Dan Terrio, director of IT, emphasized that this event was designed to test the system and identify its strengths and challenges.

He and his team will evaluate the results of the test to identify inaccurate data (bad phone numbers and email addresses, for example), work to improve Lewis & Clark’s email and phone systems, and coordinate with Blackboard to improve the vendor’s system on its end.

Another test will take place next semester at a date that is still to be determined. If you have not registered, please do so now: http://www.lclark.edu/dept/safety/notification.html

Here is a preliminary analysis of what worked and where adjustments need to be made.

Successes

Text message and email messages to alternative sources outside of the Lewis & Clark system worked seamlessly:

• Text messages to cell phones were successfully sent simultaneously and received with no reported issues.
• Email messages to personal e-mail accounts landed in hundred of inboxes that included a text and audio test message.

Challenges

There is a limit to the number of calls and email messages that the Lewis & Clark phone and email system can handle at one time:

• The Emergency Notification System had to send out calls to campus phone lines in batches so as not to over load the phone system. The result is a delay of approximately 30 minutes before all on campus extensions were contacted by the emergency notification system.
• In order for L&C’s email system to effectively and efficiently deliver the email to all L&C email accounts, the system needs to accept messages in batches.  The setup for the test was to accept all incoming email at one time, which overloaded the internal mail server, causing a delay in receipt as well as some messages not reaching the intended recipient.
• Reports indicate some voice mail messages were cut off or only partial messages were left. IT believes this happened  when a voicemail system picked up the ENS call. The system was not able to distinguish between a real human answering the call versus a voicemail system and started to play back the ENS message immediately instead of waiting for the tone.

Takeaways and Next Steps

• The most important lesson learned is that providing numerous, alternative points of contact is critical to ensuring you receive the message successfully and in a timely fashion. Providing a cell phone number to receive automatic voicemail and text messages is a particularly useful method of outreach.
• IT is addressing the capacity of the Lewis & Clark email system to increase the capacity of the number of email message that can go out to lclark.edu accounts in rapid succession.
• IT is working with the vendor to identify the issues with partial voice mail emergency messages.

Learn more about the Emergency Notification System: http://www.lclark.edu/dept/safety/notification_faq.html

Still having trouble registering? Email consult@lclark.edu