Posts Tagged ‘Mass Notification’

Watch this short video interview with Dennis Sullivan Assistant Director/Emergency Management at the University of Louisville talking about how InformaCast was used to send an emergency notification to staff and students, alerting them about an emergency situation on campus involving a firearm.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 9:12 — 6.3MB)

Learn more about InformaCast Director, what is is and how it works, by listening to this short podcast with Ken Bywaters, Executive Vice President of Product Development from Singlewire Software.

Podcast

Transcript of the interview

Brad Parkel: Ken, do you want to talk about what InformaCast Director is?

Ken Bywaters: Sure. Most commonly, people think of Director as a command console or a management interface for any collection, one to many, collection of InformaCast servers that are out on the network.

Brad Parkel: And this is for InformaCast and InformaCast CK.

Ken Bywaters: Right. Both product families. Both InformaCast for a Cisco phone environment, and InformaCast CK for non-Cisco phone environments.

Brad Parkel: What will this product do?

Ken Bywaters: It is really actually fairly simple, but at the same time we’re not aware of anyone else doing this right now so it is new but the idea is you put the Director some location on your network and you can make all of your InformaCast servers visible to it. So there are a couple of ways people might use this. Number one, is a single organization that has InformaCast servers spread out across their network in a distributed manor. InformaCast Director can sit in the middle, see all of those servers, and the Director will communicate with any and all of them at any one time.

Brad Parkel: What would be an example of this? A school? Or a retail chain? Something like that?

Ken Bywaters: Both are very good examples. A school, retail, or even healthcare. We have a healthcare customer with over one hundred sites and they’re deploying InformaCast at each site. Individually, they have a very large network, but they want to keep the InformaCast traffic and control local to each site. So,they may be installing [InformaCast] on a server, they might be installing on a virtual machine, on an existing server, or a blade, an AXP blade from Cisco. Then in the middle, they’re putting Director so that they can make these [InformaCast servers] visible throughout the organization. For example, let’s say the health clinic in one city can do all of the routine paging within that facility. The central administration can talk to that facility running InformaCast Director can talk to that one facility and all the other facilities in the Western US, let’s say. All from InformaCast Director. And that has the advantage from a management perspective, but also, they don’t need to pass multicast over their wide area network (WAN). It’s a simple, very small, unicast message out to each server, and then each InformCast server takes it and converts it and it’s multicast from there. So the multicast traffic stays on the LAN, but it’s very clean from a WAN perspective.

Brad Parkel: So, what we’re talking about here is a regional notification, or a company-wide notification, where InformaCast servers are spread out.

Ken Bywaters: We do that today in a centralized model. People put InformaCast servers centrally and then send to all locations from there. But with Director, it allows people to do it, to deploy in a distributed architecture, but tie everything centrally with Director. So that’s exactly right within a single company, a single organization allowing the Director to tie together a distributed architecture into a centralized one.

Brad Parkel: Now this would also have a regional impact if there were InformaCast servers within a community, at a hospital, at a school, with a public safety director or a county government or city government. One button could send out the message across all of those agencies.

Ken Bywaters: Yes. Exactly. This has the potential to be revolutionary in the way notification is done. Because you could take that same concept for notifying everyone within a single organization to notifying an entire region. Just as you said. Let’s use an example of a UASI, a local or a regional security center. They could run the [InformaCast] Director and then talk to all the InformaCast servers in that region. And that can be hospitals, schools, businesses, anything. Let’s just take Honolulu for an example. We’ve got somewhere around 20 different customers in Honolulu. There’s a collection of banks, defense facilities, schools, hospitals, all kinds of things. Now, if they had a need to send out a regional notification, which there are, even though Honolulu is paradise, there are things they need to know about. Whether it’s volcanic activity or tsunami or anything like that. So there might be a need to notify all those organizations. So, the Director allows a third party to send out a message to all those InformaCast customers on the island and notify them of something. So that really regionalizes the notification. That same concept could be applied to any region anywhere you would need to get a regional notification to existing [overhead] paging systems. And that’s not what’s being done today. Because in a traditional analog notification, there are no means to get that message out to that system, let alone organize it regionally.

