Learn more about this tool from Singlewire by listening to the podcast or transcript below.

The Singlewire Phone Report Tool is available to customers and registered partners of InformaCast. Click here to learn more and request a 30-day free trial of InformaCast.

There is no-cost for this application, however you will need a working version of InformaCast 8.0 or later.

Learn more about this InformaCast Mobile Messenger | Visit Cisco AppHQ for download

That whitepaper is available for download here: http://info.singlewire.com/multicast-for-singlewire-applications-whitepaper

Related Posts – InformaCast Customization Kit – Video + Programmer’s Guide | Network and Configuration Testing Kit for Multicast and SNMP

Watch the video below to learn more about what InformaCast is and how it works to send mass notification and emergency communication to protect people and assets.

Click to Download White Paper – Flexible and Scalable Design Considerations for CallAware – PDF

With the release of Singlewire Software’s CallAware™ application, it is now possible to alert people to a specific number being dialed. CallAware works in conjunction with Singlewire’s InformaCast application to broadcast a message to groups of devices when a particular number or numbers are dialed. For example, if a user dials an emergency number, such as 911, CallAware can send an InformaCast broadcast to alert onsite security personnel and first responder teams.

This document is for reference only. Use your best judgment on how CallAware will fit into your organization. The examples in this document provide ideas on how CallAware might fit into your existing or upcoming deployment of Cisco Communications Manager.

Intended Audience

Because the configuration of CallAware is primarily done within the Cisco Unified Communications Manager, the intended audience for this document is a Cisco Voice Engineer. Advanced knowledge of Communications Manager, call routing, and dial plan design are a must. The actual configurations for InformaCast and CallAware are minimal.

Click to Download White Paper – Flexible and Scalable Design Considerations for CallAware – PDF

When you need validate or test your Cisco IP phone implementation, do it remotely from your desktop.

Here’s how it works.

Your organization is spread out across multiple buildings in several cities and you’ve just implemented significant changes to your IP phone network. By remotely logging into IP phones at each location via your desktop, you’re immediately able to verify that your system is up and running.

Use Singlewire RemotePhoneControl to remotely test phones across multiple sites in your organization.

Learn more about this solution by visiting singlewire.com/remotephonecontrol.

When you need to train staff or answer a help desk request involving an IP phone, do it remotely via your desktop.

Here’s how it works.

Your organization is spread out across multiple buildings in several cities. A new staff member at a remote office needs help with the operation of their Cisco IP Phone. Support staff is able to remotely control the phone via their desktop and resolve the issue.

Use Singlewire RemotePhoneControl to remotely train and support your staff across your entire organization.

Learn more about this solution by visiting singlewire.com/remotephonecontrol.

Appearing in EdTech K-12

Story by Julie Sturgeon, Photo by Max S Gerber

As principal at Chaparral High School, Lucia Washburn no longer dreads lockdowns.

Each year, the Grossmont Union High School District requires each facility to conduct two such emergency drills. Officials sound a special alarm, and students must get to the nearest room that has a door or that locks. Teachers practice keeping students safe in that secure space, and the El Cajon police officers check every room to make sure the campus is secure. The entire process lasts an average of 10 minutes — but for Washburn, it was 10 minutes of frustration because her building had no public address system. Instead, she communicated with teachers over telephone speakers.

“If the class was a bit loud, they couldn’t hear anything,” she notes.

In the fall of 2005, Jack Blaylock, director of technical serv­ices at this San Diego, Calif.-area district, selected Chaparral to investigate a new IP telecom system under consideration. Singlewire (formerly Berbee) billed its InformaCast product as a robust, full-featured system that allows users to simultaneously push an audio stream and/or a text message to multiple Internet Protocol phones and speakers. The Madison, Wis., manufacturer originally built the system for the Department of Commerce after personnel there found themselves banging on doors on 9/11 in an effort to evacuate a building without loudspeakers.

Of course, Blaylock wasn’t willing to invest in new switches, speakers and software for one building; he had a bigger challenge on his hands. The 19 campuses in this high school district handed him a mixed bag of four or five different notification systems. “Some of it, I don’t know if there’s a brand name on it because it goes back 50 years [to] when the school was built,” he says.

The variety alone meant a lot of downtime for the maintenance department as it struggled to stock the right parts to keep each independent intercom system, bell scheme and clock working. And then it was nearly impossible to keep any two clocks within a high school in sync with each other — one class would pack up early waiting on the bell while another was caught by surprise. “They were all in really bad shape, so it was the prime time to catch up with the standards,” Blaylock reports. “IP basically rolled all three areas into one.”

