It can also be useful for saving time locating lost devices, identifying an employee’s last-known location (especially in remote areas), and deterring theft.

How Does Powered-Off Location Tracking Work?

RelayX has bluetooth sensors that are activated when a device is powered down. A device can then be detected by nearby online Relay devices (up to 50-75 feet away), and its location will be reported to the user’s Relay Dashboard or App every 60 minutes. The reported location will be the online device’s location, whether indoors or outdoors.

Learn more about indoor location tracking.

How Long Can the Device Be Located?

Once a device reaches 4% battery life, it should automatically power down. The powered-off location tracking is expected to last up to 90 days for RelayX.

Location Tracking in Relay’s Dashboard

To locate a powered-off device in Relay’s Dashboard, navigate to the Indoor or Outdoor Location screen and filter for Show Offline Devices. The device will be represented by a cloud icon and will say “Seen at Location”.

The powered-off device’s location will also be present in the location history. In the example below, you can see the device was in the Celebration room, went offline for 15 seconds, and then was seen at 4616 Reedy Creek Rd.

Location Tracking in Relay’s App

To see the location of a powered-off device in Relay’s App, navigate to the Location Tab, select Filters, and select Offline Users. Offline users will display “Seen at Location”.

The post How to Locate Powered-Off Relay Devices appeared first on Relay.

Our customers find 1:1 calling to be especially helpful in keeping channels unclogged and sensitive conversations private. 

“The individual calling feature is game changing to us because certain things don’t need to be communicated with everyone.” – Patrick Davis, Engineering Director at Dream Hollywood Hotel

What is 1:1 Calling?

1:1 calling opens a temporary private Relay channel between two users unless the recipient is busy (i.e. in DND, in an active panic, on another call). The main differences between our old and current experiences are the significant audio enhancements and updated user experience that makes adoption and training a breeze.

How 1:1 Calling Works on a Relay Device

1. Placing a Call: Press and hold the Relay Assistant button, then say the command “Call (User Name)” to call a specific Relay. You will then hear a beep that acknowledges the command has been recognized and the Relay LEDs will flash green.
2. Talking on a Call: When the call has started, the devices will vibrate and then state the name of the person they’re talking to followed by a quick key in tone. This indicates that you are on a private channel with the person. To send a message, press and hold the Talk button.
3. Ending a Call: A call will automatically ends after 10 seconds of inactivity, returning you to your previous channel. The default 10 second delay can be changed in the Relay Dashboard to instead return you to your previous channel after 20 or 30 seconds. When the call ends, both devices will vibrate and play a key-out tone while the LEDs flash blue. You may also use the assistant button to switch channels to end a call.

How 1:1 Calling Works in the Relay App

Here’s what placing a 1:1 call on the Relay App will look like:

On the home screen. Click Place Call and choose a user. Once the call starts, press and hold the pink bar to talk.

Here’s what receiving a 1:1 call on the Relay App will look like:

The Relay App will announce the name of the user calling and switch you both into the private channel. You will hear a key-in tone to indicate that the call has begun, and you may press the talk button to send a message.

How 1:1 Calling Works in the Relay Dashboard

Here’s what placing a 1:1 call from the Relay Dashboard will look like:

On the Fleet Overview page, Click Call (bottom right) and choose a user. Once the call starts, press and hold the pink bar to talk.

Here’s what receiving a 1:1 call on the Relay Dashboard will look like:

When you receive a call while in the Relay Dashboard, you will hear the name of the user who is calling you followed by a key-in tone to initiate the call. Then you may press and hold the talk button to send a message or minimize the tab to continue interacting with the Relay Dashboard while on the call. 

When you fail to respond to a call, you will see a notification letting you know you’ve missed a call.

See 1:1 Calling in Action

The post 1:1 Calling: Now with Enhanced Audio and a Streamlined User Experience appeared first on Relay.

With our new Texting capabilities, Relay users can now send and receive text messages in any of our 30+ supported languages from the Relay App and Dashboard. Sent messages will play out as audio to all hand-held devices in the channel and received audio messages will be transcribed to text in the Relay App or Dashboard. 

This enhancement aims to do two things: Enable communication to continue seamlessly when voice communication is not the best option and make team communications more accessible for those who are hard of hearing.

Text to voice offers a discreet way to communicate with your team, perfect for sensitive topics like guest or security issues you don’t want overheard. No need to wait until guests are out of earshot, you can send it immediately to take quicker, discreet action. It’s also ideal for quiet environments like offices where voice comms could be disruptive to those around you, or loud settings where ensuring message clarity is critical.

This improvement also bridges communication gaps for those who are deaf or hard of hearing. By enabling seamless interaction between text-based and voice-based communication channels, it fosters a more inclusive environment where everyone can contribute effectively, regardless of their hearing abilities.

