Patent ID: 8402089

Claim:
A method for communicating information to a plurality of respondent endpoints, comprising: detecting, by an incident command server comprising hardware and one or more processors, a trigger event for an incident requiring emergency assistance, the trigger event related to an incident category for the incident; identifying a rule in accordance with the incident category, wherein the rule is associated with at least one of a plurality of pre-defined incident categories, the rule specifying one or more processes for automatically gathering information for responding to the incident with emergency assistance, at least one of the one or more processes operable to automatically launch an application in response to detecting the trigger, the application operable to access a data file corresponding to multimedia information; establishing, by a collaboration server comprising hardware coupled to the incident command server, a collaboration session with participants in accordance with the rule, the participants including a first respondent endpoint and a second respondent endpoint, the first respondent endpoint associated with a first respondent system, the second respondent endpoint associated with a second respondent system, the first respondent system and the second respondent system configured to provide the emergency assistance to the incident; and collaborating to provide emergency assistance in response to the incident, the collaborating including: gathering a first stream of information and a second stream of information from at least two of the participants of the collaboration session; mixing, by a collaboration server, the first and second streams of information to yield multimedia information, the collaboration server distinct from the at least two participants; communicating multimedia information to the first respondent endpoint and the second respondent endpoint according to the rule; and transferring control of the first stream of information to the first respondent endpoint.