Brad Parkel: And we should stress here, this is an on-network notification, so you’re hitting inside the organization and then also have the ability to go outside to email, sms, that sort of thing.

Ken Bywaters: Right. Exactly. There are some regional notification methods that are off-network; outbound dialer, sms, things like that, but still, those are centralized to one product. Where as this is everything is done on the network and activating existing on-network notification systems and InformaCast and carrying it out from there.

Brad Parkel: Ok. To this point where have you seen the interest coming from? Has it been public safety? Has it been organizations or a combination of the two?

Ken Bywaters: It’s been a combination of the two, but more [interest] from a single organization, because that’s what people are used to. So, the cases we’ve mentioned, schools, healthcare, retail, and then county government. Those are the ones that are most interested because those are the ones that are deploying InformaCast in a distributed model today. So, they have an immediate need for Director, but we are talking to the people that control the regional notification, or a community notification network. So, I think that will be the next phase of interest.

Brad Parkel: Now, if someone is listening to this, how is this implemented is probably the common question people are going to ask? How do I know who’s around us that may be able to take advantage of this.

Ken Bywaters: Well, the Director is just software, so you can install it the same way you install InformaCast, whether it’s on your own server or in a virtual machine in something like that. If you are your own organization, you already know where those InformaCast servers are. If you’re a regional center, most of them have a way to communicate with businesses under their control anyway, and we also bring those people together. I was at a meeting last week with a county government. They brought in other companies and agencies and things like that into the meeting, because those people want to know what’s going on in the county anyway. What technologies, etc. In a lot of locations the local government operates very closely with the population of the region, businesses, so it’s kind of a natural fit. And in that case the county would run [InformaCast] Director, and any business in the county may want to participate in those county-wide alerts. It is up to them, but the county can run the Director and then the others can subscribe to the notifications.

Brad Parkel: And there’s some set-up involved with the InformaCast server to say which messages could be distributed. Isn’t that the case?

Ken Bywaters: Yes. You have complete control of that. You can limit the Director’s access to certain messages or certain groups, things like that. Just like you could if you were using InformaCast stand alone. So you can limit that access, you’re not giving the Director control to do anything they want, you may just tell it “only send this particular emergency message, only to this group” if you’d like. It’s as granular as you’d like.

Brad Parkel: So, severe weather, that sort of thing might be a candidate for opening it up, whereas another type of alert would be restricted.

Ken Bywaters: Right. And the Director does not only do pre-recorded messages, but also LIVE messages. It can be audio and/or text.

Brad Parkel: Explain that real quick. If there’s an event, someone could log into Director, record something, and then send that out?

Ken Bywaters: Right. Audio and/or text. And then send it out to all the InformaCast servers on the network that they’re subscribed to.

Brad Parkel: If you’re interested in learning more about InformaCast Director, you can visit us at www.singlewire.com/director. On the site, we’ve got a one minute overview video, downloadable documentation about the product and a form where you can request additional information or order the product.

One minute video. When school is closed, protect your facility against vandalism. Extend the use of Singlewire InformaCast to protect your facilities after hours.

• μLaw: 8,000 Hz, 8-bit, mono for phones
• Up to high-quality (HQ) PCM: 44,100 Hz, 16-bit, mono for IP speakers

This Tech Tip will walk you through how to convert your audio files to use with InformaCast.

Dowload PDF Here

Take one minute and watch this video to learn more about CallAware. Interested and want to learn more?  Click here or visit www.singlewire.com/talkwithus.

Read this entire post on the Cisco Application Extension Platform at Cisco.com

Download PDF Document on IP Broadcast with AXP for Improved Organizational Communications from Cisco.com

Introduction

Industry Trends

Cisco and Singlewire: Location-Independent IP Broadcast

How It Works

Figure 1. Cisco AXP and Singlewire InformaCast Single-Site Example

Figure 2. Cisco AXP with Singlewire InformaCast Multisite Example

Solution Highlights

• Lowers total cost of ownership (TCO) with less power consumption

• Provides enhanced productivity and better management

• Provides better network and application services integration

• You can create live, temporary, or prerecorded audio broadcasts and/or text broadcasts.

