Getting Started with RapidSOS Digital Alerts

With RapidSOS Digital Alerts, we are streamlining the flow of critical safety information from IoT service providers to 911. Instead of relying on a game of telephone through 10 digit monitoring calls, which can add in excess of 7 minutes to response times, RapidSOS-verified data from devices, apps, sensors, and buildings will arrive directly to 911 almost immediately after an alert occurs with no 10 digit monitoring call required. This allows partners to provide a more informed and faster response.

API Overview

A complete Integration with RapidSOS Digital Alerts may utilize the following APIs. For details see the developer guide appropriate for your use case.

Additions to these API schemas will be added over time, so partners SHOULD take this into account to avoid additive changes breaking or negatively impacting their integrations. The types of non-breaking changes that could be introduced are:

New event types may be added
Enum values may be added (emergency_type, status, disposition, etc)
New optional fields may be added

Alerts Management API

A RESTful interface for managing active alerts. Integrations utilize this API to query for alerts, update their status, and send chat messages to the other entities involved in the dispatch of the alert.

Note that polling this API is not permitted. To receive ongoing notifications for new alerts, use the WebSocket Events API instead.

API Documentation
To view API documentation or obtain code samples in your language of choice, check out our interactive Alerts Management API explorer.

RapidSOS Additional Data Enhanced (RAD-E) API

A RESTful interface for querying additional data related to emergency incidents. This API can be used to query additional data for alert identifiers as well as phone numbers.

API Documentation
To view API documentation, check out our interactive RapidSOS Additional Data Enhanced API explorer.

RAD-E API
It is strongly recommended that when integrating this API, fields should not be hard-coded. This is because it assumes that information which should be flexible is actually fixed and unchanging. It is best practice to develop a UI renderer based on our auto-rendering schema language to allow for generating UI components native to your software for any data fields that might be added, updated, etc. for any source.

WebSocket Events API

A bi-directional streaming interface for receiving RapidSOS event notifications. Integrations utilize this API to receive notifications about new and updated alert information.

API Documentation
To view API documentation or obtain code samples in your language of choice, check out our interactive WebSocket Events API explorer.

Webhook Events API

An interface using event-driven HTTP payloads originating from RapidSOS that contain information about associated alert events. This API enables clients to subscribe to events generated in the RapidSOS system so they can receive webhooks with event data when they occur.

API Documentation
To view API documentation or obtain code samples in your language of choice, check out our interactive Webhook Events API explorer.

CAD Events API

An interface to allow CADs to return event-driven HTTP payloads to RapidSOS. Integrations can use this API to return location validation information to RapidSOS.

API Documentation
To view API documentation or obtain code samples in your language of choice, check out our interactive CAD Events API explorer.

Solution Overview

Digital Alerts for CAD

Integrating your solution with RapidSOS Digital Alerts requires 4 steps.

Authentication
Initialization
Notification Subscription
Alerts Interaction

The following diagram summarizes the sequence of API requests that are used to implement a complete integration.

Digital Alerts for Monitoring

Integrating your automation platform with RapidSOS Digital Alerts requires 6 steps.

Authentication
Initialization
Notification Subscription
Create Alerts
Receive RapidSOS Signals
Alerts Interaction

CAD Implementation

Once your Partner Integration with RapidSOS Digital Alerts is complete, several steps are required to implement your solution at an ECC.

For complete step-by-step instructions, please view our CAD Implementation Guide.

End User License Agreement

Onboarding ECCs with your RapidSOS Digital Alerts solution requires their signing of our End User Licesnse Agreement (EULA).

ECC Firewall Configuration

Onboarding ECCs with your RapidSOS Digital Alerts solution may involve modifications to ECC's firewall configuration. The timeline for modifications to ECC firewalls will vary, so we recommend beginning this process as soon as possible to allow maximum time for questions, scheduling, and execution.

Credentials

Onboarding ECCs with your RapidSOS Digital Alerts solution requires the ECC to request the credentials that your solution will use to authenticate with RapidSOS APIs.

Testing

If you would like a sandbox created for development testing, or to coordinate time to test alerts with your solution, please contact [email protected].

Support

We have a robust team of support engineers monitoring our platform 24/7/365. Support is available to help you with all general support questions during business hours Monday-Friday and for urgent service-impacting issues outside of regular business hours. Our support team can be contacted by going to our support portal at support.rapidsos.com or by emailing [email protected].

System Status/Alerting

The latest reports about system health can be found at status.rapidsos.com. In the unlikely event of service interruption, we will provide updates directly to the status page per our SLAs.