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Desks

A desk is a seat in your control room. It is the operator-side equivalent of a response unit: the desk stays put, with its own extension and its own set of branches, while operators come and go through it across shifts.

Desks are optional. A control room that has not set any up carries on exactly as before — operators sign into CleverCommand and nothing extra is asked of them. Once you add desks, operators are asked which one they are at when they sign in.

Setting up desks gives you four things:

  • Telephony that belongs to the seat. The handset, extension, or PBX link is a property of the desk, so it stays correct no matter who is sitting there tonight.
  • Coverage that starts right. Each desk can declare the branches it normally works. Signing in there starts the operator on those branches instead of an empty queue.
  • A board that shows only this desk's work. Each desk can be told what it should not receive — whole branches, individual suburbs, or specific alarm receivers — so a specialised desk isn't wading through another desk's events.
  • An honest record of who worked where. Because taking a desk opens a session, you can see who is on each desk right now, and the record survives the shift.

Adding a desk​

Video Adding a desk · 0:23
  1. Navigate to Control Room in the sidebar.
  2. Open the Desks tab.
  3. Click Add desk.
  4. Give it a Name — this is what operators pick from, so use whatever your control room already calls it (for example Desk 2).
  5. Optionally set a Seat number and Room. The seat number is what shows on the operator's sidebar badge in CleverCommand.
  6. Fill in the Telephony and Branches sections below as needed.
  7. Leave In service ticked and click Add desk.

Telephony​

The Extension is the desk's number on your phone system. Each extension can only be on one desk in a control room, which is what makes it usable as an identity.

How this desk dials decides where calls go:

  • Control room default — use whatever is configured under Settings → Telephony. Most desks want this.
  • Softphone (browser) — calls go through the Twilio softphone inside CleverCommand.
  • SIP handset — a physical handset sits at this desk. Record its SIP address so it is documented alongside the seat.
  • Click-to-call link — hand the number to a PBX or dialler using a link belonging to this desk.

Only the last option overrides the control room's own dial link. A desk left on the control room default never changes how calls are placed, even if a link was typed in and the method later switched back.

Placeholders​

A desk's click-to-call link accepts the same placeholders as the control-room link, plus two that only make sense per-seat:

PlaceholderBecomes
{number}The number to call, in international format
{raw}The number exactly as it is stored on the contact
{number_enc}The international number, URL-encoded for use in a web link
{extension}The signed-in desk's extension
{agent}The signed-in operator's name

For example, https://pbx.example.co.za/call?to={number_enc}&from={extension} tells the PBX both who to ring and which desk is ringing them.

note

Resolution runs most-specific-first: the desk's own link, then the control room's link, then the computer's default phone app. A desk with no link of its own simply inherits.

Branches this desk covers​

Branch coverage on a desk is a starting point, not a lock.

  • Tick the branches this desk normally works. The picker shows how many suburbs each branch contains, so you can see what the desk will actually cover — a branch with no suburbs assigned covers nothing.
  • When an operator signs in at the desk, their live coverage is set from this list.
  • During the shift the operator or a supervisor can change coverage from the Area Routing board in CleverCommand. That change applies to the person for that shift only and never edits the desk.
  • The next person to sign in at the desk starts from this list again, so nothing has to be cleaned up afterwards.

If you leave every branch unticked, the desk does not set coverage at all, and whatever a supervisor assigned by hand is left alone.

What this desk sees​

Video What a desk sees · 0:34

Where Branches this desk covers sets a starting point for the operator's coverage, What this desk sees decides which events reach the desk at all — on the board, the siren, and the toasts in CleverCommand.

The section shows one collapsed row per dimension. Each row's heading tells the whole story — Sees all 11, or in red, Doesn't see Ajax Receiver, Olarm Receiver +1 more — so a desk's setup is readable without opening anything. Open a row and tap a chip to hide or show that item; a hidden chip turns red and struck through.

