs every 3 seconds.

 

To reconfigure the application, click the SETTINGS button which will bring up the same options from the Set Up page. Change your settings as desired, and they will be applied once you click the SAVE button.