Abstract: A personal safety network (PSN) is provided in which authorized members of the network may rapidly and efficiently communicate with each other regarding threats, emergencies, or other circumstances. The PSN provides virtually real-time, multi-way messages among at least the members of a predetermined group of authorized members of the PSN. The PSN may integrate sensor data from security devices such as cameras, badge readers, and smart locks, with messages created by authorized members. The PSN may also include a location data database for maintaining virtually real-time location information for authorized members. Messages may be composed using speech recognition as an alternative to typing. A system administrator may provide temporary access to first responders or other authorized entities to message threads and underlying messages maintained by the PSN. Pre-processing and de-duplication methods are disclosed for managing congestion during periods when a large number of messages are received by the PSN.

Abstract: A personal safety network (PSN) is provided in which authorized members of the network may rapidly and efficiently communicate with each other regarding threats, emergencies, or other circumstances. The PSN provides virtually real-time, multi-way messages among at least the members of a predetermined group of authorized members of the PSN. The PSN may integrate sensor data from security devices such as cameras, badge readers, and smart locks, with messages created by authorized members. The PSN may also include a location data database for maintaining virtually real-time location information for authorized members. Messages may be composed using speech recognition as an alternative to typing. A system administrator may provide temporary access to first responders or other authorized entities to message threads and underlying messages maintained by the PSN. Pre-processing and de-duplication methods are disclosed for managing congestion during periods when a large number of messages are received by the PSN.

Abstract: A personal safety network (PSN) is provided in which authorized members of the network may rapidly and efficiently communicate with each other regarding threats, emergencies, or other circumstances. The PSN typically includes mobile devices, such as smartphones or tablets, on which a mobile application is running, an administrative server, and a push notification server. The mobile devices, administrative server, and push notification server cooperate to enable distribution of virtually real-time, multi-way messages among at least the members of a predetermined group of authorized members of the PSN. In addition, multiple PSNs may be linked together to effectively provide a single network for a large geographic area or remotely located, commonly owned or operated facilities.

Abstract: A web service program object is provided for use in developing application programs through a graphical program-development environment. The web service program object has a corresponding icon that can be placed within a graphical program representation and visually coupled to other program objects to define the logical operation of a desired application program. The web service program object has a plurality of publicly declared properties that may be set by the program developer to specify the Uniform Resource Locator (URL) of a selected web service and a given method of the selected web service. At run-time, the web service program object causes a proxy class to be created for accessing the web service. The web service program object in cooperation with the proxy class receives one or more input parameter values from the program user, provides those values to the selected web service and receives responding information from the web service.

Abstract: A masked edit program object for use in a graphical program-development environment is configured to have an Allow_Literal_Entry property that may be set as true or false, and an Insert_Zeros property that may also be set to true or false. If the Allow_Literal_Entry property is set to true, then at run-time when the program user enters a literal, the program object does not reject the literal as invalid entry, but rather searches the input mask for the entered literal and moves the cursor to the location in the input mask that is adjacent to the located literal. If the Insert_Zeros property is set to true, the program object will enter leading or trailing zeros in empty entries of the input mask that have been configured with specially-defined symbols for accepting leading or trailing zeros.