Getting started
Vygard is a lone-worker safety platform. A worker on their phone (or paired Apple Watch) presses SOS, and within seconds their dispatcher, buddy, duty manager and — if you've set it up — your ARC monitoring partner all get the alert across push, SMS, WhatsApp and voice. This section walks you from cold to your first real alert in about 20 minutes.
- 1
Sign up your team
Go to vygard.com → Start free trial. The 10-step wizard captures your company name, sector (forestry, care, construction, etc.), branding, the first few workers you want to invite, and the escalation policy (who hears the SOS, in what order). No card up-front; you have 14 days free.
- 2
Pick your sector
Sector picks the right safety pack — chainsaw kickback detection for forestry, medication double-check for care, gas alarm integration for petro, etc. You can only pick one. If you operate across two sectors (e.g. forestry contracting + tree-surgery for arborist crews) pick the dominant one and we'll layer extras on later.
- 3
Invite your first workers
Step 4 of the wizard captures names + UK mobile numbers. Each worker gets one SMS with a link. They tap, install the iOS app, set a password (or Face ID), and they're live. Skip this step if you'd rather invite later from /admin/team.
- 4
Set the escalation policy
Step 5 builds the cascade. Default is buddy (2 min) → duty manager (5 min) → ARC partner (immediately). Each tier has its own ack timeout and channel list. You can override per site, per shift type, or per individual worker later.
- 5
Run a test SOS
Step 8 of the wizard — or the Trust + verify panel on /admin home any time — simulates a real SOS firing through your cascade. No actual notifications go out. You'll see exactly which worker would be alerted at which tier, plus the AI-ranked nearest-responder dispatch. Run this BEFORE betting a real worker's safety on it.
The 10-step wizard saves your progress as you go. Close the tab and the next visit resumes where you left off, including the email link if you supplied one.
Adding and managing workers
Workers are the people Vygard protects. Each worker holds a seat against your subscription. You invite them by name + phone; they install the app and set their own password / Face ID. They never need to set up an account separately — your invitation IS their account.
- 1
Invite one worker
Open /admin/team → Invite a worker → enter their name + UK mobile + role. They get a single SMS with an install link. The invite expires in 7 days; if they don't act, resend from the same screen.
- 2
Bulk import via CSV
On /admin/team click Bulk import. Drop a CSV with columns Name, Mobile, Role. We send all the SMS invites at once. Workers can install at their own pace; their seat doesn't activate until they sign in.
- 3
What workers see in the SMS
"Your employer [Company] has added you to Vygard for lone-worker safety. Tap [link] to set up your account. — Vygard". The link opens the App Store on iOS or the Play Store on Android. Once installed, the worker is auto-signed in by the same magic link.
- 4
Worker sets up Face ID
First sign-in asks for a password. Second screen offers Face ID for everyday unlock. Their password stays as the backup so they can sign in on a new phone without admin help.
- 5
Deactivate a worker
If a worker leaves the company, deactivate them on /admin/team. Their seat is freed immediately (no proration weirdness, no end-of-month wait). They can no longer sign in. Their historic incidents stay on file for compliance — you can't delete them.
Don't share one worker login between multiple people. Vygard tracks who's on shift, where they are, and who fired the SOS — shared logins make all of that meaningless and may invalidate your audit log for HSE/ARC purposes.
If a worker loses their phone, deactivate that device from /admin/team → worker detail → Devices, then invite them again. The new phone gets a fresh SMS; the old one is wiped of session state on next online wake.
How the SOS cascade works
When a worker presses SOS on their phone or Apple Watch, Vygard fires a multi-channel, multi-tier alert that escalates until somebody acknowledges. This section explains the cascade end-to-end so you understand exactly who gets notified, when, and how to tune it for your team.
An SOS event has three independent components that fire in parallel: the alert cascade, AI nearest-responder dispatch, and the dispatcher dashboard notification. They don't depend on each other — if any one path is unavailable (worker has no signal, AI is rate-limited, etc.), the others still fire. The worker's app keeps trying every 8 seconds in the background until at least one path succeeds.
The alert cascade runs your configured escalation policy. Tier 1 (default: buddy worker) gets the alert immediately by push, SMS, WhatsApp and voice — in parallel, not sequence. If nobody on Tier 1 acknowledges within the ack timeout (default 2 minutes), Tier 2 fires automatically (default: duty manager, 5-minute timeout). Tier 3 is your ARC partner (BS 8484-monitored response centre) — they're alerted by voice immediately, no delay.
