Guide
The NERIS API
What it is, what it is not, and what to ask a vendor who says they integrate with it. Written for chiefs, not for developers, though a developer will not find anything wrong here.
In one paragraph
The NERIS API is how software files a report into NERIS without a person retyping it. Your department authorizes an application once; from then on that application can submit incidents on your behalf. The alternative is entering incidents by hand in the NERIS portal, which is a completely valid way to run a department and is what the API exists to save you from.
Three things chiefs get told that are wrong
"You need an API to use NERIS"
You do not. The NERIS portal is a complete way to file. The API is for when you would rather your software did it.
"Give us your NERIS login and we will set it up"
No. Authorization is granted to an application, by its client id, by a department admin inside NERIS. A vendor asking for a person's NERIS username and password is asking for the wrong thing.
"Once you connect us, you are locked in"
The reports live in NERIS under your department, not inside a vendor. Authorization is something your department grants, and something it can withdraw.
How authorizing software actually works
The mechanics are duller than the word "integration" suggests, and worth knowing so you can tell a real answer from a sales one.
- 1
The vendor registers an integration with NERIS and gets a client id — a long identifier, not a password. It is not secret; ours is published on our own enrollment page.
- 2
A department admin signs in to NERIS and enrolls that client id. This is the whole consent step, it happens in NERIS rather than in the vendor's product, and only a department admin can do it.
- 3
From then on the application authenticates as itself and files incidents for your department. No one is signing in as a person, and no one is typing your password into anything.
Worth knowing before you agree: enrollment permissions are granted as a set rather than field by field, so this is a decision to make once, deliberately, with the vendor you actually intend to use.
The steps with real screenshots are on our enrollment walkthrough. The shape is the same for any vendor; only the client id differs.
What to ask a vendor
Five questions. The answers separate software that files into NERIS from software that says it does.
“Do you file through the NERIS API, or do I export a file?”
Both can be legitimate. But "we support NERIS" sometimes means the software produces a file that a human then uploads, which is a different amount of work for you every shift.
“What do I have to do in NERIS to connect you?”
The real answer is short: a department admin enrolls the vendor’s client ID once. If the answer is long or involves handing over a password, ask more questions.
“Do you ever need my NERIS username and password?”
No vendor should. Authorization is granted to an application by the department, not by sharing a person’s login.
“What happens when NERIS rejects a report?”
Rejections are routine and usually mean one field is wrong. What matters is whether you find out immediately and in plain language, or whether it fails silently somewhere you never look.
“If I leave, what happens to the reports you filed?”
Reports filed through the API live in NERIS, under your department. That should not change when you change vendors. Ask anyway.
If you are a developer
We are not going to reproduce NERIS's technical reference here — it changes, and a stale copy of someone else's API docs helps nobody. NERIS publishes the technical reference and the data dictionary, and those are the authority.
Two things we will say from having built against it: the incident payload is validated strictly against the enum tables, so most early failures are a value that is not in the table rather than a structural mistake; and modelling your internal report shape on the NERIS module structure rather than on an NFIRS-shaped form saves a painful mapping layer later. The data model guide covers that shape.
If you build software for fire departments and want voice narration inside your own incident form, that is a different integration and it is documented separately: the FireMic partner API returns a NERIS-shaped draft your product fills in, and your product stays the one that files.
The NERIS data model · Incident type lookup · NERIS login help