• The solution supports a variety of endpoints.

• You can administer the solution through a variety of flexible interfaces.

• You can filter access to message types and recipient groups by user.

• You can schedule messages to be sent at a preset time or on a recurring basis.

• You can configure the frequency of message playback.

• Founded on 20 years of innovation and validated by millions of deployments sites, Cisco integrated services routers provide multiservice routing, offering your company exceptional network agility, performance, and intelligence.

• The Singlewire InformaCast resume includes successful installations with Cisco Unified Communications Solutions across a variety of organizational sizes. Singlewire has achieved multiyear Cisco awards for U.S. Technology Excellence Partner of the Year for Unified Communications and Security.

Business Benefits

• Overhead paging often does not reach hearing-impaired employees, compromising their safety. Singlewire InformaCast helps ensure the safety of all employees by simultaneously sending an audible broadcast and text message to Cisco IP Phones and desktops. All employees have equal access to vital information about emergencies or network outages.

• In the wake of September 11 and hurricane Katrina, many government entities are mandating that facilities meet strict emergency notification guidelines. The Cisco AXP with Singlewire InformaCast solution provides streamlined packaging to meet these emerging regulations.

• The Cisco AXP with Singlewire InformaCast solution optimizes total cost of ownership (TCO) by centralizing management and the hosting environment for service for up to 1000 endpoints from a single integrated services router.

• The IP-based broadcast solution saves up to 70 percent of the cost of a traditional paging system, adds many more features, and eases management complexity with a variety of management interfaces. The solution takes advantage of existing voice and data network resources, requires no dedicated wiring, and often requires no need to wire or rewire speakers and amplifiers. The broadcast solution extends the investment already made in Cisco IP Phones beyond just dial tone.

• Because the Singlewire InformaCast application provides the ability to send simultaneous, live audio to an IP phone, desktop, and inline IP speaker, or any preferred endpoint, it is a critical component of improved organizational communications.

• The combined Cisco and Singlewire solution provides a simplified, consolidated package for one-button messaging from a phone or one-click messaging from the desktop, and it allows you to send live, recorded, or scheduled messages.

Read this entire post on the Cisco Application Extension Platform at Cisco.com

Learn about how InformaCast can be used to address NFPA 72 requirements.

Transcript

We’re talking here with Ken ByWaters about NFPA 72.

NFPA 72 requirements include being able to send a pre-recorded audio message or tone during an emergency with options to send a voice message.

Ken can you talk about how InformaCast adresses these requirements?

Certainly, and this is something I have been having a lot of discussions with customers about already, with NFPA 72 being passed.

Recently, just about anyone out there has some type of security system or fire system in place, but almost all of those systems don’t have any audio announcement associated with them.

They’re straight notification things that’s maybe just to send a tone or a strobe or things like that.

And for years we’ve had people, with the permission of their local fire marshall, connecting InformaCast to their systems to provide, to augment their systems by providing some type of human voice along with that notification.

So, the alarm goes off, it’s not only a tone or strobe you get audio directions on what to do and what the situation is and things like that.

So when this code was passed it’s a very natural step for InformaCast or ControlKom to play to augment an existing fire security system.

And I have to say that in and of itself we don’t follow these codes it’s very very important to talk to your fire marshall or police chief or things like that to get approval of whatever you’re doing with your fire system.

Not just InformaCast but any time you touch it you really ought to get a clearance from them.

Ok, and this is something that has really been a feature that’s been inside of InformaCast since almost day one.

Isn’t that the case?

Right, we work hard with InformaCast not just to make it just a stand-alone product but something that could integrate with other systems.

We accept dynamic messages, we are built on open standards, we work on things like contact closures which are very common in safety and security.

So it’s a very natural and easy fit into a system like that to associate text and audio messages with your existing safety system.

So, if I’m a facilities manager and am looking or needing to implement NFPA 72 within my organization, what should be the next steps I should be thinking about?

