Two New Betas: Auto Dispatch and In-Car Alerts
Auto-dispatch attaches the nearest available mobile-patrol officers to an incident the moment it's created. In-car alerts put the guard's incidents on the CarPlay or Android Auto screen.
By Michael Bryce · 17 July 2026 · 3 min read
Two things every dispatcher-run security firm currently does the slow way: assign guards to incidents by hand, and expect mobile patrols to glance at their phone screens while behind the wheel. Both are open to beta testers on TacDesk from today.
Auto-dispatch: TacBot attaches the nearest mobile-patrol officers
Switch on Mobile Auto-Dispatch and, when an incident is logged against a site, TacBot looks at the officers clocked onto Mobile Duty. It leaves out anyone already on another open incident or callout, anyone whose status isn't set to Available, and anyone whose phone hasn't sent an accurate position in the last 15 minutes. Then it attaches the nearest ones within the radius of the site. Their phone lights up: "You have been attached to an incident."
The dispatcher can still take over — the toggle sits on the Dispatcher Mode screen, and per-incident overrides work as they always did. The difference is what happens on a busy Friday night when three incidents come in at once and the desk is trying to think.
What it changes. TacBot writes a note on the incident naming each officer it attached and how far away they were, so if the wrong guard got sent you can see why.
What we're testing in beta. Radius bounds (default 25km), how many guards attach per incident (default 2 — primary and a back-up), what "available" should mean edge-case by edge-case. Real dispatch desks give us the answers we can't get from a spreadsheet.
In-Car Alerts — CarPlay and Android Auto
Mobile patrol guards spend most of their shift in a vehicle. They shouldn't be looking down at a phone to read a new incident note. So the incident log now renders on the car's built-in screen — CarPlay for iPhone, Android Auto for Android — with a big obvious Navigate button that hands off to Google Maps and drives you straight to the site.
New notes are read aloud so the guard doesn't have to glance at anything.
Why it's not just "run the phone app on the car screen". Both platforms use their own strict template systems — no arbitrary UI is allowed, for good safety reasons. We've built proper native bridges that respect what each platform allows drivers to see. That's what took the time.
What we're testing in beta. Which incidents to surface (currently: only the ones the guard is attached to via Dispatcher), how the handoff to Google Maps behaves on different head units, whether we should offer Apple Maps as a fallback, when TTS should read aloud versus stay quiet.
What each one needs
Auto-dispatch needs Dispatcher Mode and Mobile Response. In-car alerts need Mobile Response. The pricing page shows which plans include each.
What's coming next
Public API for alarm-company integration. Alarm monitoring firms are one of the most obvious next markets for this: an alarm trips, their monitoring platform can post an incident to TacDesk over authenticated HTTPS, the auto dispatcher fires, the nearest guards' phones go, and the closest patrol's car app shows the address before they've even started the engine. If your firm does both alarm monitoring and man guarding, this closes a loop that currently needs a phone call.
How to get on the beta
Reply to this post, drop us a line via the contact page, or if you're already a customer, tell whoever handles your account. Both features are behind toggles — nothing changes on your workspace unless you ask for it.
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Michael Bryce
Founder of TacDesk. Writes about SIA compliance, operations, and running a UK security company, from someone who actually works the shifts.
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