Text messaging is one of the most useful productivity tools to evolve in the business community this decade.

The question is how can we leverage instant messaging to provide real-time communications in mission critical situations such as an Emergency Alert?

With Text messaging we have the ability to send a message string out to the lowest common denominator… a cell phone. Text messaging provides us a ubiquitous way to blast out a message to a large group of people at once. With intelligent server software we can then look at user profiles and ensure delivery based on their presence. For example, if they're online send the text to their computer, if they are off line sent the alert directly to their phone. Even better, if the phone has no text capability call the phone and play the text back to them leveraging text to speech technology.

Adding intelligence to the message alert system delivers real-time instant notification of any event including natural disasters and emergencies.

Text messaging becomes an excellent utility with a feature of "emergency broadcasting" to remote users. With the reality of confused evacuations and natural disasters, a tool such as text messaging provides a means for instant emergency messaging to people in the field or community. Envision hospital attendants sending text messages to ambulance drivers, or campus staff broadcasting a lock-down to its students. They would never get a busy message and the message would instantly end-up on their cell phones and laptops, without having to login to e-mail or check voice mail. Similar to push-to-talk the message can be delivered over any wireless network.

How it works

The Unified Communication Server enables clients to send urgent messages to multiple devices of subscribers within an entire community or groups of communities to communicate important information. The client software sends the text message and leverages the UC server to look at each user profile, and based on their present status broadcast a text message to a cell phone, PDA, PC, or all the devices at the same time ensuring real-time delivery.

The service can instantly and simultaneously send alerts to a subscribers:

• Mobile phone (via SMS text message)
• Traditional land line or wired phone (via text-to-speech)
• Satellite phone
• Blackberry
• Smartphone
• Wireless PDA
• Pager
• E-mail account

Unified Communications is ideal for organizations responsible for the well being of citizens, employees, students, athletes, volunteers, partners, first responders and others.

Terrorism, severe weather, violent crimes, power outage, watermain breaks, hazardous material spills, gas leaks and more—happen in an instant. The question is, will your organization be prepared to communicate urgent news before it’s too late?

• Increase the level of safety in the community, workplace or campus
• Increase the reach of communications with your subscribers
• Keep your subscribers informed in real-time
• Reduce communication costs from TV, radio, paper, mail, posters etc.

Traditionally phone dialer systems were created to notify people of important announcements. The main problem with reverse calling systems is that they don’t work well during periods of high phone traffic. For example, wired and wireless phone lines were busy for hours during the terrorist attacks on September 11th. However, SMS text messages went through just fine because they have smaller bandwidth requirements.

Following the same example, web sites that posted news of the 9/11 attacks also experienced high traffic loads, thereby making the pages unavailable to many. Website visitors simply saw the message “page operation timed out.” The massive increase in web traffic was similar to a “denial of service” attack, making the website useless for many who needed vital information to determine his/her next step.

Wireless networks are virtually in every populated area and reach nearly 200 million cell phones and wireless e-mail devices. Even when the networks become jammed and cannot process voice calls the light traffic of text messaging still gets through! It’s the way to say what you want that doesn't require talking and is always available.

• Send and receive messages to/from any wireless device and/or phone number
• Receive info alerts including new message alerts to any cell phone
• Broadcast text messages to workgroups and departments
• Enable corporate text broadcast to the complete organization
• Secure instant message to staff, employees and workforce

Applications available with Unified Communications text messaging capabilities:

• Emergency Broadcasts
• Terrorist Alerts
• Weather Advisories
• School Closings
• Event Class Cancellations
• Sports Scores and News
• Scheduled Maintenance Reminders
• Special Promotions

Related Documentation

• High Availability
• Emergency Notification System (PowerPoint)
• Disaster Recovery Planning
• Mass Notification Brochure

Additional Resources

• Optional Add-ons
• UC Comparison
• Fax Solutions
• Office-LinX Enterprise
• Office-LinX Standard
• Office-LinX Small Business