2021 Mass Notification Updates
As the pandemic continued to impact organizations across all industries in 2021, Singlewire Software committed to providing an expanded arsenal of useful features for its InformaCast mass notification software. This included expanding integrations and critical event management capabilities, user interface enhancements, and greater flexibility so organizations could get the most value out of their system. These innovative additions were recognized with awards from leading industry publications including Security Today, Commercial Integrator, Spaces4Learning, Mission Critical Magazine, American Security Today, THE Journal, Campus Technology, and more.
Singlewire Software leaders continued to be on the leading edge of critical issues contributing insights to more than 30 unique industry publications to help provide guidance, tips, and on relevant safety and communication topics. With a new year posed to bring new challenges, be sure your organization is ready to handle any situation by leveraging the full power of InformaCast. Learn about the latest updates we made in 2021 below.
Zoom Phone Integration
In an ongoing effort to make it easy for any organization to leverage the benefits of our InformaCast, we introduced a new integration with Zoom Phone. This gives Zoom Phone customers full access to InformaCast’s mobile and on-premises alerting capabilities. When a notification is triggered from a Zoom Phone it can be delivered to an ecosystem of connected devices and systems, sending text, audio, and visual messages to other phones, IP speakers, desktop computers, digital signage, and mobile devices.
Windows and Mac devices, such as desktops and tablets, can now receive InformaCast Fusion notifications when the InformaCast app is installed. The InformaCast app acts as a conduit between InformaCast Fusion and these devices, pushing notifications to the device through Apple Push Notification services (APNs) or Windows Push Notification Services (WNS). These devices can also be included in areas of interest either through Windows’ or Mac’s discovery of their locations through their Location Services or through an assigned location. The app is available in the Apple and Windows app stores for download but requires an InformaCast Fusion subscription to work.
InformaCast Incident Management was introduced as a centralized location where users can designate certain notifications as relevant to a particular event. This can include the initial alert, follow-up messages, and “All Clear” messages to signal the event has been resolved. Users are also able to upload relevant resources into the incident hub to help give safety team members all the information and assistance they require to easily manage the situation. This can include safety checklists, building floor plans, and links to external resources like security camera feeds. This reduces the need to navigate long lists or complex menus. When the incident is over, a report is created that allows users to review how the event was managed and inform future adjustments to ensure the most effective response possible.
Organizations using Webex Calling are now able to leverage InformaCast’s mass notification and paging capabilities to extend the reach of their messages and provide more options for triggering messages. This provides a bridge between Webex Calling and other devices in an organization’s environment, including desktop computers, digital signage, IP speakers, overhead paging systems, and mobile phones. This creates a single, unified system for sending out audio and text messages. Organizations can use this to broadcast messages about lockdowns and severe weather, schedule school bells, and connect to panic buttons for easy activation.
InformaCast Fusion users have access to a new system health dashboard. Knowing the health status of your InformaCast Fusion environment can aid you in troubleshooting and resolving system issues before they impact your ability to send notifications. InformaCast Fusion tracks several of its internal metrics and presents them to you in the System Health Dashboard for easy scanning.
In addition to the dashboard, system health alarms are also available allowing organizations to send a notification to certain recipients when one of InformaCast Fusion’s tracked metrics negatively changes states. Notifications can also be sent when metrics return to a healthy state. This allows organizations to stay on top of any potential issues should an emergency arise.
In 2022 we will be continuing to expand our critical event management capabilities, including mobile panic button and rostering features. Subscribe to this blog and follow our social channels to stay in the loop on when the latest tools become available.