Emergency Notification Application Enhances Communications When Emergency Strikes

Enhanced 911—more typically known as E911—has cut a wide swath across North American workplaces and campuses. The network, which automatically associates a physical address with a telephone number, helps first-responders to an incident—be they police, emergency medical technicians or other emergency personnel—more quickly determine where an event is taking place and how resources can best be diverted to handle it.

Providing calling party information to the emergency service during an emergency is a standard feature of every ShoreTel® Pure IP Unified Communication (UC) solution, but the ShoreTel Emergency Notification Application takes emergency calling a step further. Through the use of the Emergency Notification Application, an even higher level of capability is available to assist not only fire and medical personnel, but also security officials, top-level administrators, and other parties who must be made aware of criminal acts, extreme weather situations and other events affecting their campus or building.

“The Emergency Notification Application is an optional overlay available to ShoreTel customers taking advantage of the integrated emergency support in the ShoreTel UC solution,” says Maura Higgins, director of professional services at ShoreTel.

ShoreTel’s Pure IP Unified Communication solution automatically contacts emergency services to transmit critical caller identification to an appropriate Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP), notifying emergency personnel. With the Emergency Notification Application, other designated individuals—a college president or the head of security at an assisted-living facility, for instance—can receive desktop pop-ups and telephone calls. Built-in text messaging allows alerted parties to communicate in a broadcast mode with the Emergency Notification Client software, to make sure they, too, know that a emergency call has been placed and from where. Such notification helps those people not directly involved with emergency-response to assist those people who are—by meeting them at a certain door of a building, preparing a defibrillator, or activating a crisis-management plan.

What’s more, someone receiving an alert must acknowledge receiving it by pressing a key on her phone or clicking a box on his computer screen. All alerts and responses—or lack of response from a person designated to receive an alert—are recorded by the Emergency Notification Application. “The application keeps a careful log of events so that the organization can look back at what happened after the crisis is over and either affirm crisis-management policies or re-examine them,” Higgins says.

Emergency Notification in Action
Schools—whether K-12 or universities—as well housing complexes for the elderly, factories and financial institutions are among those who have benefited from deployment of the Emergency Notification Application, Higgins says. Two such organizations are Palisades Charter High School in Pacific Palisades, CA and Down Lite, a premier manufacturer of down and feather bedding.

When Palisades Charter High School replaced its PBX-based phone system with a ShoreTel UC system, the school put a telephone in every classroom and automated telephone call handling modes according to class schedules so that teachers can communicate more efficiently without the fear of being distracted by unwanted calls during class time. Palisades Charter High School also implemented ShoreTel's Emergency Notification Application, which enhances the school’s ability to quickly and efficiently coordinate a response. Whenever a ShoreTel phone is used to dial emergency services (i.e. 911), the system automatically notifies the school’s executive director, director of communications, school police officer, and dean of discipline of the call. Each person has a vital and different role to play, and by receiving simultaneous notification, they can immediately create an appropriate and unified response to the emergency. Built-in messaging allows them to send text messages to each other from their desktops, further improving their ability to coordinate a timely response. Learn more about Palisades Charter High School’s experience with Emergency Notification Application.

Down Lite had better emergency capabilities high on its list when it chose a new phone system. While it liked that ShoreTel was much simpler to manage and that it was easier to set up new users than on other phone systems it considered, ShoreTel’s Emergency Notification capabilities confirmed Down Lite’s choice. “The E911 capabilities on the Cisco side required an additional applications server and additional software in the range of $20,000, and it required a lot of complicated licensing,” says Matt Fleming, network manager at Down Lite. “While Cisco and ShoreTel were close in E911 capabilities, the cost and complexity were far different and ShoreTel was much more appealing. While it wasn’t the only reason we went with ShoreTel, E911 certainly sealed the deal.” Learn more about the benefits Down Lite experienced with its ShoreTel UC system.

Emergency Notification Application Architecture
Higgins also notes that Emergency Notification Application is easily installed and managed on a central administrative server. A second site—or 25 more sites—can be added with no extra configuration work on the part of IT staff. “The Emergency Notification Application leverages the underlying distributed platform of ShoreTel,” says Higgins.

The ShoreTel Emergency Notification Application consists of three software components: Emergency Notification Server, which runs on a ShoreTel HQ or DVM Server and continuously monitors all trunks in the system for emergency events; an associated configuration facility that lets administrators configure the notification features; and Emergency Notification Client, which runs on designated client PCs.

For more information about the Emergency Notification Application, contact ShoreTel’s professional services group at 800-425-9385, ext 3331, or send email to professionalservices@shoretel.com.