2020 CMS President's Forum - New Features Coming to Alarm.com

Alarm.com was given the opportunity at the 2020 CMS President's Forum to present some of their upcoming features that will soon be made available. The discussion was led by Alarm.com Product Manager Jennie Lee. We are sure that Alarm.com users will love these features that are coming soon!

These upcoming features are designed to prevent Alarm.com users from needing to contact the central monitoring station and instead manage their own security systems more effectively. This is helpful to Criticom Monitoring Services (CMS) in improving response times, and it also provides a more engaging end user experience. Needless to say, we are very excited about what Alarm.com is bringing to the table!

First, Alarm.com is offering an in-app panic feature that makes it possible to trigger a panic alarm right from the Alarm.com Mobile App. This is great if you ever need to discreetly call for help in the event of an emergency. End users can also use the Alarm.com Mobile App to cancel an alarm or verify that an alarm is legitimate. These features must be enabled by your alarm monitoring company. Alarm Grid customers can contact us at support@alarmgrid.com to get started. But please remember that if you are ever experiencing a confirmed burglary or fire while you at the monitored premises to instead call 911 immediately.

Another upcoming feature that Jennie Lee mentioned is the ability for end users to view their central station event logs directly from the Alarm.com Mobile App. End users will be able to see prior alarm events, as well as any emergency dispatches that may have been ordered. By implementing this feature, Alarm.com is hoping to make things more convenient for end users and prevent them from having to contact the central station directly for simple tasks. This feature should also prove to be very useful for system testing purposes.

Jennie Lee also discussed the upcoming in-app test mode feature that will soon be made available for the Alarm.com Mobile App. End users will be able to access the Alarm.com Mobile App to put their systems on test mode when needed. When the system is in test mode using this service, alarm notifications will still be forwarded to the central station. However, any central station operators will know not to dispatch, and no false alarms will occur. An end user can set the time for their system to remain in test mode, and the system will automatically exit test mode once the set time has expired.

Alarm.com is also going to be putting out some useful tools for alarm technicians that should help to improve the customer experience. Technicians will be able to perform zone syncs on Alarm.com customer accounts. This is needed whenever changes are made to system zones and whenever sensors are added, edited, or removed. Another feature that will be made available to technicians is the ability to quickly and conveniently put a system into test mode on behalf of the end user. Technicians will also soon be able to initiate a Walk Test on an end user's behalf for testing specific sensors and zones. The technicians at Alarm Grid will surely appreciate these great new features!

Lastly, Criticom Monitoring Services President Tony Wilson mentioned that CMS will soon have the ability to see images directly from the DSC PG9934P and DSC PG9944 PowerG Image Sensors. These image sensors are widely used with security systems that support PowerG, including the Qolsys IQ Panel 2 Plus. Currently, images produced by these devices are visible from Alarm.com, but they aren't made available to Criticom. But that will soon change, as Alarm.com will be able to automatically forward the produced images to the central monitoring station. The PowerG Image Sensors are only able to capture images during alarm events, so as to maintain privacy for the end user. When the system goes into alarm, the image sensor will produce an image every half-second for five (5) seconds straight, for a total of ten (10) images. The first of these images will be sent immediately to Alarm.com and CMS, while the other nine (9) will be made available to the central station operator as a stop-motion video shortly thereafter.

Overall, our team is very impressed with what Alarm.com will soon be putting out. We think that these upcoming features will really help improve the lives of end users, and they will also make the jobs of our support technicians much easier. If you are interested in starting service with Alarm Grid for access to Alarm.com, you can check out our monitoring page for more information. Also remember that you can email us at support@alarmgrid.com to get started. We maintain support hours from 9am to 8pm ET M-F. We look forward to hearing from you!