Practice exercises on the demo

Run these three exercises on your program’s demo deployment before you take a real call. Every tip you create there is automatically marked as a demo tip. That’s expected, and it’s what a demo deployment is for.

Before you start: the discipline still applies

None of what follows is real, but the point of practicing is to build the habit correctly, so treat every exercise below exactly like a live call.

Never type anything that could identify a “caller” you’re role-playing — a name, a phone number, anything similar — anywhere on the screen, including the notepad.
Never write down a retrieval code yourself, even a practice one.
Never keep a personal note mapping a practice caller to a case number.
Never keep an off-system copy of anything you type into a practice tip.

If a habit is wrong here, it’s wrong on a real call too. There’s no separate, looser standard for the demo.

Nothing about the caller ever follows you past a call, practice or real. You never retain:

the caller’s retrieval code
any caller identity fragment, anywhere, including a local notepad
any personal mapping between a caller and a case number
any off-system copy of tip content

Exercise 1: a straightforward tip, then check it as the caller

Click Start call.
Fill in the capture form: category Vehicle theft, priority Standard, a short narrative describing a suspicious vehicle, and the Vehicle box filled in: for example, “dark gray sedan, partial plate ABC123.” Leave Suspect and Victim blank. Add a Location. Leave the reward toggle off.
Click Review & read back, check the confirmation box, then click Confirm & log tip.
Write down the retrieval code exactly as you’d read it to a caller.
Open a private or incognito browser tab and go to /dialog. Enter the code, leave the passphrase field blank, and click Check status.
Confirm you land on a status view, with nothing asking you for a passphrase.

This is the core promise of a phone-in tip’s code: on its own, it’s enough to check status.

Exercise 2: a reward-interested tip, followed through to a reply

Click End call to close out this exercise.
Click Start new call.
Fill in the form: category Domestic violence, priority Critical, both the Suspect and Victim boxes filled in, a Location, and turn the reward toggle on.
Log the tip the same way as Exercise 1, and get the retrieval code.
In your “caller” tab, go to /dialog and enter the code. This time, use Add a passphrase.
Once the passphrase is set, switch to the operator side. Open the tip in Workspace or Messages and send a reply.
Switch back to the “caller” tab and confirm the reply appears.

Add a passphrase explains itself on screen: a passphrase protects access to messages, and it’s also what’s needed to collect a cash reward. Most callers don’t need one. The code alone still checks status.

Exercise 3: search mid-call, and a dropped call

Click End call to close out this exercise.
Click Start new call.
Before filling in the capture form, use Search while on call to look up something from Exercise 1: try the vehicle’s description (“gray sedan”) rather than the plate. A plate alone isn’t guaranteed to turn up a match through this panel, so a color-or-type match is a more reliable test of it. Confirm the panel either shows a result or tells you no prior tips match that signal. Both are expected outcomes here.
Fill in a tip: category Missing person, priority High, the Victim box filled in, no reward.
This time, instead of clicking Review & read back, click End call directly.
Click Start new call again for a new caller and confirm every field in the capture form is empty.

This demonstrates the rule behind everything above: nothing is saved until you explicitly confirm and complete the tip.

If any exercise doesn’t behave the way this page describes, tell your supervisor before you take a real call. The version your program runs may not match this page yet.