14
S moke S ignals
NOVEMBER 15, 2016
'AlertSense is awesome'
ALERTSENSE continued
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ing to get the word out for important
messages,” said Emergency Oper-
ations Coordinator Steve Warden.
“We used it for the Great Shakeout.
We sent out a test message and
had it been the real deal we would
have been able to give information
on where to go, where the contacts
points for rally points are or where
services are going to be located for
evacuations or for shelter. There are
any number of capabilities that we
have with AlertSense.”
Warden said that because Alert-
Sense originates from the Tribe, the
information provided is more local
and current.
Two of the regions are devoted to
the Tribe’s educational programs.
One region is reserved for use by
Youth Education (6-12) and the oth-
er is used for the Preschool (K-5).
“The reason we wanted to use
AlertSense as a communication tool
is to send out notifications to par-
ents whether they are on campus or
if they are off-campus or wherever
they live,” said Education Program
Manager Tim Barry. “It’s a much
faster way of communicating to
people and we use it for upcoming
events or for changes in the sched-
ule. The technology actually allows
us to see if they received the mes-
sage or not.”
The fourth region is set aside for
the Health & Wellness Center for
its patient database. The clinic can
use AlertSense to notify patients
of potential appointment openings
and send out reminders. The clinic
also can use AlertSense to notify
people on its database of upcoming
events related to health and well-
ness opportunities.
“We started getting people signed
up for AlertSense this past month,”
said Health & Wellness Center
Quality Improvement Manager
Dawn Doar. “We’re going to be
using it to piggy-back off of what
the Tribe already does notifying
patients of impending situations,
closures and if there are any events
going on in the clinic that we would
like to have patients be aware of.”
Doar said it will be a more stream-
lined process with mass notification
capabilities rather than having
a staff member individually call
every one of the clinic’s contact list.
Doar said that although the clinic
has yet to actually use the system,
she sees it being especially helpful
during winter weather conditions.
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The region where AlertSense
technology has been put in use the
most has been in the Education
Department.
Youth Education Administra-
tive Assistant Amber Yates sent
out the program’s first AlertSense
notification on Monday, Oct. 24,
when she notified parents of details
for a planned, upcoming event for
students.
“We are excited about the Alert-
Sense program and this will be
the first of many announcements
through this communication tool,”
said Yates in an e-mail announcing
the program’s use of the technology.
“With this tool, we will be utilizing
announcements through automat-
ed voice calls, through e-mails and
social media.”
Yates said that Education gath-
ered the necessary information to
make the contacts through the an-
nual application process. She urged
people who want to get signed up
to contact her at Youth Education.
“AlertSense is awesome,” said
Education Department Manager
Leslie Riggs. “It’s another com-
munication tool. We thought we
needed a more effective tool to get
the word out on important things.”
Network Administrator Greg Pat-
ton said AlertSense is the second
messenger notification system the
Tribe has used. Patton said that
the Tribe used a program called
AutoMessenger, but found there
were problems and that the Tribe’s
Information Systems Department
scrapped it in favor of AlertSense.
“We started looking around at
other services and we selected
AlertSense as the best option and
we have been really pretty happy
with it,” said Patton.
Patton, who previously worked
for the Dayton School District
before the Tribe, said the new
system was first used during the
Cascadia Rising earthquake drill
this summer.
“That was really our first effort
at using it for its main purpose,”
said Patton.
Patton said the Tribe has bare-
ly scratched the surface of what
AlertSense can do. He also said
the Tribe can create as many “re-
gions” as necessary to provide the
communication needed to conduct
the Tribe’s business.
“I’ll be the first to admit, we’re not
using it to its full potential,” said
Patton. “We can have as many re-
gions as we want without increasing
our costs, which is a nice feature.
We’re still learning it and figuring
out all of its capabilities and, yes,
we will definitely be growing into it.”
Warden said the premium the
Tribe places on communication is
necessary to keep people safe and
the business of the Tribe running
smoothly.
“It’s real important,” said War-
den. “General messaging is nice,
but say we have a big storm coming
in and it is known that there is
going to be damage, there is going
to be flooding, there is going to
be those type of things … we can
use the AlertSense system to get
messages out to our membership.
We can let them know when we
expect it to hit and what intensity
it’s going to be. Getting that early
warning out and giving people an
opportunity to get prepared and to
get themselves into a position of
safety is the basic premise.”
Warden said he and Tribal mem-
ber Brandy Bishop, who works with
Warden in the Tribe’s Public Safety
Office as an emergency manage-
ment assistant, attended training
with Patton during the second week
of November.
“We want to make sure we have
a good working knowledge of every
aspect of it so we can utilize it to its
fullest capabilities,” said Warden.
“We’re going to really get the nuts
and bolts of it and try to figure out
what we can do to utilize every as-
pect of it and make sure we are on
top of everything.”
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