Is It Time to Scale Your ENS: Insight from Alertus Director of Product
by Kat Wilkerson, Content Marketing Specialist
If you’ve been thinking about scaling your mass notification system, chances are it’s time. Organizations often start their notification journey with limited systems specializing in text or email. However, limiting yourself to email and text alerts may prevent you from reaching every inch of your facility with vital information.
At Alertus, we realize reaching everyone, everywhere, is the number one priority in an emergency. So, what’s the best way to do this? Scale your emergency mass notification.
What does 'scaling' mean?
Scaling is the ability of IT systems to increase resources to meet business demands. However, this doesn’t mean organizations have to start from scratch. In implementing a more comprehensive notification approach, organizations can leverage existing technology through unified mass notification to provide additional solutions while remaining cost-effective.
Dr. Ben Brewer, DM-HLS, CPM, Director of Product
We asked our Director of Product, Dr. Ben Brewer, to explain how the Alertus System is not only tailored to each organization’s unique requirements and culture but also scalable as the organization expands and contracts.
“When it comes to scalability, it is essential to consider the alerting modality independent of other modalities, as different variables affect alerting modalities differently. In the following sections, I’d like to address desktop notifications, overhead PA systems, and VoIP telephony deployments,” Ben says.
Alertus Desktop™ Notifications
Scalability specific to desktop notification is most frequently affected by increases and decreases in the stakeholder population and information technology (IT) refresh rate. The Alertus Notification System achieves desktop notification via the Alertus Desktop™ Notification Client and the Desktop for Chrome browser extension.
Desktop alerting is easy-to-use and offers options for organizations that need to reach people over a large area or multiple locations. Through software integration, organizations can scale their existing desktop computers to
Target specific devices or send alerts across your entire network
Customize alerts or choose from a library of templates
Embed images, audio, and links into the desktop notifications
Provide full-screen, partial, or ticker mode alerts
Monitor delivery rates and recipient responsiveness
As an organization adds emergency notification stakeholders, the desktop notification endpoint polls the Alertus Server, receives a unique device ID, and automatically adds the new stakeholder to groups based on established rules.
Alertus Technologies recommends that customers remain attuned to how the total desktop notification endpoints compare to license thresholds and communicate these changes with their Alertus account manager as necessary.
PA Systems
Overhead public address (PA) system scalability is easily supported in many instances and frequently occurs due to an audio coverage gap or new construction, including facility renovation. Once the impacts on the system’s architecture are understood, scalability occurs within the Alertus Notification System by creating new Alert Services to address a unique zone or group and adding new Alertus hardware to satisfy changes to the customer’s use case.
In an emergency, spoken alerts can deliver critical details about the crisis and instructions on how to react. The Alertus IP Text-to-Speech Interface utilizes breakthrough text-to-speech (TTS) technology in a compact PCB module to fit inside most public address systems or standalone indoor/outdoor speaker enclosures.
This integration allows organizations to communicate seamlessly with their existing PA system for enhanced widespread coverage and to
Activate PA systems in all or specific areas
Send custom alert messages
Provide unrehearsed live voice
VoIP Phones
The scalability of Voice Over IP (VoIP) telephony is likely the easiest discussed. As an organization adds or removes VoIP endpoints to the system architecture, they must ensure new appliances are added to or removed from system groups and that endpoint counts are discussed with Alertus Technologies to ensure that license thresholds are adjusted when necessary.
Similar to overhead PA scalability, if an organization creates new VoIP groups, additional Alert Services may be required to meet use case requirements.
Phone notification systems are a valuable asset in a comprehensive mass notification approach. You can leverage existing phone system permissions and vendor security to transform a simple VoIP system into a paging or emergency PA system by
Sending notifications to all or select VoIP desk phones in your facility
Leveraging your phone as an emergency button to request help or trigger pre-set alerts
Immediately distribute alerts without overwhelming phone networks
How do you know it's time?
Let’s face it, organizations have many moving parts, making it hard to disperse life-saving information effectively. If you aren’t confident that your current system can reach everyone in your facility in an emergency – personnel, staff, students, faculty, visitors, patients, etc. – it’s time to scale your system. You want the ability to deliver immediate alerts when and where you need it most, and Alertus will ensure you’ve reached everyone.
When scaling your mass notification system, it’s ideal to cover the four areas of comprehensive coverage, including indoor, outdoor, personal, and public notifications. This coverage guarantees your organization has notification solutions for each layer and further improves its system by customizing targeted alert messaging through several endpoints.
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A scalable mass notification system is the key to the sustainability of that system. Ben indicates, “Just like the dynamic incidents your organization faces that could impact the safety of your stakeholders, the Alertus Notification System is dynamic in its ability to meet your organization’s scalability needs as it expands and contracts without major overhauls or significant costs.”