Enabling Message History

To get the full value out of Texting, Relay users must have message history enabled. This allows you to not only send a message but read the transcriptions of voice messages that happen on the channel. 

• On the Relay App: To enable message history on the Relay Dashboard, click on a channel and check Message History.
• On the Relay Dashboard: To enable message history on the Relay App, click the conversation icon next to a channel and then click Enable History. 

Sending a Text on the Relay App and Dashboard

Once message history has been enabled, you can send text messages and voice messages from the Relay App or Dash.

• On the Relay App: To send a text message on the Relay App, click the conversation icon. This will pull up all messages on the channel.  
• On the Relay Dashboard: Navigate to the Communications Menu, choose Messages, and select the channel you’d like to communicate on. If you aren’t active on the channel, select Switch to send a text to the channel.

Receiving a Text on the Relay App and Dashboard

Texts can be received by any hand-held device, Relay App, or Relay Dashboard user who is on the channel. When receiving messages, App and Dashboard users can choose to listen to voice messages aloud or view them as text. 

• On a hand-held Relay device: Device users will hear a notification of who sent the message followed by the audio transcription of the text message
  • i.e. If Scott texts, “Is anyone available to bring towels to the fitness center?”, devices will hear “Scott said: Is anyone available to bring towels to the fitness center?”
• On the Relay App or Dashboard: Users will receive a notification that a message has been sent on the channel and may click the notification or the message history to read the message.

Texting for Multilingual Teams

Texting also works with TeamTranslate™, instantaneously translating text messages sent from a Relay App or Dashboard into each user’s preferred language. Users will only receive the translated version of a message, making it seamless to communicate with a multilingual team. For Relay App or Dashboard users, transcriptions of any messages sent from hand-held devices in another language will appear in both languages in message history.

See Texting in Action

The post Beyond Voice: Enhancing Accessibility and Streamlining Communication with Texting on Relay appeared first on Relay.

Manual check-ins add an additional task to the already busy schedules of teams and their managers. They make it harder to stay vigilant and take away valuable time away from other important tasks, leading to delays and negatively impacting productivity and employee morale. 

When security guards, housekeepers, or nurses forget to complete or record a check-in, it can lead to liability and safety concerns. Not to mention, difficult conversations when managers have to hold staff accountable. 

The time and resources spent on manual check-ins should be redirected towards more value-added activities that contribute directly to the team’s goals and objectives. Organizations should consider implementing an automated check-in system that streamlines the process, ensures compliance, and minimizes the negative impact on teams.

Introducing Rounds

With Rounds, managers will be able to passively track scheduled rounds or patrols and automatically receive a notification when an employee has missed their rotation. This eliminates the need for manual entry with paper logs, QR codes, or NFC scans.

As teams carry Relay devices on their rounds, the Relay devices will pick up indoor location readings from our bluetooth indoor location beacons, which automatically marks the round as complete. 

Relay users can then access all logs in Relay dashboard and can even receive a notification any time a round is missed.

How does Rounds work?

The first step is configuring Relay’s bluetooth indoor location beacons in each area staff needs to visit. Once these beacons are placed in each area, managers can configure the Rounds workflow in their Relay dashboard by noting the following:

• Which Relay devices are responsible for making rounds?
• How frequently does each room need to be visited?
• If a round is missed, who would need to be notified?

Once everything is set up, staff can simply walk their rounds with their Relay device, and as they walk the established route, Relay devices scan for indoor locations in real time and complete rounds as they near a beacon. If a rotation is missed, users will receive a notification. All completions and misses are stored and accessible in the Relay dashboard.

“Rounds has made my life a lot easier. Now I don’t have to try to track down people to find out whether a patrol was done, what time it was done, and who was it done by. I can simply go on to the Relay dashboard and pull up the historical information. Whereas before everything was kind of estimated times.”

Rich O’Donnell, Director of Security, Raleigh Marriott City Center

Setting up Rounds in the Relay Dashboard

In Dash, navigate to Locations and choose Rounds. Click Create Rounds. 

Name the Round (e.g. Security Patrol, Cleaning Rounds), and then select which group need to complete the Rounds and which group needs to be notified when a Round is missed.

Then, set the Primary interval of how often a location needs to be checked and choose which buildings, floors, and rooms need to be visited. The interval timer will start when the last Relay device has left the area.

Once the Rounds have been configured, users can view and edit the configuration within the View Configuration section in Relay’s dashboard.

To view Rounds data, go to the View Summary sections in Relay’s Dashboard to see a room-by-room number of completions and misses over a time period, or the View Logs section to review individual logs containing each completed or missed patrol, including who completed the patrol and the time at which it was completed or missed.

Virtual users set up as Notifiers will receive a notification in the Dashboard or on their phone from the Relay App any time a Round has been missed. 