I mean, hearing about InformaCast as an option, what are the next steps that would allow me to learn if this is even an option.

Well probably the best step is to contact your Singlewire sales person and talk to them about it.

If you’re not familiar with the products that’s a good place to find out more about it, we also have some great videos.

And then get us on the phone and we’re having these discussions all the time. And we can talk to your safety and security vendor, your fire vendor, security vendor whomever and find the best way to integrate.

A lot of these things are very standard integration so.

But definitely the first step is to find what you want to do.

Learn how you can use the dynamic text functionality in InformaCast to send mass notification and emergency communications.

Transcript

We are talking with Ken Bywaters Executive Vice President of Product Management. Can you tell us more about what dynamic text is and how it works with InformaCast?
Dynamic text in InformaCast or for that matter dynamic audio is really combined so that other systems can pass a message to InformaCast and have InformaCast send it out.

We have a lot of customers that have messages generated by another system or somewhere else some on the Internet perhaps and they still want that message to go out to phones, desktops, and speakers but all the grouping information is already in InformaCast. So dynamic text or dynamic audio components allow you to do just that. They take messages from one place pass messages into InformaCast, use the grouping and all the infrastructure we provide to send that message out to your phones, desktops and speakers.

What would be an example of that?

Well, a straight forward example of that would what people do with weather alerts from the National Weather Service.
If a tornado alert is issued or some other type of severe weather alert, that text is already generated from the National Weather Service.  You just want to get it out to your Cisco phones and all the other devices on your network. We can watch for that text to be generated and then pass it through our system and send it out.

The same might be true for amber alerts, or community messages, or anything like that, or even messages generated on your network, security notifications, anything like that, that might be anything our customer systems might generate.

Now is that something that requires a human to push a button to allow that o pass through or can that be setup to remotely or automatically to watch an audio feed or text feed?

No, that automatically happens.  So the dynamically part of it means that the person does not have to do anything he has set it up to watch for the content and send it out as soon as we get it.

Ok, now if someone is interested in this how do they get this?  Is this the latest version of InformaCast? Where does that if in?

Dynamic text is built into InformaCast starting in version 7.0 and dynamic audio is built into 7.1 which is generally available in May 2010 and it’s all in the documentation. If people have any questions they can always contact our technical support team or their sales person.

Very Good, that you Ken

Learn more about text-to-speech functionality in InformaCast can be used to send mass notification and emergency communication in your organization.

Transcript
INTERVIEWER: We’re talking to Ken Bywaters, Executive Vice President of Product Management.  Ken, can you talk to us about text to speech, and how that works in connection with informed guests?

KEN BYWATERS: Certainly.  So text to speech is a pretty familiar concept for most people, I think. Well the way our approach to text to speech is not to bundle in the text to speech engine ourselves, because there’s lots of varieties, lots of choices out there and our consumers want to be able to choose which one they like best.  So what we’ve done is allow for a hook that you can insert any text to speech engine, take the text of an InformaCast message and convert it to speech, audio, and send it out to any of your Cisco phones, or desktops, or speakers, in the form of audio.  So it’s very convenient, very flexible, allows people, to make their own choice.

INTERVIEWER: So there’s an engine that will plug in that will generate this, is that how that works?

KEN: Yeah, Microsoft, for one, bundles one in with their operating system, but I’ve found that people like different ones.  I’m from Texas, text to speech engines might sound a little differently from someone else in different parts of the country. So people have pretty strong feelings for which one to use, for instance.  If you don’t like the one Microsoft provides for free, there’s plenty of other ones to choose from, whether they are for free or for purchase.

INTERVIEWER: And have you seen many installations of this, and what would be an example of how someone’s using this?