Today, the announcement system is an enterprise that allows users to contact any combination of schools simultaneously. Because each intercom carries an IP address, officials narrow their message as specifically as the math department at one, two, three or all the high schools.

“Anyone with the code can make an emergency broadcast from any telephone in the school,” Blaylock notes. Users can also send a text-only update flagged by an unobtrusive audible alert, so administrators can sidestep starting a schoolwide panic over the speakers, says Ken Bywaters, director of voice products at Singlewire.

IP Telecom Made Sense

Grossmont Union High School District began converting to an IP structure in 2000, starting with phones and then adding security cameras. Because Blaylock built the network using Optical Carrier OS3s between the school and his servers, bandwidth wasn’t an issue. “It made it very easy, when a product like this came along, to put it on our network,” he says. “We didn’t have to go out and buy a bunch of equipment and make a drastic change. It was just a matter of adding more ports.”

The district also had another advantage already in place. Back in 1990, administrators ran fiber underground between the buildings to avoid shutting down entire campuses in case of lightning strikes, electrical surges and other problems. It has enhanced the infrastructure over time, running new fibers for faster speed on the data network, and reducing as many as 10 conduits to four.

Still, architects working on building renovations relied on yesterday’s features from names they already knew — Dukane, Rauland-Borg — to create the bid specifications. They were solid products, Blaylock knew from his research, but in the end the district would wind up paying for duplicate features using that route. For instance, the IP phones covered the same needs as a two-way intercom system did.

“And you still had to go to the local call box and have wires run to the cabinet,” he says. Those wires usually ran along the roof, where Mother Nature rotted away the elements. Blaylock estimates that 30 percent to 40 percent of the analog speakers in some of his schools no longer work.

So what Singlewire suggested was tempting, “but it was new,” he adds. “What if it doesn’t do everything it says it will? What’s the turnaround on parts if something breaks? How quickly can we get service to it here on the West Coast?” played like a drumbeat in his head. He called a colleague at Rialto (Calif.) Unified School District whom he knew through the California Educational Technology Professional Association for a heart-to-heart conversation on the district’s satisfaction with InformaCast, and decided it was at least worth a pilot test at Chaparral.

The system’s cost was an issue for Blaylock. “The speakers were more expensive than I’m used to paying. But even when you took that price and the licensing fees and add it all together versus the infrastructure costs to go with the traditional system, I was out in front. Once we had some of those numbers put together, it started making more and more sense.”

Testing … One, Two, Three

On the other hand, Grossmont Union did need to make a few up-front network investments. True, the district already enjoyed Optical Carrier 3s’ 155-megabits-per-second lines running between the school campuses and Blaylock’s department at the district’s headquarters. But because it built its IP network more than five years ago, it met 5e standards that have changed when it comes to switching for Power Over Ethernet. In a nutshell, Blaylock needed to purchase one new Cisco switch to run power ports to the equipment. Happily, the InformaCast system needs no electrical plug because it is fed right from the data switch.

The initial installation was a no-brainer. The district had two possibilities to choose from: set a server at the site or run the entire operation from the district headquarters. Blaylock chose the first because “if anything happens at the office, you don’t want to take down everyone’s communication system. When you get more than 10 schools wide, you don’t want headquarters to be the weak point,” he says. So he bought an enterprise license from Berbee, set up a server at Chaparral, installed the InformaCast software, and then tied that server back to his main server.

His team spent a week getting the hardware into place and then another month fine-tuning the configurations and adjusting speaker volumes in each classroom. And after the initial configuration, the clocks suddenly quit. Turns out, the IT department assumed the settings rather than seeking the manufacturer’s recommendations, which caused a problem in the software. Thankfully, the proper configurations righted the gaffe.

Blaylock admits the next rollout should be faster now that they’ve worked out these bugs, although other high schools will offer a challenge — to amplify football fields and other outdoor areas that 350-student Chaparral High School doesn’t offer.

Since then, school administrators have made their own tweaks. They prerecorded the lockdown message so that if they’re ever in the midst of a real emergency, Washburn can activate it by pushing two phone buttons.

