OpsPlanner™ Frequently Asked Questions
What is OpsPlanner™?
A. OpsPlanner™ is a powerful software tool that delivers COOP and contingency planning, emergency management notification and tracking services in one easy to use Web-enabled environment.
It can be customized to fit any size organization's needs and continuity planning processes.
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What are the key components of OpsPlanner™?
A. OpsPlanner™ includes four modules: Collaboration, Planning, Recovery and Notification. Together, these modules provide comprehensive continuity of operations (COOP) coverage, collaborative
assessment, planning management, recovery and notification tools. The software provides a collaborative work environment, plan templates, personalized features, real-time, high-speed
notification, tracking, mobilization and crisis management capabilities that can be utilized during planning, disruptions, plan testing or post analysis review.
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Is OpsPlanner™ easy to use?
A. The OpsPlanner™ user interface is simple and similar to Web-based applications that most businesses already use.
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How can I access OpsPlanner™ when I am out of the office?
OpsPlanner™ is 100% Web-based and can be accessed at any location with Internet access or access to your agency's Intranet, if installed at your facility. You will need the Internet/Intranet
URL for your application, and then each individual user will need his or her login name and password.
If Internet/Intranet access is not available, plan users can download and print plans from OpsPlanner™ and carry them manually from one office location to another.
Internet access has proven resilient during recent disruptions such as 9/11, 2003 Blackout, Hurricane Isabel, and the subway bombings in London. During times of blackouts, many people
continued to access the Internet from different locations using various means.
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How do I use OpsPlanner™ to assess vulnerabilities?
OpsPlanner™ provides the ability to create surveys to solicit input from different parts of your organization. Teams can collect and analyze data gathered from the surveys in order to create
complete, comprehensible and collaborated plans.
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There is a lot of sensitive and confidential information in our Business Continuity plans. Does OpsPlanner™ have security measures? If so, how does this work?
OpsPlanner™ has been designed to support the security needs of complex organizational hierarchies utilizing the methodology of 'role based' security. The system administrator assigns security
levels to individuals based on their role and function as they relate to specific plans, locations and organizations. This allows for the system security to be highly flexible while
maintaining a level of simplicity for managing access rights for users.
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Can I upload my own documentation into OpsPlanner™?
The OpsPlanner™ document repository allows plan contributors to post and exchange all types of documents such as Microsoft Word ® and Excel ® files, facilities maps, floor plans, photographs,
surveys, web reference links, and much more.
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Can OpsPlanner™ work if I have people working in different locations?
Plan members and contributors across multiple geographic locations can access the plan, collaborate, stay on the same page, and be aware of the status of assigned tasks to get the job done.
Collaboration can occur equally well at anytime, during plan development, at the time of an event or during the post analysis stage of an event.
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How does OpsPlanner™ enable team-based planning?
OpsPlanner™ allows for the creation of groups that can be used to share documents, exchange information, schedule events, track tasks and issues and ensure that every one is on the same page.
Additionally, our plan development tool provides check-in/check-out and version history capabilities to support team-based plan development. OpsPlanner™ also offers a document repository for
surveys and interviews and allows document changes to be tracked.
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Does OpsPlanner™ support hierarchies?
Plans can be associated with a location hierarchy, organization hierarchy, and plan types. Reporting will support summarizing information at any level of each hierarchy.
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Briefly describe the notification process and how it is provided?
High-speed notifications to employees, partners, customers and suppliers can be easily initiated as part of crisis management in the Recovery module. Behind the scenes, OpsPlanner™
integrates with notification and telecom service providers to deliver the message and track responses. OpsPlanner™ has partnered with best-in-class emergency notification
service providers such as Varolii Corporation.
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What multiple devices does the OpsPlanner™ notification service deploy to reach people either during a disruption or for announcement messages?
With OpsPlanner™, you can choose one or all of the multiple-device functions to activate within seconds to thousands of people. Such devices include land line phones, cell phones,
email, fax, PDAs, Blackberrys and other wireless devices.
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Does OpsPlanner™ feature Text to Speech (TTS) notification messaging?
Text messages sent during the notification process of an event are easily converted to voice using Text-to-Speech (TTS) message conversion in OpsPlanner™. The receiver of the message
will hear a clear, precise and detailed voice message of the text that was entered by the sender. There is no limit to the amount of text that may be entered in a message.
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Can I create multiple plans?
You can create and maintain various types of plans as well as access multiple templates already created in OpsPlanner™. These templates can be used as is or customized to suit particular
needs. Both templates and custom plans can be integrated to a standard your company wishes to use to meet your compliance goals. Plans and plan templates can also easily be made from
scratch to meet your agency's specific needs.
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How do plan contributors, technical and non-technical alike "write" in OpsPlanner™?
OpsPlanner™ offers a word-processor-like ability to edit documents that is very easy to use by any plan contributor.
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How does OpsPlanner™ allow me to import a list of users?
OpsPlanner™ provides an easy-to-use bulk import function to load a number of users, contacts and resources at one time. For example, a Microsoft Excel template may be easily downloaded
from OpsPlanner™ to create a comma delimited file (CSV file). With this file you can add users, contacts and resources and import them all together into OpsPlanner™, thus saving data entry
time.
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What reporting options does the OpsPlanner™ software offer and support?
OpsPlanner™ offers robust reporting capabilities. The software comes with pre-installed reports ready to be used. OpsPlanner™ uses Crystal Reports Writer which can be used to create custom
reports that in turn can be uploaded to the OpsPlanner™ software.
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What Internet browsers does the OpsPlanner™ software support?
A: The OpsPlanner™ software is supported on the following browser versions:
- Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.01 with Service Pack 2
- Internet Explorer 5.5 with Service Pack 2
- Internet Explorer 6
- Netscape Navigator 6.0 and higher
Which database engine does OpsPlanner™ use?
OpsPlanner™ runs on Microsoft SQL Server 2000.
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How do we typically go about creating busines continuity and resiliency plans?
We work with an organization's leadership to create awareness, then team with all parties to find a strategy that's right for you. The BC plan becomes reality as the various teams
collaborate and the plan/sub-plan development is completed.
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