Rounds in Action

We checked in with Rich O’Donnell, Director of Security at The Raleigh Marriott City Center, who has been piloting Rounds at the hotel for six months. Before implementing Rounds, he relied on the honesty and integrity of his security officers to go out and do the required patrols he asked them to do. Now, Relay is keeping track of these rotations for him. Here’s what he had to say about the impact Rounds has had on his team.

“The Rounds feature is great because now as the officers walk the building, their location is tracked. I have the ability to set up mandatory patrols that I want done on a particular time basis. And if when those time intervals are hit, a patrol hasn’t been done, it sends an audible reminder to all of the security Relays, advising them that the patrol hasn’t been done yet. It gives them that gentle nudge that some people need to make sure that they go out and get those patrols taken care of.”

“The other thing it helps out with is when there’s a complaint of some kind, I can go in, pull up the historical records and go and see, ‘Hey, did somebody actually go up there to investigate when we had a report of a noise complaint on the floor’. I can pull it up and see. ‘Yeah, somebody was up there’. Rounds has definitely shortened the amount of time it takes for me to do some of those investigations. I’m able to pull up that information in moments compared to it taking me sometimes an hour to try and get in touch with the security officer that was here that night.”

“I would highly recommend it. I think it’s fantastic. It gives me the peace of mind to know that I can manage my team in a very time effective manner and that I’m getting accurate information that is super helpful and saves me a lot of time.”

Removing Manual Headaches

Now, frontline workers across industries can customize and automate the manual processes that keep them from focusing on the tasks that matter most.

Whatever your reason for making rounds, Relay can help upgrade your operations, improving team effectiveness all around. Employees feel good about keeping their focus on the work, not the process, while managers spend more time focusing on people instead of paperwork.

Check out all of our new enhancements here.

The post Rounds: Removing Manual Check-Ins for Security and Beyond appeared first on Relay.

In response, many businesses with multilingual staff resort to using translation apps or on-site translators, while others lacking access to these expensive and logistically challenging resources simply don’t communicate at all. Additionally, staff members being on their phones can look unprofessional, especially in a luxury setting.

Using traditional translation devices is also inconvenient because conversations must take place in-person. That means team members have to stop the task at hand to physically locate the person they need to communicate with. 

These hurdles create divisions within teams and can even restrict candidate pools when hiring new staff. Being understaffed or unable to promote non-english speakers results in slow guest service and frustrated staff members. 

That’s why we created TeamTranslate.

What is TeamTranslate?

An upgrade to our existing translation capabilities, TeamTranslate will allow you to access a broader hiring pool, communicate clearly in real-time, and enhance guest and staff experience. With real-time speech-to-speech translation capabilities, multilingual communication is no longer limited by language barriers.

TeamTranslate allows you to set up to 31 different languages for a device and translate messages in real time across Relay channels. When a message is sent, it’s first heard in the spoken language and then instantly translated into the recipient’s set language.

For example, If an English speaker sends “I need help” to French, Spanish, and Mandarin users, they will hear the English message, immediately followed by the translation into French, Spanish, or Mandarin.

The languages currently supported by TeamTranslate are Arabic, Bengali, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Filipino, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Mandarin, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish, Tamil, Turkish, Ukrainian, and Vietnamese.

How Does TeamTranslate Work?

First, set a preferred language for each user in the dashboard.

Any combination of currently supported languages may be translated between each other. Therefore, a Spanish user can send a message that will then be translated into English, German, or any other supported language.

The types of messages that will be translated are real-time messages in channels, panic notifications, broadcast messages, missed call notifications, and assistant button responses such as device name and channel name.

Here are the answers to a few of our most common questions.

1. Who can send or receive translations?
   • Any user! You may send a message that is translated from any Relay, the Relay App, or our dashboard. Currently, only Relays and dashboard users can receive translated messages.
2. How does Relay know which language I’m speaking?
   • A Relay device automatically detects a spoken language to determine which language to translate from.
3. How long does it take Relay to translate?
   • Translations typically will play within 0-3 seconds of the original message.
4. How do I upgrade to TeamTranslate?
   • Reach out to your Customer Success Manager.

See TeamTranslate in Action

Now, frontline workers can communicate seamlessly with guests, colleagues, and superiors in their native language while TeamTranslate does all the hard work. Relay customers can overcome language barriers in real-time with the tool they’re already using to communicate and ask for help.

TeamTranslate opens doors to a more inclusive, rewarding, and enriching work environment for any business where diversity is not just an advantage, but a necessity. Check out all of our new enhancements here.

Learn how TownePlace Suites Raleigh Cary/Weston Parkway is using TeamTranslate to improve guest service, free up time for multilingual employees, and empower non-English speaking staff to build relationships with their coworkers.

The post TeamTranslate™: Breaking Down Language Barriers appeared first on Relay.