KEN: Well I’ve seen people start to use it in transportation, in particular, where you know, they, they want to announce the arrival of a train, or a gate change, or something like that.  The message is extremely predictable, that they’re not going to have to record live, but, the people seeing or getting the message aren’t going to be near a display.  So what they do is they’ll take that, convert it to text to speech and pump it out the loud speakers.  That way the person sending the message doesn’t have to do much to create the message and it just goes out and then they send it.  Another nice thing is you can customize any message, any InformaCast message right before it goes out.  You can put up the framework of what you’re going to say in text, maybe write a paragraph of what you’re going to say, but then you change it a little bit to give it specifics to the message.  Uh you know, ‘now boarding rows thirty-one and higher’.  You might type in ‘now boarding rows blank’, and then type in ‘thirty-one or higher’ yourself, and then the text to speech engine takes it and sends it out, from there. Those are the, the most common uses I’ve seen of it, so far.

INTERVIEWER: Is it difficult to implement this with InformaCast?

KEN: No, it’s actually quite easy.  It’s documented in our installation guide, and really, it’s no different than sending any other message out.  There’s only one part of the message where you just attach a script, which is a text to speech script, and it sends the text to the message and it’ll automatically be converted before it’s sent out.

INTERVIEWER: Okay, and if your organization is interested in this, and they have InformaCast currently, what’s the version that they would need to run this?

KEN: 6.1 was the first version to have this, but then that, that came out in 2009, so it’s, it’s been out for awhile.

INTERVIEWER: OK.  Well very good Ken, thank you for your time today.

KEN: Thank you.

(MUSIC)

Learn more about InformaCast^® CallAware™ by listening to this interview with Ken Bywaters, Executive Vice President of Product Development with Singlewire Software.

Transcript from Interview

We’re talking with Ken Bywaters, Executive Vice President of Product Management at Singlewire. Welcome Ken.

Thank you, Good to be here.

Hoping you can talk a little bit about CallAware a new — something that’s new to InformaCast. Do you want to just explain what that is.

Yeah we’ve had a lot of requests from customers in the past about having the ability to monitor some type of out bound call, most commonly it’s 911 but in other countries it might be a different dial-string and do something with it. Frequently people even don’t know that 911 is being dialed in their organization until maybe the next month when the police or fire gives them the list of erroneous 911 calls.

So what Call Alert does is it sits passively and watches the CallManager system to see 911 or whatever phone number you want to watch is dialed and when that happens it can send a message out to whatever group of devices that you want. Any device on the network that is a CISCO phone, IP speaker, desktop, analog paging system can receive this notification in text and audio just like you would any other InformaCast broadcast.

Can you put that to an example if your in a large building and lets say something happens on a floor and someone dials 911 what would what could be a typical scenario for that playing out then?

Actually a good example is we have a we are working with an organization in Europe that has eight thousand phones deployed on a very large campus, hundreds of buildings separate locations they have no idea if someone’s dialing an emergency number or not. With this is a very scalable product so they can have CallAware we can watch all eight thousand phones to see if 911 is dialed with minimal load to the voice system and when that happens the security office elsewhere on campus is notified this phone, this user at this phone dialed 911 at this time.

So much more efficient they don’t have to wait see what happened maybe they want to do something else as a result of that call and since InformaCast can trigger other systems it they now have the ability as does everybody now to trigger other systems and be notified when 911 is called.

So today someone would dial 911 and that’s going to the police or fire the dispatch is bringing trucks to the building and the security staff internally might not know that anythings going on at all.

Yeah I worked with another customer who said that the only way they know 911 is called is every month they get a report from the city saying here are the number erroneous 911 calls you’ve made here’s you fine so they had people accidentally dialing 911 police come help they never even know what happens because it’s a large organization spread across majority of the state. So they don’t even know that’s happening until they have to pay the fine. So they look at this as not only an improved communication but actually saves them money very directly.

Do you want to talk about the impact to the network and is this a solution that will scale across large organizations you mentioned this one organization is that typical?

Yes in fact we waited until there is a good method to build this so that we can scale to very large organizations. We do have customers that have tens and thousands of phones and we didn’t want to introduce something that could only be used on five hundred phones lets say. So it is very scalable we do it in such a way that we don’t have to actually watch each phone and that allows us to scale very very well.

I see do you want to talk a about when this will be available and how people can get this if they are interested or learn more?

It’s available in February 2010 and you can just contact your local sales rep if you’re interested in using this or you can always send an email to http://www.singlewire.com/talkwithus

OK easy enough.