AI nearest-responder dispatch runs alongside the cascade. Claude ranks every other worker in your tenant by distance from the SOS, role match, on-shift status and recent location ping freshness. The top 3 get a push + SMS — they're independent of the escalation tiers, so a buddy 50 metres away gets the alert before the duty manager 50 km away even if the cascade hasn't reached the buddy yet.
Dispatcher dashboard lights up on every admin's notification bell within 10 seconds of the SOS firing. The admin sees the incident card with worker name, location, what3words address, and an AR site view if location accuracy allows.
Acknowledgement stops the cascade. The first person to tap Acknowledge — buddy, duty manager, ARC operator — silences all further tier escalations and marks themselves as the responder. The incident stays open until somebody marks it Resolved or False Alarm.
Run the Test SOS on /admin home → Trust + verify weekly. It exercises every Twilio + push + email path without notifying anyone, so you'll catch a bad ARC phone number or expired WhatsApp template months before a real incident does.
SOS bypasses every trial cap and per-channel quota. Even if you've hit your Starter SMS limit for the month, every SOS still fires across every channel. You're never blocked from making a real safety call.
Running your day
After the initial setup, most days are calm. The admin home page (/admin) is the dashboard you'll live in — open tasks, today's shifts, unassigned work, and the action cards for the four things you do most: invite, dispatch, schedule, sync.
- 1
Dispatch a task
Open /admin/tasks → New job. Pick a worker (or leave unassigned), enter location + what3words, hazard notes, and the expected duration. The worker sees it on their phone with a Navigate button (opens Apple Maps / Google Maps / OS Maps based on their preference).
- 2
Build this week's roster
Open /admin/roster. Drag shifts onto the weekly grid, or click an empty cell to add one. You can pre-assign or leave unassigned — workers can pick up open shifts via the swap marketplace.
- 3
Sync to your calendar
Settings → Calendar sync. Generate an iCal URL and subscribe from Outlook / Google / Apple Calendar. Every roster change pushes within 60 seconds.
- 4
Send a broadcast
Open /admin/broadcast. Pick recipients (all workers / one site / one role), pick channels (push / SMS / WhatsApp), write a message. Track who's read it via per-worker ack columns. Broadcasts respect each worker's individual channel preferences — if Alex turned off WhatsApp, your broadcast falls back to SMS for them.
- 5
Review incidents
/admin → Today on the roster shows live shifts. Notification bell shows the latest 50 alerts (SOS, no-movement, geofence, welfare ping). Click any to jump into the incident detail page with the full audit trail.
What workers see and do
Workers install one of 12 sector-branded Vygard iOS or Android apps. The app handles their sign-in, location tracking, fall detection, SOS button, and any sector-specific workflows. This section walks you through the key worker-side flows so you can confidently train a new hire.
Sign-in: One-time SMS magic link from your invite, then password + Face ID for everyday unlock. Workers never see your admin dashboard — their app shows their shift, their day's tasks, their map, and the SOS button. Big and red and impossible to miss.
Clock on / clock off: On the worker's home screen, they tap Start shift. Vygard begins tracking location, fall events, and check-ins. Tap End shift to stop. Off-shift, no tracking happens — your privacy obligations are easier to defend.
The SOS button: A red pulsing ring at the bottom of every screen. One tap fires the cascade. There's no confirmation dialog by default (panic-friendly), but you can require 2-second hold from Settings → SOS gesture if you prefer. Apple Watch can also fire SOS from the wrist face.
Check-ins: On routes with no boss-imposed schedule, workers can voice-tag a check-in ("all clear, on site 4") which transcribes via the phone's built-in Siri model — no audio leaves the device unless they explicitly opt in.
Fall detection: The iPhone in their pocket runs a 50 Hz accelerometer pipeline (FallDetector.swift). Three-stage detection: sudden freefall → impact → stillness for 5 seconds. If all three trigger, the SOS cascade fires automatically — same as a manual button press, no human in the loop.
Apple Watch Chainsaw Monitor (Forestry only today): When chainsaw mode is on, the wrist sensor watches for the kickback signature — sustained vibration + sudden arm-jerk. If detected, a 3-second "Are you OK?" haptic gives the worker a chance to cancel. If they don't, SOS fires.
Workers can set their own preferred channels in app Settings → Notifications. Some hate WhatsApp; some prefer voice for noisy environments. Respect their preference and your ack rates go up.
Plans, seats and billing
Vygard bills per active worker per month. Three plans, one currency (£), one cycle (monthly), one trial (14 days, no card up-front). All real-time, all self-serve from /admin/billing.
- **Plans**:
Starter — £9/worker/month. Core SOS, check-ins, alerts, live map, audit log. Capped at 200 SMS / 100 WhatsApp / 50 voice per month. Best for teams of 1–10.
