Informant 3.32 is the latest major update to Informant and is currently in early release testing. It includes several exciting new features and improvements.

WHAT'S NEW IN THIS RELEASE

Better manage workflows and to-do lists in Informant with Tasks
On-demand geocoding for Location records
Enter extensions for phone numbers
Redact street numbers in reports
Users can now work on records simultaneously
Check NIBRS errors for the current month
Improved TraCS integration
Import Person records from a CSV file
Master index records now load faster
Control who can add words to Informant's spell-checker
Multi-Database Access
Other improvements in this release

Better manage workflows and to-do lists in Informant with Tasks

Track anything with Tasks

Customers on our Enhanced, Elite, and Enterprise editions can now easily manage to-dos for you and your department with Informant's integrated Tasks sidebar:

Use Tasks to streamline your operations:

Simplify your record review process: Assign a task to a supervisor when it's time for them to review a record, and have supervisors assign follow-up tasks to officers with specific feedback if they need to address any issues.
Keep your investigations organized: Add tasks after creating a new Incident for the common to-dos to make sure nothing falls through the cracks as your investigation progresses.
Schedule evidence audits: Assign a recurring task to remind you or your evidence officer to perform evidence audits, and see when they complete it.
Add private todos: View and add tasks in your own task list to track your tasks.
And anything else you want to keep track of: Tasks are like digital sticky notes: use the Tasks sidebar as your personal day planner or as a collaborative tool to streamline anything that requires intra-office communication or coordination. The possibilities are endless!

Tasks are flexible and support several features:

Assigned tasks: You can optionally assign tasks to another Informant user or a team to delegate tasks to the correct individual or group.
Personal task list: Tasks created in your sidebar when you are not in a record and not assigned to someone else become part of your private task list, visible only to you.
Record-specific tasks: When in a record, add and see tasks related to that record. Any record in any module can have tasks added to it.
Task due dates: Optionally add a due date to tasks to ensure important tasks are finished on time. Tasks due sooner will appear at the top of the task list, with overdue tasks on top.
Recurring tasks: For repetitive tasks, set a task as recurring on a daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly schedule. This is great for scheduling evidence room audits, reminders to submit UCR, NIBRS, or other reports, and other periodic tasks.
Documentation: If you have Tasks, check out the Tasks section in the Informant Help Center for more details about this feature (click Help > Informant Help Center in Informant to access the Help Center).

Get work done faster with Tasks! If you don't currently have the Enhanced, Elite, or Enterprise edition and are interested in upgrading to get the new Tasks feature, contact us to learn more and to get pricing information.

On-demand geocoding for Location records

Our new Geocoding feature helps automate the entry of latitude and longitude in Location records. When a Location is saved or updated, Informant can now fill in the Latitude and Longitude fields automatically if it recognizes the address or location entered.

This feature helps you store accurate information about locations: collecting latitude and longitude is also mandatory if you are currently reporting, or plan to report, NIBRS data in PA (did you know you can submit PA NIBRS data from Informant? Ask us about it!). Instead of looking up and entering latitude and longitude by hand for each location, let Informant do it for you!

We plan to add additional features powered by geocoding in future updates, such as address normalization and the ability to display a map of a given location.

Enter extensions for phone numbers

All phone number fields in Informant now include an Ext field for entering an optional extension number (up to 4 digits).

This makes it easier to note phone extensions for any individuals or businesses attached to records. This is particularly helpful in investigations when you need to note the extension required to reach someone, and for emergency contacts when providing a work/office number for a contact. All printable reports that display phone numbers have also been modified to show phone extensions if they are entered for a given phone number.

Redact street numbers in reports

While it has always been possible to redact full street addresses from reports in Informant by opting to redact "Street addresses" in the Hide Data tool, users can hide just street numbers in reports by selecting the new "Street numbers" option (where available), keeping street names visible in reports without revealing a specific address.

Users can now work on records simultaneously

It may have happened to you before: you've spent time entering a long supplement or making other edits to a record, only to discover when you attempt to save your changes that another user has made changes to the same record, requiring you to close your copy of the record and start over again, re-entering your edits.

In version 3.32, we've implemented a new "auto-merge" feature to help mitigate this issue: now, when Informant detects that another user has edited a record that you've also changed, it will automatically combine your changes with the changes made by the other user and notify you when this has occurred, so that you won't lose your changes.

The "auto-merge" feature uses a few simple rules to merge concurrent changes to a record:

If you've added new items to a record, such as a new supplement to an Incident, a new vehicle to an Accident, and so on, these will be preserved and added to the existing record.
In cases where an item is a link to another record, such as a suspect, victim, vehicle, etc., and the same link was added by the other user, the link is preserved without creating a duplicate link.
If you and the other user have changed the same part of a record, your changes and theirs are merged - any fields they've changed that you haven't edited will be carried over, and any fields you've changed will be kept.

With this change, multiple users can now work independently on different parts of a record simultaneously.

