Omnilert LLC, based in Leesburg, Va., and maker of e2Campus, a unified emergency notification system for education, recently announced that a dozen smaller specialty schools have chosen e2Campus for multimodal emergency notifications.
The e2Campus notification system enables non-technical staff to administer and send custom or predefined messages instantly to the entire campus community for improved crisis communications, said the company.
There is no traditional software to install, no hardware to buy and no additional phone lines needed, said the company. Through one unified interface, e2Campus instantly and simultaneously sends multimodal alerts to a subscriber’s mobile phone (via SMS text message), landline phone (via voice message), computer desktop (pop-up), and e-mail accounts, plus school infrastructure such as PA systems, digital signage, alert beacons, Facebook Pages, Twitter Accounts and relevant school Web pages, according to the company.
Customers are citing ease of use, reliability and affordability as main reasons for choosing e2Campus, said the company. The specialty schools that have recently implemented e2Campus multimodal emergency notifications include Atlanta Institute of Music, The Cleveland Institute of Art, Forest Institute of Professional Psychology, Graduate Institute of Applied Linguistics, Idyllwild Arts Academy, Maine College of Art, Moore College of Art and Design, New York College of Health Professions, Pratt Institute, The Wright Institute and others.
“If I am going to be instantly immersed in an emergency situation, I need to put a message out and spend as little time as possible doing it so I can continue my focus on the emergency at hand and e2Campus lets me do this,” said William Schmitz, director of safety and security for Pratt Institute in New York. “Its simplicity and speed is very valuable to me. I hope I never have to use it in the case of an emergency, but certainly with the weather, it has been a real effective tool. It’s very fast. I push ‘send message’ and my cell phone is almost instantly receiving the message. Even if not everybody has signed up, a lot of people get the message by word of mouth from those who received the e2Campus alert.”
“e2Campus is a very easy-to-use service,” said Chris Fragale, director of media services at Atlanta Institute of Music. “We have to use it now just to be in touch with our students. They told us point blank that they do not pay attention to signs we put up on doors or where they have to clock in everyday, so e2Campus has been an easy tool to reach everyone in an efficient way. The cost of e2Campus is very competitive and moderately priced compared to everything else. We chose e2Campus because they cater specifically to schools and all their services are already tailored towards that environment. I like that I can track each individual user and add or delete people at any time. Since we are a vocational school, every three months we have a new batch of people and e2Campus makes it easy to stay on top of everything and keep people informed.”