Enhanced mass notification portfolio links comms systems, event triggers and people to stay safe and connected

Eric Wells of Muskogee Public Schools

Mitel, a global provider of business communications, is preparing organisations to better respond to emergency situations requiring real-time, effective communications with citizens, students, staff and dispersed teams. This includes the launch of a next-generation mass notification solution that connects communications systems, sensor triggers and people to improve the emergency responsiveness of all types of education, government, healthcare and other work environments.

Because disruptive events unfold quickly, response time can be complicated by today’s mobile world, where students, teachers, employees and citizens access communications via many different devices and channels. Keeping people safe, informed and productive becomes more challenging as critical response time is lost. These considerations, combined with growing regulations like Kari’s Law in the United States, mean fast-moving organisations must re-examine their approach to mass communications.

Designed with these concerns in mind, Mitel Revolution is a next-generation mass notification solution that embraces multimodal communications – including mobile phones, desktop PCs and desk phones, paging systems, SMS text, email and more – to quickly reach the widest audience possible. The single platform features out-of-the-box integrations with external early-warning systems and support for a broad range of event triggers, sensors and controls.

With Mitel Revolution, there is said to be no need for expensive professional services for set up or ongoing management. The highly reliable solution can scale to support thousands of devices and is now available in North America, the U.K., Australia and New Zealand for both the MiVoice Business and MiVoice Connect platforms.

Organisations from a broad range of industries trust Mitel to support their emergency communications needs, including these public education customers:

Muskogee Public Schools Founded in 1898, Muskogee Public Schools in Oklahoma, USA spans 133 square miles across Muskogee County, covering one early childhood centre, nine elementary schools, one junior high school, and two high school sites. The district deployed a Mitel mass notification solution to enhance safety and security processes. In the event of a crisis, native emergency number support and response management is expanded with automated alerting and built-in messaging. The solution provides calling party information to 911 services and internal notification to the school’s police and executive-level staff, alerting them when a 911 call has been placed. Alerts include the caller’s name, extension number and exact location. With simultaneous notifications, the school district can immediately create an appropriate and unified response. Built-in messaging further improves response coordination, allowing callers to communicate via text throughout the incident.

Carleton University Located in Canada’s capital city of Ottawa, Carleton University serves more than 30,000 students. Partnering with Mitel, Carleton built a structure to enable communications in critical situations and ensure a high level of reliability for the entire system. The solution relies on a three-tiered method of mass notification to deliver broadcast notifications that can reach the entire campus population during an emergency, no matter where they are. As part of the solution, Carleton can quickly issue PC desktop alerts as it locks thousands of campus computers, send a mass email notification to nearly 27,000 accounts and an SMS to its entire database of mobile phone numbers. When the university unveiled its mass notification strategy, it drew praise from the Ottawa Police Service as an example for other universities and businesses to follow.

Beyond critical events, mass notifications also enable daily opportunities for organisations in every industry to share knowledge, improve productivity and enhance customer experience. New technologies and the rise of the Internet of Things (IoT) are even enabling businesses to take mass notifications to a new level, allowing machines to “talk” with their own notifications. As an example, event triggers can help align and accelerate how shipping companies might handle incoming freight to be processed and deployed across various functions and work groups.

Learn more about how Mitel’s mass notification solutions can help organisations share information with large groups in any situation.

“The Mitel mass notification application helps us ensure the safety of students, teachers, administrators and visitors by facilitating a quick and accurate response in case of an emergency, whether it’s a medical emergency or the need to escort a visitor off campus that doesn’t pass our background check,” said Eric Wells, chief operating and technology officer, Muskogee Public School. “Overall, Mitel offers the best feature set, highest quality, easiest administration at the right price – it just works.”

“Organisational preparedness is a necessity not just for schools, but also for businesses of every size and kind,” said Johan Aasheim, director – North American Public Sector, Mitel. “The way we work has changed giving rise to the need for new ways of keeping everyone informed and safe. With Mitel’s mass notification solutions, schools, public sector, healthcare and hospitality organisations, retailers, airports, even sports venues, can communicate and collaborate seamlessly and effectively in an emergency and whenever routine mass notification is needed.”

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