StarWitness 2nd Quarter News

​StarWitness is off to another great year in 2023. We have updated our show schedule, completed a couple of product software releases to make your interviewing more efficient, and promoted key team members to enhance your overall StarWitness experience. 
 
Show Schedule
Summer is almost here, and our 2023 Event Calendar is heating up.

• Coming Up: We're in El Paso for the Border Security Expo. See us in Booth #627 from May 8 to 11.
• Next up: In June, we'll be in Atlantic City for the Police Security Expo. See us in Booth #1045 June 27 and 28.

 
Sales Team News
Congratulations, Romina and Michelle: Many of you may have met Romina and Michelle at our tradeshows, through email, or via phone call and we would like to officially congratulate both. Effective April 1, Romina is our new National Sales Manager. Connect with her at RominaQ@signalscape.com.  Michelle Chandler is our Inside Sales Specialist supporting all our State and Local Law Enforcement customers with their support and maintenance needs. You can connect with Michelle at MichelleC@signalscape.com. Both will gladly provide you with their complete contact information.

​CLOUD STORAGE IS HERE!!
We are excited to announce the release of product updates for the Field Interviewer and Interview Room
Field Interviewer. StarWitness Interviewer and StarWitness Field Interviewer 2.5 includes the following new features:

• Axon Evidence integration – Upload recordings to your agency’s Axon Evidence.com directly from within StarWitness Interviewer and StarWitness Field Interviewer desktop app.
• Microsoft OneDrive and SharePoint – Upload recordings to your Microsoft OneDrive and/or SharePoint account for easy sharing with stakeholders.

Other product upgrades

• HTTPS support – Enables encrypted communication between the StarWitness Interviewer and LAN-connected computers (StarWitness Interviewer only)
• Support for Field Interviewer HD September 2022 firmware  - Field Interviewer HD with the September 2022 firmware supports true authentication code generation and additional metadata.   Contact Signalscape to have your Field Interviewer HD upgraded with the September 2022 firmware version.
• Stream live recordings over secure Wi-Fi and view them on a compatible device by connecting to the Field Interviewer's web-enabled streaming site. 
• Improved intuitive menu layout displays settings by category. 
• Added recording metadata, including the complete, accurate authentication code, the MAC address of the device, versions of the application and operating system, and a customizable device name.  
• Added warning to ensure the user notices significant time changes due to a clock reset​

YOUR QUARTERLY PRO TIP - Backing up your data
Many customers know that StarWitness Interviewer has redundant hard drives but think that this redundancy provides adequate backup of their interview data.   There is a difference between redundancy and backup and a good backup strategy will provide long term protection of your data while redundancy will provide less downtime in the case of a hard drive failure.
Redundancy
StarWitness Interview room systems are equipped with two hard drives configured in a RAID 1 mirrored configuration.   This means that data written to the system is written to both hard drives at the same time providing data redundancy and continued system uptime.   If one of the hard drives fails for some reason, the system will continue to work with the functioning hard drive until the faulty hard drive can be replaced.   When a new hard drive is installed the system will rebuild the mirror by copying the data from the hard drive that didn’t fail to the new hard drive.  After that the system will start writing data to both hard drives again.  It is important to monitor the health of the RAID volume on the system using the Intel Optane Memory and Rapid Storage application installed on the system.  If it appears that one drive has failed that a new be obtained and installed as soon as possible.
Backup
Backup is a process which copies data from the StarWitness Interviewer system to a separate storage system, oftentimes at a different location.   Backing up data provides data security in case of accidental data deletion, or the system is damaged due to a natural disaster, or a facilities failure such as a broken water pipe.   Data saved offsite can be restored to a new system and retrieved normally without having to resort to data recovery techniques.  
Signalscape recommends that you periodically backup your data to prevent data loss using one or more of several methods.  Backing up data weekly along with burning DVDs of recordings would be a good backup strategy.
Backup methods
Export to DVD 
The easiest way to make backups is to create a DVD export of a recording.   The DVD can then be stored in your agency’s evidence locker with other case evidence.
Export to File
Using the export to file capability individual recordings can be copied to a thumb drive, an external hard drive or even a network share.
Upload to Cloud
Using the new Axon Evidence.com and Microsoft OneDrive/SharePoint integration, recordings can be uploaded up to the cloud providing an off-site backup of your recordings.
Manual backup to external hard drive
The data directories and database files can be backed up to one or more external hard drives.  These hard drives can be stored in a secure location for later data retrieval.   A good backup strategy may involve several external hard drives that are rotated through use.  Whenever a backup is made to one external hard drive, that hard drive is taken and stored offsite and a hard drive drive in storage is brought back to the primary location to used for the next backup.  Contact Signalscape technical support for more information.
Configure backups using enterprise backup software
If your StarWitness Interviewer system is connected to your agency’s enterprise network, your IT department can configure its enterprise backup system to backup the video data directory and database files.  Contact Signalscape technical support for more information.