  • Branches — hiding a branch hides every suburb inside it.
  • Suburbs — hide individual suburbs on top of (or instead of) whole branches.
  • Alarm receivers — hiding a receiver hides the panel signals that arrive through it. Camera events don't come through receivers, so this list never affects them.
  • Event source — the four ingestion paths: Alarm panels (via receivers), CleverCam cameras (CCU), CleverMail cameras, and App panics (CleverAlert). The classic splits fall out naturally: a video desk hides panels, an alarms desk hides both camera sources, a bureau desk keeps only its receivers. Vendor photo platforms (AVLytics and friends) arrive through receivers and count as panel events; trackers, app open/close and manual events belong to no source and always show on every desk.
  • Signal types — the same types as Settings → Alarm Handling, grouped the same way, each group with a hide all / show all shortcut. A malfunctions-only desk, for example, hides Life-safety, Intrusion and Open/close and keeps the Power, Technical and Environmental groups. Note that camera detections arrive as Burglary, so hiding Burglary hides those too.

Hiding any of panic, duress, fire, or medical — or the App panics source — shows a warning: that desk will neither show nor ring for them, so make sure another desk covers life-safety before saving.

Because the lists record exclusions, anything created later — a new branch, suburb, receiver, or signal type — is visible on every desk until someone deliberately hides it, and a site that doesn't fall inside any suburb always shows everywhere. A desk with nothing hidden sees everything, which is the default and exactly how desks behaved before this existed.

Coverage warnings​

Hiding things per desk is safe as long as someone still sees them. The moment that stops being true, CleverOps says so:

  • On the Desks tab, a red banner appears when every currently manned desk hides the same thing — "Right now, no manned desk receives: …" — or, if nobody is signed in yet, when every in-service desk shares a blind spot: "No in-service desk is set to receive: …".
  • In CleverCommand's desk picker, an amber note under the desk list warns before the operator takes a desk that would leave the room blind: "If you take this desk, no manned desk will receive: …". It never blocks taking the desk.

One desk that sees everything makes every such gap impossible, so small control rooms with a single catch-all desk will never see these warnings.

Beyond the scope-level warnings, the platform watches the actual events: an open event that nobody owns counts as not watched when every manned desk hides it, or when it is homed to a desk nobody is signed into. When that count is above zero:

  • the Desks tab shows a red card — "Right now N open events are not being watched…" — saying how many have no desk that would show them and how many sit on an unmanned desk;
  • the CleverCommand board shows a red "⚠ N not watched" chip beside the queue filters (refreshed every minute); tapping it reveals everything the current desk hides so the events can be picked up immediately.

Both disappear the moment a desk that sees those events is taken, someone claims them, or the scopes are widened.

Assignment: My desk and Other desks​

In rooms where at least one manned desk limits what it sees, every incoming event is also homed to its best-matching manned desk — the most specialised desk that would show it wins, so a panels-only desk owns panel work even while a see-everything desk is manned. Events nobody's scopes claim are Unassigned and belong to everyone.

Operators holding a desk get a My desk / Other desks toggle beside the queue filters in CleverCommand. In My desk, cards homed to other desks dim (with a small chip naming whose they are); in Other desks the reverse. Dimmed cards stay fully clickable — assignment is a lens for attention, and only the visibility exclusions above ever remove a card. Taking or leaving a desk re-homes the open, unclaimed events automatically.

Per-desk numbers​

Performance & Reports → Dispatch → Controllers grows a Desks table in rooms that have desks: Assigned (events homed to the desk), Worked (events an operator first opened while holding the desk), Avg time to open (from the event landing on the queue to that first look), and Worked from elsewhere — events this desk worked that were homed to another desk. When a week shows ten or more of those, a Review Queue item (Desks category) points out that the desk scopes and the room's reality disagree, naming the loudest desk pair.

