Help with codeplug

We have updated our radios to XPR-6550 and XPR-3550, 53 in all. Everything is up and working but we are being asked about the codeplug by the company that we purchased them from and we don't enough to make an informed decision. We don't have the software to look at any of the codeplugs I have seen online. Our main questions are: what is the hierarchy between zones, groups and contacts and what can we manually change and what would need to go back to the vender to program?

That's a pretty vague question.

So, everything is up and working, but your vendor is asking YOU for programming information? WTF?

Are you trying to reorganize something? Change the channel order? Buy new radios? What?

Why are you asking here? This sounds more like a question your Motorola salesman should be sitting down with your leadership team and helping you answer.

If you are buying radios from some mail order place, you are doing it wrong.

Yes, quite vague but I can tell you everything you mention (zones, talkgroups, IDs) can only be changed using the CPS.

Additionally, there are hundreds of different settings resulting in 10s of thousands of different combinations of answers to your question. As someone who works with this stuff every day, I will ask you the same thing I ask my normal customers...... "In plain English, what are you trying to do?" TT

I'm reading the OP, and wondering if the vendor isn't asking "What do you have now?". Instead is asking "So what do you want to do, how many talkgroups you want, etc.?".

Thanks for the replys

We purchased from a vendor. Let me tell you what we are trying to accomplish. We are in a highrise and have 33 of the 3000 series radios for emergencies for floors and areas that we will want to keep very simple and 20 of the 6000 series radios that will be used by building personnel and security. This is a major update from the previous radio system and I'm an audio video coordinator that has been asked for help. I don't know what I don't know. Any help from you pros would be much appreciated.

The vendor is trying to develop your Fleet Map or how do you want the radios programed. Tell them just what you told us here. They will help you develop a programing template (or templates) that each radio will be programed with. You may want only certain radios to be able to talk on certain channels or only supervisors to be able to use some of the features such as scan. As was mentioned above there is very little you can change once the radio is programed.
BB

Quote"If you are buying radios from some mail order place, you are doing it wrong."

Why is this wrong? Just because Motorola wants to control who sells in a particular area?

We buy 1000's of radios, and I can tell you not one goes through our local rep.

BTW forcing anyone to buy from a particular vendor is considered a restraint to trade and is illegal.

Now if the OP is on a system not owned by the user that's something different, but it doesn't sound that way. Best thing is have the vendor come in and read one of the radios.

As was said before, the OP was kinda vague. I think some definitions may help you get closer to what you seek.

Zones are sets of visible channels in the radio to navigate. MOTO's new 7550 is awful for zoned navigation, but zones are very helpful in many cases and do work normally in the 6550. For instance, if you have 36 voice channels available, without zones you'd have to have a continuous selector knob like the 7550 has to get to all of them by twisting 36 clicks. The 6550 has a standard 16 channel limit knob though, so you're limited to 16 channels per zone. If you use more than 16 voice channels, you need to spread them out into zones (which can be helpful anyway if you have different types of channels, for instance all your ops channels on zone 1 and their corresponding tactical channels on zone 2 so you can switch up quickly, but that's mostly public safety stuff for that example.) So, zones make navigation easier by expanding your channel list from one line of channels to a column of zones containing shorter lines of channels- a table.

A 'group' as they casually call it in MOTOTRBOland, is properly called a talkgroup. A talkgroup is in its most basic terms a voice channel. Everywhere above I say the word 'channel', you can interchange that with the word 'talkgroup' IF you're talking about a trunked radio system. For more info there, look up trunked systems or you can look in my post history, I've explained them a few times before. All TRBO systems are basically TRS's, even if they're single-frequency, but most are a little more complicated, especially if they need more than 2 voice channels. Anyway, talkgroups are voice channels, and are what you select on the radio to talk to other people who have selected the same talkgroup(channel).

Contacts are entries on one radio that represent other individual radios on the system. Having contacts programmed in a radio allows you to do direct-calls (iCalls in MOTOland) to individual other radios and utilize individual-to-individual text messaging. They also allow you to see WHO or what radio is talking on a talkgroup, as a Contact entry pairs a radio ID with an alphanumeric tag that can be used to identify who/what that contact is.

I don't know if TRBO radios can be programmed to allow manual contact entry. I can do it on the APX7000, but that's a very different and newer radio, so I don't know. Regardless, it's all kinds of tedious to do by hand, and doing it for 33 entries in 33 radios would be a PAIN. Editing of zones and talkgroup info is system-necessary stuff, though, and has to be done through CPS, which would be your vendor's domain.

I hope the above info is helpful to understanding what's going on. Sorry I couldn't be more specific in some places, but the info on your specific system is still rather vague.

If the OP had gone to the local radio shop and purchased there, they would not even had to ask any of these questions. The local radio shop would be answering all this for them. You get personalized service without having to have your own in house radio expert.

Now, if you are fortunate enough to have a person in your organization who is more than conversant with MotoTrbo radios, their programming, system design and deployment, then by all means, purchase your radios from giant-discount-warehouse dot com. As long as you are prepared to do all the maintenance, programming, warranty issues and deployment yourselves.

Otherwise you should buy local, service local, and get smart money results. After all, the radio shop doesn't sell whatever your business does, do they?

Thanks

I want to thank everyone for their help. I learned a lot that helped me with the vendor. They apparently realized that they were not going to see a penny until the programming was complete. Your posts made our programming choices easier.

I'm a little shocked that radios were purchased without the fleet map planned out ahead of time. Something like this happens when companies switch vendors, or purchase from one and buying a service contract with another.
If you upgraded from old radios, your vendor should be able to read the old radios and build a fleet map based on the old programming, but your input will help a lot for changes.