Pro — £19/worker/month. Everything in Starter plus AI Virtual Watcher, broadcasts, sector-pack workflows, family sharing, Apple Watch / Wear OS support, AI-ranked dispatch. 1,500 SMS / 1,000 WhatsApp / 300 voice. Best for teams of 10–100.
Enterprise — custom pricing. Unlimited messaging, dedicated ARC integration, SSO, on-prem option, named CSM. Best for >100 workers or regulated industries.
Trial: 14 days free, no card required. Capped at 10 seats while you're on trial. Use Starter quotas. At day 14 your subscription either auto-converts to Pro (if you added a card) or pauses (if you didn't). Pausing is recoverable — add a card any time and your team comes straight back online with all their data intact.
Overage: If you blow past the included monthly quota for a channel, Vygard keeps sending and adds an overage line item to next month's invoice. SMS is 4p/message overage; WhatsApp 3p; voice 12p/minute. Pre-buying a Top-up pack from /admin/billing → Top-up gives you a chunkier discount.
Top-up packs: One-off bundles of SMS + WhatsApp + voice credits that don't expire. Light (£35), Standard (£95), Pro (£250). Credits are consumed before overage kicks in.
Cancellation: From /admin/billing → Customer Portal. Stripe-hosted, two clicks, no phone calls. Your team keeps working until end of the paid period; after that they're locked out but their data is retained for 30 days in case you reactivate.
If you only need the chainsaw kickback detection (no team dispatcher dashboard, no AI), wait for the standalone Vygard Chainsaw app — coming soon at £9.99/month. Same detector, different licensing model.
We never auto-charge an expired card without warning. You'll get three emails (7 days before, 1 day before, day-of) telling you to update your payment method. If your card fails on billing day, your tenant is paused — same recoverable state as the end-of-trial pause.
Verifying everything works before a real incident
Vygard's biggest single risk is that everything looks fine on the dashboard but the real cascade is broken — wrong ARC phone number, expired WhatsApp template, Twilio account suspended. The Trust + verify panel on /admin home lets you catch every failure mode before betting a real worker's safety on it.
The panel lives on /admin home below the action cards. Six checks: API health, Twilio status, WhatsApp templates, push notification capability, Stripe billing health, and Claude AI availability. Every check shows green / amber / red with the actual error if it's failing.
Test SOS is the killer feature inside the panel. Click it, pick a worker (or pick yourself), and Vygard runs the full SOS dispatch pipeline against that worker — same code path as a real SOS button-press, but the final notification step is replaced with a simulation log instead of actual outbound messages. You see the cascade timeline ("buddy notified at +0s via push+SMS", "duty manager notified at +120s via push+SMS+voice") without anyone's phone ringing.
Run Test SOS weekly — once a week, on a quiet day, click the button. The 30 seconds it takes is the cheapest insurance you'll ever buy. If anything has changed (worker rotation, phone number update, ARC partner switch), Test SOS catches it before a real shift.
Integration status: Each row shows the configured value (Twilio account SID prefix, WhatsApp sender number, ARC partner name) so you can sanity-check at a glance that you're pointing at the right environment.
If Test SOS shows green but a real SOS doesn't fire, you've likely got a worker-side issue — push permission revoked, app force-quit, no signal. Worker-side diagnostics live on the worker's app under Settings → Diagnostics.
Audit trail, HSE export, GDPR
Vygard's audit log is the legally defensible record of every event in your tenant. Every SOS, every escalation, every acknowledgement, every settings change — HMAC-signed at the time of insert, tamper-evident, retained for the life of your subscription plus 7 years if you cancel. This section covers what's in the audit log, how to export it for the HSE or your insurer, and the GDPR / UK DPA story.
What's in the audit log: SOS events with full timeline (buttoned-pressed, channels-fired, who-acked-when, who-resolved). Worker invites, sign-ins, deactivations. Settings changes (escalation policy edits, channel preferences). Billing events (plan changes, payment failures). Roster changes (shift added, swapped, cancelled). Admin user actions (master-admin impersonation, broadcast sent).
Read access: /admin/audit (Pro plan and up). Search by worker, date, event type. Each row shows actor, target, action, and a JSON details blob with the full state at time-of-event.
HSE / RIDDOR export: /admin/audit → Export. Pick a date range and incident type, hit Generate. We produce a signed PDF (RIDDOR F2508 format) with every reportable injury or near-miss prefilled from your data. Manual review still required before submission — we're a data source, not a regulator.
Worker data subject access: Under UK GDPR, a worker can ask for their data. /admin/team → worker → Export data. Generates a ZIP with everything we hold about them: location pings, SOS events, messages, audit entries. Standard turnaround is 7 days; we generate the ZIP in seconds.