The first look is recorded once, the moment an operator first opens the event — either in CleverCommand, or on the event's page in the CleverAlert app, which many control rooms work their alarms from. It stays on record after the event closes, so a busy day's numbers are complete rather than only the events still open. Opening the event again, or a repeat signal waking a sleeping one, never moves it. Events a customer reads are not first looks and are never counted. Events first opened by someone who is not signed into a desk are counted on the Unassigned row, next to the routes no desk accepted. The record starts on 1 September 2026; events closed before that cannot be reconstructed and never appear.

The same table also says who actually sat at each desk, and whether they were looking:

  • Operators — how many different people held the desk in the range.
  • Expected · manned — when the desk was meant to be manned, and how long it actually was. Expected comes from the desk's rostered postings where the Roster module names the desk; otherwise from the control room's default shift hours; otherwise it is simply the whole range. When more than an hour of expected time went unmanned it is shown in red as N short. Manned folds desk sessions together first, so a reload or a second CleverCommand tab never counts as a gap.
  • Active / idle / away — the manned time split by what CleverCommand saw (see Desk monitoring). Time from a browser that has not yet reloaded onto a build that reports attention is left out of the split, and a desk with none reads no telemetry.
  • Active, no work — active time that no first look and no event action touched, within five minutes either side. A mouse that keeps moving while nothing gets worked lands here; half an hour or more shows in red.
  • Gaps — breaks of more than five minutes between sittings, with the longest.
  • Arrived while empty · away — of the events homed to the desk, how many landed while nobody held it, and how many while its occupant was in another tab or minimised. Hover for the total homed and how many arrived while the desk was idle.
  • First look (active / not) — the median time from an event landing on the queue to somebody first opening it, split by whether the desk was active when the event arrived. The gap between the two numbers is what attention costs.

Below it, Operators at desks gives the same split per person across every desk they held — desks used, manned time, active / idle / away, active with no work, first looks with their median, and the number of event actions. Export CSV writes both tables to one file.

Every Monday the platform looks back over the week and raises one Review Queue item (Desks category) for a control room whose worst desk sat empty for four hours or more of its rostered or shift-hour time — "Werkstasie 4 was unmanned for 8 h 40 min of the 84 h it was expected to be manned this week (from the roster), and 41 of the 312 events homed to it arrived while it was empty." Rooms with neither a roster desk nor shift hours are never flagged, since nothing says when their desks should be manned.

An operator who is away from their desk for ten minutes is also marked On break on the Area Routing board. They are marked available again the moment they are back, or as soon as their desk session ends — nobody has to flip it by hand. A break an operator sets on themselves is never changed, and neither is a status they pick over an automatic break.

The Desks tab itself carries an at-a-glance Last 24 h column on every row — 2 op · 5h 12m manned · 3 gaps (1h 05m) · 12 arrived while empty, then assigned · worked with misroutes in red — so the day's shape is visible right where desks are managed; the Performance table holds the fuller ranges.

These numbers are for managers and control-room supervisors. A controller never sees them — not on this tab, not under Performance, and not by asking the server directly.

What the operator sees​

The filter is a lens, not a wall. When the signed-in desk is hiding events that would otherwise be on the board, a chip appears beside the queue filters — "3 hidden by desk" — and turns red if any hidden event is an emergency. Tapping it shows the hidden events; tapping again puts the filter back. Nothing is ever unreachable from the desk.

Changes to a desk's visibility apply the next time the desk is taken — signing in, moving desks, or reloading CleverCommand.

Taking a desk in CleverCommand​

When a control room has desks configured, operators are asked "Which desk are you at?" after signing in. The desk this computer used last is already selected, so it is usually a single click.

