Tones, volume, and getting through Do Not Disturb

Your tone

You choose your own alert tone from the sounds already on your phone. Your department can also set a different tone per call type, so a structure fire can sound different from an EMS call.

In Settings you can set a default tone and, where your department has configured call types, a tone for each one.

Getting through silent and Do Not Disturb

A phone on silent will not make a sound for an ordinary notification. Two settings change that:

• Do Not Disturb override — lets dispatches break through DND. Android requires you to grant this in the system settings; the app has a button that takes you there.
• Full volume on every alert — raises the alarm volume for the page itself, so a phone left turned down still alerts loudly, then puts it back afterwards.

Dispatches play on the alarm channel, which is the same one your alarm clock uses — that is what lets them sound when the ringer is silenced.

Keep sounding until I answer

Off by default. Turn it on and the tone repeats until you mark up. It is the right setting for someone who sleeps through a single tone, and the wrong one for a phone that spends the night in a locker.

⚠ If you did not get a page

Work through these in order:

1. Open the app. If it says your sign-in has ended, enrol again.
2. Settings — does it warn that notifications are blocked, or that DND will silence dispatches?
3. Send yourself a test page from Settings.
4. Check your phone's battery optimisation. Some manufacturers — Samsung, Xiaomi, OnePlus and others — aggressively put apps to sleep, which can delay or drop notifications. Set the app to "unrestricted" or "don't optimise".
5. Tell your officer. The department can see which devices have not acknowledged recent pages.