Deletion: We don't delete safety-critical records (incidents, SOS, audit log) even on worker request — UK ICO accepts "legitimate interests + statutory obligation" as a lawful basis for retention. We do delete profile data (name, phone), pseudonymising the audit trail. Workers retain the right to complain to the ICO if they disagree.
Your insurer may discount your liability premium if you can show a Vygard audit ledger covering the last 12 months. Talk to them — task #72 wired insurance broker integration for some of the major UK liability providers.
Connect Vygard to your other systems
Vygard exposes a REST API + webhook system for pushing events into ServiceNow, Datadog, Splunk, your HR system, or anywhere else you want them. Pro plan and up.
REST API: Base URL `https://lwp-api.fly.dev`. Bearer token auth (issue from /admin/settings → API tokens). Rate-limited per token. Endpoints cover workers, incidents, audit log, messages, roster. Full reference at /docs/api (link in the sidebar).
Webhooks: /admin/settings → Webhooks. Add a URL, pick the events (incident.opened, incident.resolved, worker.invited, broadcast.acknowledged, etc.). We POST a signed JSON payload — verify the signature with your shared secret and process. Retried up to 5 times with exponential backoff if your endpoint 5xx's.
ARC partners: a default Vygard ARC partnership is being finalised (BS 8484 monitored response, 24/7 UK voice). Until that lands, bring your own — supply the partner's number + escalation rules and we route Tier 3 SOS to them. Your ARC contract is between you and the partner; Vygard is the dispatch path.
Calendar sync: iCal feed from Settings → Calendar sync. Subscribe from Outlook, Google, Apple Calendar. Read-only — changes still happen on /admin/roster, but your existing calendar shows them.
SSO: Enterprise plan. SAML 2.0 + OIDC. Talk to support for setup (one-off engineering work to map your IdP to Vygard's tenant + role schema).
Common problems and how to fix them
Quick fixes for the issues we see most. If you don't find your problem here, mail hello@vygard.com — we usually respond in under 4 hours during UK working hours, 24h on-call escalation for paying customers.
A worker never received their SMS invite: Check /admin/team → their row → status. "Pending" means we sent the SMS but they haven't installed yet. If status is "Failed", their number was rejected by Twilio (usually a non-UK number — we only invite UK mobiles right now). Resend with a corrected number.
SOS test didn't reach me: First check Settings → Notifications on the app — push permission off is the most common cause. Second, on /admin → Trust + verify, check Twilio integration is green. Third, check your own worker record on /admin/team has your real phone number, not a placeholder.
WhatsApp messages aren't being sent: WhatsApp templates need Meta approval (24-72 hours). If you've just set up Vygard, your templates may still be pending. Check /admin/settings → Channels → WhatsApp. Until they're approved, SMS is the fallback for any WhatsApp send.
Stripe checkout shows an error: Most likely your card is on a network Stripe blocked for fraud (rare for UK cards). Try a different card. If the same card works on other sites, mail support — we can chase Stripe.
My team can't sign in after their trial ended: Your subscription paused (trial ended without a card). From /admin/billing add a card; your team comes back online within 60 seconds. Their data is intact — sessions, shifts, audit log are all there.
The Apple Watch chainsaw mode never fires: Three-stage detection requires sustained vibration AND a sudden arm-jerk. A gentle test wave doesn't trip it — by design (false positives are worse than missed detection for sales credibility, in our view). To genuinely test, fast wrist-shake at high amplitude for 2 seconds.
I forgot my admin password: From /login → Forgot password. Email link arrives within 1 minute. Link expires in 30 minutes.
How to reach us
We're a small UK team running real customer support. Channels in order of speed:
Email — hello@vygard.com — under 4 hours during UK working hours (9–18, Mon–Fri). Paying customers get a dedicated escalation alias on their welcome email.
Live chat — bottom-right widget on every vygard.com page. Same SLA as email but the conversation history stays attached to your account.
On-call — Pro plan and up. Single phone number, 24/7. Reserved for genuine production incidents (SOS not firing, billing locked out, mass worker sign-in failure). Misusing it for general questions burns goodwill fast.
Book a call — sales@vygard.com or vygard.com/contact → Book a 30-min call. We do live screen-share onboarding for any customer who asks. Free.
Status page — status.vygard.com. Real-time API + Twilio + Stripe health. Subscribe to the RSS feed for outage updates.
This manual lives at vygard.com/docs. It's updated alongside every release; the live site is always more current than any downloaded PDF.
We'd rather you ask than spin.
Five-minute reply on the chat widget. Four-hour reply on email. Same-day live screen-share onboarding for anyone who asks.