Police department feedback during lockdowns resulted in Chaparral posting periodic updates during the drill to give teachers a sense of what’s happening outside their darkened classrooms. During spring break in 2007, the local SWAT team used Chaparral as a training ground for its officers, and suggested school administrators run the emergency announcement on a continuous loop.

IP allowed them to incorporate everyone’s advice with ease. According to Blaylock, schools can program an entire year’s worth of class dismissal bells and drills online in one sitting. Changing a date is no more complicated than using an e-mail program, in his opinion — just log into the software, type the change and close the program. Washburn is of a different mind. Using the system to make an announcement is “super simple” in her experience, but as a nontechnical person, she votes for a training session to get users comfortable with the change order process.

But even easy isn’t fail proof, as Washburn learned when a fire broke out in the high school’s kitchen in the fall of 2005. The principal wanted to inform students the fire department was on its way and maintain updates throughout the drama, but instead accidentally tapped into the phone system’s Muzak loop, playing elevator music to the waiting teens.

“Which, of course, is the worst music they could hear,” she laughs. Washburn made up for it by using the IP telecom to pipe Pirates of the Caribbean music throughout the building during a special celebration this spring.

Read More of this article at EdTech K-12

Whiteboard – Design Considerations for a Scalable Implementation of Singlewire CallAware

Transcript

Hello, I’m Peter Lord, part of the Professional Services division here at Singlewire software.

Today, it’s my pleasure to talk about our CallAware application and how it can fit in and add value to your existing Cisco unified communications environment.

Our CallAware application will monitor for dialed digits and that works in conjunction with our InformaCast application to send text and audio broadcast to groups of Cisco IP phones, IP speakers, analog paging systems as well as desktops.

CallAware was really designed to work with emergency situations of dialed numbers, such as 911 in the United States.

Because we’re working with these emergency telephone numbers, it’s really important that you have a firm grasp of call metric fundamentals dial play design and call routing in the call manager before undertaking this sort of deployment.

If you need assistance with this type “skill set” you can contact one of the many Cisco partners who are skilled in this area.

What we’re gonna show you today is one way to create a flexible, scalable, and easy to administer deployment of our CallAware application.

The goal behind this is to set up your CallManager in such a way that this can scale from one, two to hundreds to a thousand locations and thousands of IP phones across the enterprise.

The process starts when a user at a particular site picks up the phone and use it to make an emergency call, they dial the phone to 911, the phone that the user is at will have a device called search base the search base will have a site specific  911 partition.

Within that partition will be a translation pattern for 911.

That translation pattern will turn the 911 call the dial string into a unique number for the site.

We’re gonna do this based on the DID range.

So our site has the country code 1, the area code 608 and the prefix 555. The 911 at the end is to represent the string that was dialed, and the 0 is a representation of a alert number, a logical alert number.

So actually to change this number from 911 into this new number, we need to route the call to a CTI route point.

CallAware uses the CTI route point within CallManager-Communications Manager to monitor when the 911 call is made and then take action based on that. So your CallAware has been alerted that a unique number has been dialed for our site 1. CallAware then will contact Singlewire InformaCast to send out a broadcast to alert the onsite security and first responders that the emergency call has been dialed. InformaCast then sends a text and audio broadcast out to all of the pre-chosen devices to alert that security and first responder group. At the same time though, that 911 call needs to make it out to the telephone network to get to the 911 PSAP. CallAware forwards the call and resends it to a route pattern. The route pattern then will be set up to strip all of the preceding digits before the 911. Now, when the route pattern is going to forward, it forwards to the site specific route list or the local route group containing the gateway for that site. Now the calls at the gateway, makes it to the PSTN and the rials at the local PSAP and speaks to the 911 operator.

So what we just described happens instantaneously. When the 911 number is dialed, the InformaCast broadcast is made and the first responders are alerted and the 911 operator gets the call instantaneously. This isn’t much different from normal call routing for other types of calls from the same CallManager. The only difference really being the CTI route points specific to CallAware. For more information about our CallAware products or other Singlewire products, please visit our website at www.singlewire.com.

Support for District Safety Plans

IP telephony also helps schools prepare for and respond to emergency incidents. Simply having a phone in every classroom improves the school’s security posture. At Cristo Rey Jesuit High School, teachers press one button on their classroom Cisco Unified IP phone to summon security personnel. Horizon Charter School of Lincoln, California, uses InformaCast software to send alerts to all sites through the phones’ builtin speakers. And Davis School District, near Salt Lake City, Utah, uses SchoolMessenger for Cisco Unified Communications to automatically call the homes of absent elementary school students who aren’t at school one hour after schools starts.