  • Taking a desk that someone else is still signed into signs them off it. That is the handover — the person arriving does not have to find the person leaving.
  • Reloading CleverCommand, or opening it in a second tab, keeps the desk already held. The operator is not asked again and the desk board does not record a move. A tab closed and reopened within two minutes gets the same desk back the same way.
  • If a supervisor has assigned the operator to particular desks, only those can be taken. The others stay in the list, greyed and marked not assigned to you, so the reason is visible.
  • If the control room requires a desk, Not now is not offered. When none of the operator's assigned desks is in service, Carry on without a desk lets them work anyway, and the Desks tab tells the supervisor they had nowhere to sit.
  • The current desk shows as a badge on the CleverCommand sidebar, with a small dot: green while CleverCommand sees the operator in the tab, grey otherwise. That dot is all an operator ever sees of desk monitoring. Clicking the badge reopens the picker to move to a different desk mid-shift.
  • Logging out gives the desk up, and so does closing the last CleverCommand tab.
  • If a desk stops responding — the browser was closed, the machine went to sleep, the line dropped — it is released after about five minutes and shown as free. That is deliberate: anything routed to it then starts counting as not watched, instead of sitting unread behind a seat nobody is in.
  • A browser that comes back within half an hour takes its own seat back automatically, so a closed lid or a short network drop does not cost an operator their desk. After that the desk stays released and the operator has to reload CleverCommand and pick it again. A desk somebody else has taken in the meantime is never handed back — the person now sitting at it keeps it.

Unless the control room requires a desk, the picker can be dismissed with Not now. That choice holds for the browser tab, so reloading CleverCommand does not ask again. The sidebar then shows Desk with a None badge, and clicking it opens the picker whenever the operator is ready to sit down. A desk that cannot be taken never blocks anyone from working.

Desk monitoring​

Once desks exist, CleverCommand tells the server once a minute not only that a desk is held, but whether anyone is looking: whether any of the browser's tabs is visible, and when the operator last touched the mouse, keyboard or screen. The server turns those facts into one of three states, using the control room's own idle threshold:

  • In the tab — a CleverCommand tab is visible and there has been input inside the threshold.
  • Tab up, no input — a tab is visible, but nothing has been touched for longer than the threshold. Typically the mouse is in another window on a second screen.
  • In another tab or minimised — no CleverCommand tab has been visible for a full minute.

A desk with no session at all is simply empty.

On the Desks tab, the occupant's name carries a dot in that colour — green, amber, grey. Hover it for the state, since when, and how many CleverCommand tabs the browser has open. Coming back shows within seconds. A tab has to stay hidden for a full minute before it counts as away, so a window briefly covered by a popup, a softphone or another program never reads as the operator leaving. Going quiet is picked up within the minute.

Managers set the rules on the card at the top of the tab:

  • Idle after … min without input — the threshold behind Tab up, no input. Operators are never shown it.
  • Operators must take a desk — the room default for the picker. It can be overridden per person (see below).

Operators never see these states or numbers, for themselves or for anyone else — their desk chip shows a green or grey dot and nothing more. Every change of state is recorded, kept for 90 days, and readable only by managers and control-room supervisors. Nothing here signs anyone off: a desk that goes quiet stays held until the operator leaves it, closes the last tab, or the five-minute check-in window closes.

Who may take which desk​

On Control Room → Operators, each operator row in a room with desks has a Desks control beside the role. Tick the desks this person may take — nothing ticked means any desk — and choose whether they must hold a desk to work: Room default, Yes or No. Supervisors are never restricted and never required.

The rule applies the next time the person takes a desk. It never signs anyone off a desk they already hold, and taking an allowed desk still hands over whoever was sitting there. CleverCommand only offers the allowed desks, and the server refuses any other, so the picker and the record always agree.

When someone works without a desk under a rule that asks for one — none of their desks was in service, or the desk could not be taken — the Desks tab shows a red card: Working without a desk: Thandi (none of their desks is in service, 14:32). It lists people from the last 12 hours who still hold no desk, and clears as soon as they take one. Choosing Not now in a control room that does not require a desk is a choice, not a gap, and is never listed.

