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      State Fire Database Uploads / NFIRS Reporting

      Learn how AngelTrack automatically performs your state fire database reporting.

      Data Validation

      NFIRS reports are subject to the following validations:

      • 184 data consistency rules called "relational edits"
      • 19 module consistency rules called "incident module rules"
      • An assortment of "star rules" which represent the required fields that are marked with stars on the NFIRS paper forms

      AngelTrack's NFIRS report authoring system -- which is called the PCR because it also supports EMS charting -- implements all these rules electronically. It will not allow a crew member to submit a report to QA until all the rules are satisfied.

      The data validation runs again when the QA reviewer seeks to pass a report from QA onward to billing, and it runs a third time when AngelTrack is preparing to transmit the report to a fire database. For a more detailed explanation of these validation steps, refer to the State Trauma Registry Uploads Guide, which explains it in terms of EMS uploads that are treated similarly.

      "Jumping" a call over QA review

      If a supervisor "jumps" a dispatch over QA review, skipping the checks to send it straight to "Billing office" or "Finished", then AngelTrack is required to upload it even though the crew and the QA reviewer did not have a chance to check and correct any data validation errors.

      AngelTrack will perform a final data validation right before upload, and this might fail for a "jumped" call. Such failing calls will appear in the State Upload Queue as validation failures. From there you can open the reports to make corrections, or open the run tickets to send them back to the crews to be fixed, or tell AngelTrack to try the validation again.

      SFTP Uploader

      AngelTrack's NFIRS uploader is an SFTP uploader, to match the common protocol in use by state fire databases.

      It has automatic backoff/retry capability, and is gentle to your state's servers by uploading only one report per minute. If it encounters any error, it will report it to you by raising a warning flag on the Settings icon on the AngelTrack home page.

      To configure the uploader, find the NFIRS item under the Settings page. To add a new credential, click the Add.large-4 plus sign.

      Multiple Authorities / Multiple Credentials

      AngelTrack's state uploader can upload to multiple authorities, in a cascade:

      1. Incident city
      2. Incident county
      3. Statewide

      That is, each credential in the uploader can have a jurisdiction city, or a jurisdiction county, or be a statewide credential. To decide where each report should be uploaded, AngelTrack checks for a city match, and if not found then a county match, and if not found then a statewide credential.

      For example, suppose you have a credential for the city of Dallas and another for the city of Fort Worth, plus a credential for Tarrant County, and finally a statewide credential. AngelTrack will then decide jurisdiction like this:

      1. Check to see if the incident occurred within Dallas or Forth Worth, and if so, upload it using those credentials.
      2. If no match found by city, then check to see if the incident occurred within Tarrant County, and if so, upload it using that credential.
      3. If no match found by city or by county, then upload it using the statewide credential.

      In this manner, you can create a cascade of credentials for the different authorities to which you must submit reports.

      Each dispatch is only ever reportable to one credential. The automatic uploader does not support reporting one particular dispatch to multiple authorities. If you are in that situation, follow the instructions below under "Manual Uploads".

      Note that this restriction does not apply to ET3 uploads, to CAD pushes to ESO, or to progress-report pushes to HealthEMS and to VectorCare. All of those have their own separate uploaders and so run independently of the automatic state uploader.

      Inactivity Reports

      If you respond to zero incidents during a calendar month, NFIRS requires you to submit an inactivity report. AngelTrack does this for you, automatically, to every active credential.

      Manual Uploads

      If you are stuck needing to report each dispatch to two different authorities, you must perform the secondary reports manually.

      AngelTrack makes it easy to sort and filter your calls to a date range, and other criteria, using the many filters on the Closed Dispatches page, and in other locations. From there, you can select the trips you want, and then use the "Bulk Operations" tool to export them as NFIRS files, suitable for upload to the secondary authority using whatever web portal they provide.