Is the nature of sodium bromide itself to act as a water softener, essentially preventing minerals from attaching/building up on surfaces?

What I am trying to figure out is if pool chlorine or bromine tablets actually have something like a water softener (if you call it that), so that I can use it in my swamp cooler, cutting up the tablets and using only a small piece at a time if it's too strong, so that it can both disinfect and "soften" the water so that minerals don't build up on the pad. I read on product descriptions for pool tablets "softens water" and "prevents scale." I am aware of the fact that I have to drain the water and replace it every so often to reduce mineral buildup, and there are swamp cooler products that loosen the minerals and prevent them from attaching to surfaces, but these are one-time applications, and I want something that just sits there for weeks without me having to do anything. The only other alternative is toilet tablets, and some of these say they prevent scale/deposits on the toilet.

Water hardness is due to dissolved minerals that contain Ca+2 and Mg+2 etc ions. We soften water by removing those ions.

NaBr would not remove those ions.. if you dump in NaBr into a pool filled with Ca+2 ions, you would end up with a pool filled with Ca+2, Na+ and Br- ions. nothing would precipitate out.

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on an aside note.. just so you're clear here..

water softeners have tanks packed full of small beads that are made of polystyrene and coated with a resin that has active surface groups. Those groups have are either cation scavenging or anion scavenging depending on the surface group

examples

.. bead - resin - SO3(-)... would attract + charged ions

.. bead - resin - NH3(+).. would attract - charged ions

so let's say you had a cation scavenging resin bead and you began removing Ca+2 ions

eventually you would end up with your resin saturated with cations.. like this

.. bead - resin - sO3(-).. Ca+2

.. bead - resin - sO3(-)

.. bead - resin - sO3(-).. Ca+2

.. bead - resin - sO3(-)

.. bead - resin - sO3(-).. Ca+2

.. bead - resin - sO3(-)

.. bead - resin - sO3(-).. Ca+2

.. bead - resin - sO3(-)

and your resins would not be able to remove any more "hardness". So what we do is "regenerate" those beads by soaking them in brine. (saturated NaCl or NaBr if you really wanted to) to displace all those Ca+2 ions and replace them with Na+

.. bead - resin - sO3(-).. Na+

.. bead - resin - sO3(-).. Na+

.. bead - resin - sO3(-).. Na+

.. bead - resin - sO3(-).. Na+

.. bead - resin - sO3(-).. Na+

.. bead - resin - sO3(-).. Na+

.. bead - resin - sO3(-).. Na+

.. bead - resin - sO3(-).. Na+

and we're reading to start scavenging Ca+2 again

.. bead - resin - sO3(-).. Na+

.. bead - resin - sO3(-).. Ca+2

.. bead - resin - sO3(-)

.. bead - resin - sO3(-).. Na+

.. bead - resin - sO3(-).. Na+

.. bead - resin - sO3(-).. Na+

.. bead - resin - sO3(-).. Na+

.. bead - resin - sO3(-).. Na+

etc

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NaBr would not act as a water softener, it does not react with the major hardness minerals, calcium and magnesium, it is very soluble in water. If softening is desired in the tablet, another ingredient would have to be added.