For example:

Different officers can enter a supplement in the same Incident record without overwriting each other's entries.
One user can add property/evidence to an Incident while another adds suspects, victims, etc.
In an Accident record, a different user can enter each vehicle involved and the occupants for each vehicle, allowing officers to divide and conquer when entering an Accident record.
And, any other situation where it may be more efficient for different users to be responsible for entering data in different sections of a record.

Check NIBRS errors for the current month

The Export NIBRS Data wizard now includes a new option (Run a NIBRS error check for the current month) that will report any NIBRS errors in Incidents created or updated since the beginning of the current month. This feature streamlines NIBRS reporting process by allowing administrative staff to periodically review and fix NIBRS errors throughout the month instead of having to fix a potentially large number of NIBRS issues when that month's NIBRS submission is due.

Improved TraCS integration

The E-Citation Interface integration with TraCS is now even more streamlined:

The E-Citation Interface will now import non-traffic citations created in TraCS, saving time by avoiding the need for double data entry if your department uses TraCS to issue non-traffic citations.
The E-Citation Interface now recognizes and imports and imports business defendants and businesses that are listed as vehicle owners in traffic and non-traffic citations.

Import Person records from a CSV file

The new Import Person Records feature under Tools in Administration lets you bulk import Person records from a CSV file. This is particularly useful if you have person records from another system, such as a student information system or another RMS, that you want to import into Informant.

Master index records now load faster

Master index records with a large amount of history on the History tab now load more quickly. More specifically, the History tab now shows the first 500 most recent history items. The complete history for a master index record is still accessible by printing the record.

We've also made improvements to other areas of the product to improve loading times.

Control who can add words to Informant's spell-checker

The new <General> | Add words to spell-check dictionary permission allows administrators to control which users can add words to Informant's spell-checker.

In this update, all user groups are granted this permission to mimic the behavior of previous versions of Informant, but administrators can remove this permission from any user groups that should not be allowed to add new entries to the spell-check dictionary. This is useful in scenarios where only certain users, such as supervisors or administrative staff, should have control over the words added to the dictionary, which can help reduce the number of entries added to the dictionary by mistake.

Multi-Database Access

Our Multi-Database Access add-on is designed for situations where two or more departments share the same server or the same computer network, but operate as separate agencies.

With the Multi-Database Access add-on, separate agencies on the same computer network can set up one or computers to access each other's Informant databases.

This setup is ideal for scenarios such as:

A university with multiple campuses, each operating its own police or public safety departments: In this scenario, each campus can have its own Informant installation, but can configure designated workstations with access to the other campus databases. This is ideal for public safety directors, campus police chiefs, or other administrators, as it allows them to log in and access each campus's Informant database from their workstation. It's also ideal for consolidating reporting across campuses, as one user or group of users can be given access to each campus's Informant system. This is particularly useful if one person is responsible for compiling Clery statistics for each campus.
A police department and a code enforcement office: In scenarios where both agencies share a network or server with the local code enforcement office, both offices can have their own Informant database, but can set up access to each other's databases. For example, certain code enforcement users can be given read-only access to certain modules in the police department's database, and vice versa.
A sheriff's office and a detective bureau or DA's office: In this scenario, the sheriff's department and detectives or DA's office can provide access to each other's databases to aid in investigations.

Unlike traditional data sharing, which usually provides read-only access to a more limited set of data, Multi-Database Access allows designated users to log into another agency's Informant system as if they were sitting at a desk at the other agency. The other agency can control which users can access their database and what permissions those users will have, which means designated users can be given read-only or edit access to specific modules in the other databases they have access to.

This is why this solution is ideal for supervisors and other designated users in any shared network environment where multiple agencies are operating independently.

As long as you have two or more agencies that share the same computer network, you can use Multi-Database Access to set up cross-database access between them.

Other improvements in this release

This version of Informant also includes other useful changes.

General improvements

Users can now click to show/hide the contents of the password field when logging into Informant and when changing their password in the Change Password dialog: this provides a quick and easy way to verify typed passwords.
The Latitude, Longitude, and Intersecting Street fields no longer need to be activated in Administration and are now always available by default in Location records.
The Citation Payments and Ticket Payments features (found in the File | Payments menu) are now available in OnPatrol.
Findit has a new icon and a new, modern look.

UCR improvements

Unknown victims and victims with incomplete demographic information no longer cause UCR errors.
"U - Unknown" can now be selected in the UCR Code field for the Person | Race and Person | Ethnic Origin selection lists.

NIBRS improvements

All states: Informant now supports the latest version of the NIBRS specification, including the most recent 2023 changes to NIBRS (such as the removal and consolidation of some NIBRS offense classifications and the deprecation of "22 - School/College" as a valid NIBRS location code) and upcoming 2025 NIBRS changes.
All states: An issue was fixed to allow "NP - Number of Plants" to be used as a unit of measure for drugs of type "E - Marijuana," "G - Opium," and "K - Other Hallucinogens."
Massachusetts: "G - Gunshot Wound" has been added to the NIBRS Code list for the Incident | Victim Injury Type selection list for Massachusetts NIBRS.
Florida: Various improvements were made to the Florida NIBRS support in Informant.

Informant Knowledge Base

Release 3.32 (Currently in early release) Print