Read more – Download this Newsletter Profile from Cisco (PDF)

Cisco has created a design guide resource for deploying emergency and mass notification systems for education as part of the Cisco Notifi-Ed solution.

The Cisco Notifi-Ed solution for School Safety and Security is a Cisco Validated Design (CVD) that provides school districts with an integrated communications system for rapid mass and audience-specific message broadcasting. The solution demonstrates how the Cisco Unified Communications can be used by Reliance Communication’s SchoolMessenger system and Singlewire’s InformaCast product to deliver rapid communications to school administrators, teachers, students, and parents through audio, Register for Text Messages (SMS) text, and email and to receive and log acknowledgements from message recipients, a critical function in emergency situations where school districts must be sure that parents have received announcements about the well-being of their children. The Cisco Notifi-Ed can be used to send emergency communication as well as daily operational announcements to the broader community that consists of parents, school district administrators, school faculty, students, and law enforcement.

Click to learn more about this resource

Founded in 1896 in Pasadena, California, Lake Avenue Church has grown to occupy six multistory buildings on a campus that spans half a city block, plus two nearby residential offices. Approximately 150 staff members and volunteers work together on worship services, educational programs, community and global outreach, and small groups centered around life stages, shared interests, and common needs.

Staff members on the sprawling church campus rely on the communications system to collaborate with each other and communicate with members. When the old private branch exchange (PBX) system began to fail, the IT staff looked for a new communications system.

Lake Avenue Church plans to gradually introduce more features that increase the value of the Cisco Unified
Communications platform. “We give staff a chance to become comfortable with one new feature before we introduce
the next,” says Tulcan. “Cisco Unified Communications is very simple, so new features don’t take long to learn.”
Plans under consideration include:

• Enhanced safety: When someone places a 911 call from any location on campus, the public safetyanswering point receives the building and floor location, not just the church’s main address. “If someone calls from the third floor of our Family Life building, the paramedics don’t have to spend the time to search 240,000 square feet of building space to find the caller,” Tulcan says.
• Emergency preparedness: The church can send pages through the IP phones using InformaCast software from Singlewire Software, a Cisco developer network partner.

Read Full Case Study at http://www.cisco.com.kz/en/US/prod/collateral/voicesw/ps6788/vcallcon/ps7273/case_study_c36-547629.pdf – PDF

Located in the heart of Orange County, California, Los Alamitos Unified School District (LAUSD) has always believed in high standards for its staff, faculty, administrators, and students. District officials rely heavily on collaboration and communication tools to generate quality education and growth potential opportunities to meet the needs of its students. In particular, LAUSD strives to build partnerships with the leading technology providers to supply the support and resources needed for its students to achieve academic excellence and develop unique talents in
preparation for their future goals.

LAUSD had an outdated network and was unable to communicate effectively with key stakeholders, including the parents of its students. With the support of the community, the LAUSD Board of Education implemented a three-year Technology Use Plan to achieve its next level of technology-based curriculum. The plan called for a revamp of the  entire network infrastructure, incorporating a solution that would enable all schools within the district to  communicate general announcements, individual student related information, and emergency broadcasts to parents quickly and efficiently.

LAUSD turned to Cisco and its partners, SchoolMessenger and Singlewire, to accomplish its goals, moving from a decentralized to a centralized solution that provided a robust notification system for all of its schools to utilize across the district.

Download the full press release. – PDF

Read more about the Notifi-Ed Solution from Cisco.

Register at: https://ciscosales.webex.com/ciscosales/onstage/g.php?t=a&d=207951097

We invite you to join a free live webcast on Improving School Communications, featuring experts from the award-winning Los Alamitos Unified School District in California.

In today’s 21st century learning environment, the ability to communicate the right information to the right people at the right time is essential. Schools have to be able to reach every student, parent and staff member in the district, efficiently and economically, and often at short notice. Yet many schools are using costly mass notification services, or still relying on aging auto-dialers, labor-intensive manual calls, and expensive printed communications, with little or no standardization within the district.

