Using Buoy during an incident

Wiki ▸ Documentation ▸ User documentation ▸ Using Buoy during an incident

Whether you have sent an alert to your Crisis Response Teams or are responding to Buoy alerts, you will be presented with Buoy's incident response and field support toolkit. This page guides you through the basics of accessing these tools. For more information about a specific tool, follow the link to that tool's documentation page.

Overview

1. Navigating the incident coordination interface
2. Using the incident toolbar
3. Communicating with responders
4. Documenting an incident
5. Next steps

Navigating the incident coordination interface

Upon activating or responding to an alert, you will be presented with Buoy's default incident coordination interface. A partially annotated screenshot of this interface is shown here:

The major components of this interface from top to bottom are:

1. WordPress Admin Bar
2. Buoy incident toolbar
3. Incident chat room (the default incident coordination tool)

Use the incident toolbar to access additional incident coordination capabilities.

Using the incident toolbar

The incident toolbar provides one-touch access to additional incident coordination tools, such as:

• the Incident map,
• incident media sharing capabilities, and
• videoconferencing ("videochat") and livestream capabilities.

Communicating with responders

By default, Buoy provides a simple text-based incident chat room with which to send messages to and receive messages from responders. However, using the incident map and videoconferencing, you can also:

• Place a standard telephone call to a responder.
• Participate in a group videochat.

Documenting an incident

In some situations, the most urgent response action is simply to bear witness, documenting it for future action. To accomplish this, use Buoy's incident media sharing capabilities to record video, audio, or still pictures and instantly share those records with others. This way, even if something bad happens to your phone (e.g., it is damaged or confiscated), a copy of the video/audio/picture you recorded will exist on one or more different, remote computers for safer-keeping.

Next steps

🚧 TK-TODO

Read Coordinating an incident response for more guidance.