Close open events​

Video Closing open events in bulk · 0:34

A stack of stale camera alarms, or a morning of panel test signals, can be closed in one go from the Desks tab instead of card by card. The Close open events… button appears only for people who hold both Manage VCR settings and Bulk close events in this control room — the Supervisor role includes both, and company owners and admins always have them. Operators who only have the Bulk close events toggle do not see it; they keep closing cards in CleverCommand.

  1. Open Control Room → Desks and click Close open events….
  2. The dialog lists every event open in this control room right now, oldest first, and says when the list was loaded. Refresh loads it again.
  3. Narrow it down with the chips. Every chip shows how many open events it matches, given everything else selected; untick a chip to leave those events out.
    • Source — Alarm panels (via receivers), CleverCam cameras (CCU), CleverMail cameras, App panics (CleverAlert), or No source (manual, app, tracker…).
    • Signal type — Burglary, Low battery, Hub / device offline and so on. Panic, duress, fire and medical are marked (life-safety).
    • Age — Any age, Older than 1 h, Older than 24 h or Older than 7 days.
    • Desk view — Whole room, or What <desk> sees: only the events that desk's visibility settings would show.
    • Suburb and Receiver appear when the open events span more than one.
  4. Check the summary — Will close N of the M matching events — and the list of what will close: site, signal, source, and when it landed on the queue. A number after the signal, such as ×4, counts the repeat signals that close with it.
  5. Under Why are these being closed?, pick the reason: the same reasons operators pick when they close an event in CleverCommand (Workers on site, Test, Already handled, …). Other needs a note; for every other reason the note is optional.
  6. Click Close N events, then Yes, close.

Events close in small batches so every desk's board keeps up, which can take a minute or two in a busy room — keep the dialog open until it finishes. Stop halts it after the batch in flight. When it is done, the dialog shows how many events closed, and lists anything that was skipped, blocked or not attempted, with the reason for each.

What is never closed from here​

  • A response in flight — an active dispatch, a live call, or an unanswered required checklist item, on the event or on any of its repeat signals.
  • Events also open in another control room. Closing an event ends it for every control room that has it, so those are left for their operators.
  • Events being worked — anything an operator acted on or first opened in the last 15 minutes.
  • Events that just arrived — under 2 minutes old.

These are counted under Won't close in the summary. The same rules are checked again at the moment each event closes, so an event that has changed since the list was loaded — a new signal, an operator's action or a first look — is skipped rather than closed. A list more than 10 minutes old is refused outright: refresh it and review again.

Closed only when ticked​

Three kinds of event are left out unless their box under the summary is ticked:

  • Life-safety events — panic, duress, fire, medical, or an alarm whose verification was requested or confirmed.
  • Events with no source and no signal type.
  • Sleeping cards. A sleeping trouble card is waiting for its restore signal; closing it ends that fault without one.

What gets recorded​

Each closed event gets a Bulk Close line on its timeline with the reason and note, under the name of the person who closed it. Customers are not notified. Repeat signals linked to a closed event close with it. Every batch also writes a receipt to the control room's audit log.

Editing and removing desks​

Open the Desks tab and click Edit on any row to change it. Delete is not on the row: it sits in the Danger zone at the bottom of that same edit dialog.

To stop using a desk, edit it and untick In service. It disappears from the operator picker while its history stays intact. Delete is for desks created by mistake — past sessions survive but stop naming the desk, so its shift history is lost.

Rostering a desk​

If you use the Roster module, a control-room post can name a specific desk instead of asking for a number of seats.

  1. In Roster → Demand, create or edit a post and set What gets staffed to Control room seats.
  2. Choose a Desk.
    • Any desk — staff by headcount keeps the usual behaviour: the post asks for a number of people and any desk will do.
    • Picking a named desk makes the post that seat, which needs exactly one person.

Most control rooms are better served by headcount. Name the desk only where the seats genuinely differ from one another.