Genetec Mission Control Tested

•Published Jul 13, 2017 14:40 PM

Genetec continues to move up market with their Mission Control, "Decision Support System", bringing PSIM-like procedures and incident management to their 'unified platform' / VMS Security Center.

We tested Mission Control to see how it worked, what features it adds to Security Center, how complex monitoring and configuration are, and how it compares to existing PSIM and VMS platforms.

Related, see our coverage of Genetec's other platforms/features:

Summary

In our tests, Mission Control was simple to use for incident monitoring and reporting, with very little training required above and beyond typical event management already included in Security Desk.

However, organizations should expect workflow, procedure, and document setup to be a substantial time investment.

Finally, its high price puts it out of reach of many organizations who may desire this functionality (though still notably less expensive than typical PSIM).  

Overview

This video, from our testing, explains the fundamental features / operation for Mission Control:

Mission Control has three main components:

  • Incident Configuration, found in Config Tool
  • Incident Monitoring, found in Security Desk
  • Incident reporting, found in Security Desk

Note that these tasks are installed via a separate executable, not included in Security Center by default. Mission Control is currently not part of Genetec's Update Service and must be manually updated. Genetec says that Mission Control is intended to be updated about every three months, independent of Security Center's release schedule.

Compared To PSIM

Compared to typical PSIM, Security Center with Mission Control is significantly lower cost. However, third party integrations are more limited, with almost no other VMS/NVR platforms supported, and limited access and intrusion lines, where PSIM platforms typically are more vendor agnostic.

That being said, Security Center/Mission Control benefits from the tight integration between Genetec products, allowing full functionality and configuration, instead of simply receiving events and video typical in PSIM. This may be attractive to current PSIM customers using Genetec as their VMS.

Pricing

Mission Control has a base license MSRP of $75,000 USD, not including operator licenses ($995 each/$39,800 unlimited). This license is in addition to Security Center licensing, an additional $3,650 base license/$250 per camera (Enterprise is required, see below).

Genetec says that an intermediate tier of Mission Control will be launched in the future with lower pricing. Included features and pricing were not available.

Compared to typical VMS systems, this pricing is very expensive, with Mission Control's base license well above the total license cost (or even hardware cost) of the majority of systems. However, compared to PSIM systems it may be considered against, it is on the lower end, as historically most PSIM installations have been well into six figure costs. 

Version / Device Compatibility

Mission Control requires Security Center Enterprise. It is not available with Standard and Professional versions.

Nearly any device supported by Security Center (Omnicast, Synergis, AutoVu, Sipelia, or plugins) may be used in incidents. This includes video motion detection and analytics, card readers and contacts, LPR cameras, perimeter detection, etc. There is a small license fee ($55) for devices connected via the Genetec SDK, which includes many third party integrations to advanced systems such as perimeter detection. 

Incident Monitoring

In our tests, Security Desk's Incident Monitoring task was simple to use, effectively similar to standard event monitoring, with the addition of procedures, documents, and incident monitoring, discussed below. 

Essentially, it is a modified version of the existing Monitoring/Alarm Monitoring tasks found in Security Desk, displaying a list of incidents as they occur (top), along with a map showing incident location(s) below. Incidents are located via the colored pins shown on the map below (with colors and icons selectable for types/priorities). 

To the right of the incident list and map is the Incident pane, which contains information about the selected incident, including its location, owner, monitoring operators, and current state:

Finally, below is a set of Standard Operating Procedures defined during setup. These procedures are intended to walk the operator(s) through each incident, asking for documentation for specific steps, and sharing documents which may be needed for incident response.

Users may upload any file type as a document, but most typically these files will be images, PDFs, or other documents. For example, as part of our "Fire Alarm" test incident, procedure includes a staff roster as well as a fire evacuation plan, shown here:

 

Incident Configuration 

Compared to monitoring, Incident configuration is a complex task. Incidents are built in two sections:

Workflow Configuration

The Workflow tab contains a flow chart of actions which are triggered when the incident occurs. Elements are added via drag and drop, connected by dragging arrows action to action. 

Actions include basic operations, such as displaying a camera, playing a sound, or triggering a PTZ to move to a specific preset. Additionally, users may trigger changes to incident properties, such as color, type, priority, owner, etc., trigger export of the incident and related video/info, or trigger other incidents from the workflow.

Because Workflows present so many action options, there may be a tendency to overcomplicate flowcharts, but no workflow is actually required for each incident. For simpler incidents for which users desire Procedures, users may leave it blank, with operators manually adjusting these parameters as the incident is in progress. 

Procedure Configuration

Finally, Procedure configuration allows users to enter a set up steps to be followed for each incident, requiring feedback for certain steps, and attaching related documents for reference, shown below.

Though procedures are not complex to create, configuring SOP for incidents is a non-trivial data entry project. Organizations at the level where Mission Control is useful (and affordable) are likely to have written procedures already, though these must be translated to Procedures steps and entered to Mission Control, and likely to need further tweaking after use. 

Support Documents

Users may also add supporting documents to incidents for operator reference. These may include practically any document type, as Security Center simply opens the document in its associated viewer (images in Windows Photos, PDFs in Acrobat, DWG in AutoCAD etc.) instead of viewing them natively. Documents are associated with a given SOP step via "tag". More than one document may be associated with a tag and displayed.

As with Procedures, many organizations likely have these documents in digital format, but collating all necessary related items for use in SOPs may be a significant time investment. 

Time To Respond/Audit Trail

Mission Control includes full audit trail of all incident-related steps, including users viewing the incident, playback and live view viewing, workflow steps completed or skipped, documents accessed, and more. All activities are timestamped, allowing managers to assess how long operators took to respond to a given incident, check efficiency of the process and specific operators, etc.

In future releases, Genetec says they will be adding a visible countdown timer as an option for incidents, to inform operators of how time allotted for proper response. 

Incident Investigation

Like other events in Security Center, Incidents have their own investigation task. Users may search for incidents based on type, date range, owner, status, location, and more. Double clicking a given event unpacks it into a separate tab with attached entities.

Users may also export an incident to a report with timestamped activity, snapshots from related cameras, operator notes, etc.

More Advanced Than Security Center Alarm Monitoring

Incidents differ from Security Center's built-in alarms in two key ways:

  • No built in workflow: The only actions an operator may take on an alarm are acknowledge (default, alternate, and forcible) and forward. Instructions may be displayed via an HTML URL, but this is configured outside of Genetec and lacks the audit trail found in Incidents.

  • Limited audit trail: Alarms essentially only store who acknowledged the alarm and when, as well as some basic notes fields. By contrast, Mission Control stores full audit trail of incident response, including which operators view the incident, close or complete steps, user to user chat, and more.

Versus Milestone XProtect

Milestone XProtect allows users to display the triggering camera as the video source for an alarm, without requiring multiple instances of the alarm to be created. For example, an alarm may be set to trigger on line crossing analytics on all cameras, but Milestone's Alarm Manager displays only the source camera. Other cameras may be manually configured as related to the incident, as well.

XProtect does not have a simple way to replicate Mission Control's workflow, attachments, auditing, etc., nor a way to base triggers on multiple events in succession (such as bad card read, followed by forced door alarm, followed by motion detection).

Versions Tested

This test was performed using the following software versions:

  • Genetec Security Center: 5.5.670.1080
  • Genetec Mission Control: 2.3.620.69
  • Genetec Sipelia: 2.2.91.0
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