Los Alamitos USD has been recognized multiple times for academic achievement, including the National Blue Ribbon Schools of Excellence award and the California Distinguished Schools award. In this webcast, you’ll learn how they addressed the challenges of school communication with a centralized district-wide notification system, featuring:

• Automatic calls for absentee notification, general announcements, emergency situations, homework and test information
• Instant translation to more than 30 languages
• Integrated paging, bells, alarms, and text alerts/messages
• Simultaneous broadcast of audio streams and text messages to IP phones, IP speakers, desktops, and overhead paging systems
• Surveys and interactive messages to obtain parent feedback and build community support

Panelist(s) Info:

Register at:

https://ciscosales.webex.com/ciscosales/onstage/g.php?t=a&d=207951097

Read Case Study to learn more: http://www.cisco.com/web/strategy/docs/gov/LosAlamitos_cStudy.pdf

Read Written Version | Watch Additional Video Interview Footage

The Challenge

Culmination of comprehensive crisis management planning involved the need for a stable emergency notification system that could access multiple locations quickly and provide continuity in the notification process

The Solution

Implementation of InformaCast paging software that, in conjunction with the Desktop Notification System, and SchoolMessenger, allows contact across campuses through IP phones and speakers, legacy paging systems, computer desktops, SMS text messaging,and email

The Benefits

• Cross-campus, “one-click” notification for speed and consistency of messages
• Control over who can access and send messages, integrated with Active Directory
• Easily scalable to diverse environments
• Able to broadcast to different technologies, including overhead IP speakers, IP phones, desktops, legacy paging systems, and (with SchoolMessenger) email

Read and Watch additional information on this case study.

Transcript from Video

DR. JAY BOX:  Kentucky Community and Technical College System was formed back in 1998.
Today we have grown to sixteen comprehensive community and technical colleges with 67 campuses across the state of Kentucky.

BOB HAMMONDS: There are no dorms at any of our campuses.
We do not have dormitories.
So, all of our students commute.
Several of our students due to the nature of their colleges and remote locations travel up to an hour, an hour and a half each way to attend class on a daily basis.
Five years ago is about the time we started our, our overall crisis management process.
The culmination of this process has been the implementation of a emergency notification system.

DERREL CONE:  We have the ability with our Voice Over IP phone to hit a services button and it brings up a menu and we can choose the message.
This is a pre created, pre recorded, pre scripted message and we can choose that message right there by hitting a button.
And then we can choose what group we want to send it to.
This campus, or that campus, or all of our campuses.
We have the ability right then and there to send that message.
So, if it’s a critical message and  seconds count, we can make it happen.

Snap is the name we’ve given our emergency notification system here at KCTCS.
The system goes immediately to about 8,000 or so Voice Over IP phones.
It can go to desktop computers.
And also we’re tied into a text messaging which gets out thousands of messages in minutes.

InformaCast does what we consider internal messaging.
It sends to the internal phone, the internal PA’s, the internal IP speakers, the desktops on our campus.
SchoolMessager is our external component.
It sends out SMS tags to anybody who have signed up for the SMS tags.
It sends out the emails to anybody who signed up for the emails.
Well when you send out an infomaCast message, we have the script.
And then what that message does is goes out, logs in to the school messenger, runs a pre created job with SchoolMessengerand then does what we asked it for.
We can hit that one button and then it does it all.

BOB HAMMONDS:  It’s something that’s used much more frequent than we anticipated.
We knew we had emergencies and we knew things went on.
But since we’ve implemented the system it has been phenomenal.

DR. JAY BOX:  We have several testimonials from our students talking about what a great concept this has been.
They love the idea of the quick notification.
Plus from the safety prospective it’s, it’s that feeling more secure.
That when an incident does happen, we have a process now in place that can notify our employers and our students in case of that emergency.

BOB HAMMONDS:  One person’s life is worth much, much, much more than what we’ve invested in this system.
The comfort that it gives a person in my role as being Director of Crisis Management for this system is I know we can’t prevent things from happening.
But I feel comfortable at night knowing that if something happens tomorrow we’re going to be able to alert people, let them know what’s going on and potentially save lives.
And for me the cost is . . . the benefits far out weighs any cost we have incurred.

There are three opportunities for you to attend this event. The first is on the morning of Tuesday, November 10th in Waukesha, then again Tuesday afternoon in Madison and Wednesday morning in Appleton.

Reserve your seat at one of these sessions to learn more about unified communications and just how much they affect your business. You can reserve your seat by following this link. We hope to see you there.

Additional information can be found in the downloadable PDF document on the right hand side of the page.

Learn More at Cisco.com

To learn more about the deploying Singlewire InformaCast on AXP and when this option will be available, please read more here.