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Enhanced 911 (E911) is a Federal Communications Commission program designed to automatically route 911 calls to the appropriate Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP), based on Automatic Number Identification (ANI). PSAPs are regional call centers staffed with 911 dispatchers. 

Talkdesk’s E911 feature ensures that when a 911 call comes from the Talkdesk system, Talkdesk will use a “Verified Physical Location” tied to the user or device, so that the dispatcher can receive geographic data from the telephone company.

Availability

• Regional Support: E911 emergency calls are supported for users physically located in the United States and Canada.
• Product Integration: E911 is available as part of Talkdesk Conversations™ and Talkdesk Phone™. Agents can dial 911, the emergency test number 933, or any of these with a prefix (X911 or X933).

Compliance

In compliance with Kari’s Law and Ray Baum’s Act, Talkdesk’s E911 offers the following capabilities:

• Enabling E911: Features are available for configuration and enablement by Talkdesk Admins.
• Direct Dialing: Agents can dial 911 directly without the requirement of a prefix.
• Notifying Designated Personnel: The system sends an email notification to emergency contacts for every 911 call placed.
• Managing Missing Information: Notifications are generated even if address information is incomplete, as long as the agent's identity and callback number are known.

Enabling E911

Note: If you are in Talkdesk Workspace, you can access all features described below by navigating to the Admin app. For more information, please refer to this article.

 Administrators are responsible for enabling the E911 feature and configuring the account emergency information.

To do this, please follow these steps:

1. Click on the Admin app and select Emergency Calls [1].

2. Fill out the “Default Address” [2]. This is the company address and will also be used for taxation purposes regarding the costs incurred with the E911 services. Please add the following details:

• Country (required).
• House number (required).
• Street line (required).
• Street line 2 (optional).
• City (required).
• State (required).
• Zip (required).
• Plus 4 (optional).

3. Hit Validate Address [3]. Before moving to the next section, the address needs to be checked and validated by our system. 

4. Enter the “Emergency Contacts” [4], one by one: This is the list of emails of the personnel that should be notified in the occurrence of a call to 911.

• Hit the + (plus) button for each email address. The email addresses need to be checked and validated by our system. 
• You can add up to 10 e-mails or mailing lists. After a call to 911 is placed, these contacts will receive an email describing the details sent to the PSAP: the user’s display name; callback number; and (device) emergency address.

5. Add a “Callback Number” [5]. This is the number that will be dispatched with the call, in case the user opts for the company callback number to be sent by default to the PSAP. This contact will be used if authorities need to reach back to the caller or the notified person who is able to get in touch with the caller. Please add the following details:

• “Display name”: Preferred display name that will be sent to the PSAP. It must contain only letters and numbers.
• “Callback number”: Phone number to which the authorities can reach back.
• “Preferred language”: This is the language in which the caller who reached out to 911 prefers to be addressed by the authorities, if they reach back. Agents can select this preferred language or another one when they configure their emergency information.
• Validate the Callback Number by clicking on Save [6]. Before moving to the next section, the number needs to be checked and validated by our system. 
• “Enable Emergency Calls” [7]: After filling out the mandatory fields, you can enable the E911 feature by clicking the toggle. 

Note: If agents call 911 before defining the required emergency information, the call will not fail, and it will be forwarded to a specialized sorting center to determine that user’s location; however, there will be additional costs per call.

For more information, please read the article Setting up Emergency Information.

Enabling E911 with RedSky’s E911 Anywhere

Customers who use RedSky’s E911 Anywhere as their emergency calling solution can integrate with Talkdesk. The integration with RedSky is number-based. 

Here are the steps to follow to configure RedSky with Talkdesk.

1. Contact Talkdesk using a Support Ticket and ask for your unique Account ID within Talkdesk. Additionally, request that your account’s emergency provider be set to RedSky.

2. Contact RedSky to set the “External Organization ID/Key” of your RedSky organization to the value of the account ID received in Step 1.

3. Set up a user on Talkdesk and assign an E.164 number to the user. Refer to the Numbers guide to purchase new phone numbers. Refer to this guide on how to assign numbers to phone users.

4. Create a corresponding user on RedSky and configure the phone number and “Device User ID” with the same E.164 number assigned in Step 3. Refer to the screenshot below.

Limitations of E911 with RedSky’s E911 Anywhere

Below are the limitations of using Talkdesk with RedSky:

1. Usage of special RedSky headers like E911-Location-ID, E911-User-Info and E911-Callback-Number.
2. Mapping Talkdesk users or devices to E911 Locations within RedSky.
3. Network-based discovery of E911 locations using identifiers such as BSSID, IP Addresses and MAC Addresses.
4. Using HTTP-Enabled Location Discovery (HELD) on SIP devices registered to Talkdesk to pass emergency location information.